Migrant workers endure long hours bent over harvesting watermelon near Conesville, Iowa. (2003)

Hamlin Garland, when his family arrived in Iowa in the 1860s, marveled that his father “was in his element. He loved this shelterless sweep of prairie.” To survive here, you have to have that gift for living inside of silences, for finding calm within your mind when there’s nothing from the outside to feed it.