Back home after the reading in the Cities. I haven't made that drive for a while, and I forgot how much I like going through Motley (population 585). I know it's just a typical small town in Minnesota, but I love the name of the town and some of the business names: Mr. Ed's Restaurant and the Y-Knot Liquor Store, for example.

I think my favorite part of the drive is seeing all the lowland north of Motley along highway 64. Miles of land where there are no signs, no development — nothing except reeds, sedges, hummocky places and water in the road ditches. And lots of red-winged blackbirds.

The Minnesota writer Bill Holm said* he had a "prairie eye," adding that "dense woods or mountain valleys make me nervous." I agree and think I understand what he meant. When I'm in woods with towering trees, I sometimes feel claustrophopic.

I think I like lowlands because they really are nothing kind of places. A high water table means it's hard to build. But I also like them because of their appearance: old vegetation is bleached out, and the ground is pocked and dimpled. Water pools in the dimples, between tussocks. There's nothing really remarkable to see, but that's the point. Some of the days I like best are spring and summer days when I'm here in the meadow and nothing — no thing — happens.

At the complete opposite end of the spectrum is the brief time Jeff and I
spent at the Mall of America on Thursday. In order to go from Macy's to Torrid , I crossed the amusement park in the middle of the mall. (It used to be called Camp Snoopy, but I think it's something else now.) Anyway, they have a walk-through exhibit there called Butterfly Bay where you can enter into a screened tent with lots of tropical butterflies flitting about. I was tempted for about 5 seconds to go inside, but the shrieking of all the kids in park made me pass by. Can butterflies hear?


* If you want to reaad all of Bill Holm's essay "Horizontal Grandeur," click here.