Amber Waves of Grain

If there were only one thing I could share with you about my life here, I would share the wind as it flows across the rice paddy at night. I would share the way the stalks, growing heavier and more golden with each day that passes, bend and ripple at the lightest touch of a breeze. I would share the low rustle and the fresh soft smell that reaches through my living room window.

As I walked home the other night, I passed a rice paddy just as the breeze picked up. For an instant I thought, "it smells like home."

Though I come from the Heartland and have always lived in vast, flat countries crisscrossed by fields, it is only now, halfway round the globe in a land of mountains and earthquakes, that I truly appreciate the beauty in amber waves of grain.