Fields of Gold

I have always loved this time of year. I love the golden hills, a patchwork quilt of different grains. Having grown up on a wheat farm, I feel an unbreakable connection to this land, and these fields of gold and brown and green. I find it beautiful, especially on a calm night, when the haze in the air from dusty combines and grain trucks helps to create a truly amazing sunset. If I close my eyes, the wind in the wheat almost sounds like the ocean, and I smile.

Every year I take the kids to walk through the hot stubble in search of a familiar grain truck. I know that if we wait there long enough, eventually the soft hum I hear in the distance will become a roar as a combine appears from behind the hills and slowly climbs toward us. The kids have never been afraid of the fearsome machine, with its noise and huge moving parts. They are always excited to watch as the beast slows, stops, and the motor winds down. This year was no different, and they jumped around in anticipation as the great machine quieted. The door opened, and Grampy helped them up the ladder for their annual combine ride.



I used to ride with them, but this year they wanted to go on their own. I sat in the wheel well of the truck, taking pictures and appreciating the beauty of the golden field set against the dark green mountains and the bright blue sky. I watched them slowly move around the field, chewing up the standing grain. The kids only rode for one loop, but it amazes me to think about the hundreds, thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands of loops my dad and many other farmers have made around these same fields year after year after year.


A part of me misses being out here too, carefully hauling the precious cargo from field to elevator, over and over again - a hot and miserable job that seems a rite of passage for a farm kid on the Palouse. I wonder if my kids will ever drive these dusty roads cut through stubble fields, hauling in the grain, and complaining about the dirt and chaff and heat. Will they feel as tied to these fields as their mother?




Too soon, their ride is over, and they climb backwards down the tall ladder, dirty and happy, chattering about the header and the auger, and the wheat. I hope that we can do this again next year, and the next, and that someday they can look out at these fields and remember, and smile too.






Thin stalks wave in liquid movement, flowing over the hills like water.

A steady wind stirs the surface, swirling green and summer gold,

Delivering the gentle warm smell of chaff and earth,

Calling me to leave the safety of bare ground,

and slip into this wild wheat sea,

where I might drown in its colors,

Pulled down by hazy memories of harvests past.

Whitecaps form in standing grain.

The sun explodes in droplets of pink and orange.

My heart sails home on a rolling sea of wheat.