Home for the Harvest

Walking around campus makes it easy to forget about where I came from. Sure, we have trees and neatly manicured landscapes. The green grass is cut weekly and the flowers are watered daily. All of it is quite nice to see when I take my daily journey to class. On my way though, I also have to dodge skateboarders, bikers, and that person on the phone (I could really care less about what you ate for dinner. Or what your cat ate and threw up for that matter). The landscape is nice, but there’s no place like home, especially my home.

Michigantown, Indiana has a gas station, a liquor store, and The Angry Donkey (the local’s watering hole). I couldn’t wait to leave my small town for a bigger, unknown adventure. As the fall creeps up though, I start wondering about what everything outside of cardinal country looks like. Are the crops getting brown and crunchy? Do the little family farms have pumpkins yet? MY questions needed answers. Therefore, it was time to go home.

Just the drive back took away all of the typical 18-year-old anxieties I have accumulated since I’ve been at Ball State. Yes, the crops were perfectly crunchy and brown. Not only were some pumpkins ready, but apple season was in full swing as well. Once I finally got back home, where it smells of sweet cinnamon and coffee, I started my weekend off perfectly by watching the sunset in the combine with my dad. There’s nothing more beautiful than a Midwest sunset; especially in the fall. In that moment of time, I remembered why I love the earth and our resources so much. It was like falling in love all over again.

“Who says you can’t go back, there’s only one place and that’s a matter-of-fact,” are the wise words of Bon Jovi. I couldn’t agree more with him. For me, home is more than where the heart is. It’s where my passion blossomed. To some it may just be a dot on a map, nothing in a world full of somethings. But my town is more than that. My little farming town helps to feed the world. My town is a place where a person can breathe easy and take in the natural surroundings. A place where one can leave the hustle and bustle for a minute. No, we don’t have skyscrapers or Starbucks. We have something better. We have the food and the future. Why wouldn’t you want to protect those precious things?

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