Midwestern farm fields, gently sloping hills, and muddy river banks create a backdrop of unusual beauty. I don’t mean “unusual” in terms of rare or extraordinary. In fact, it’s almost the opposite. It’s an “every day” sort of beauty. And, beyond calling the plain, gray brown grasses beautiful because that’s what nature bestows upon us this time of year, during my Galena getaway, I really felt a special quality of beauty in the way the season’s muted tones made so many other things seem more beautiful.

To start our second day in Jo Davies Country, Adam and I had the equivalent of a Grand Slam breakfast at the Broken Spoke, a cash-only, family run diner along Route 20. It was brimming with southwestern styled bric a brac and served a bottomless cup of coffee. Afterwards, we visited a potter’s studio in Elizabeth. Why Paul Eshelman decided to set up shop in this spot of the world, I don’t know. His studio was full of very sophisticated, Asian influenced crockery; tureens and over-sized mugs. He even had an assistant working for him. On wire shelves only a few feet from his firing room, he had stacks of heavy duty boxes so he could ship his ceramic art anywhere.

After a short stop at the county’s conservancy office, we headed for the hills. Actually, we headed for the mounds. Mounds, raised fields, usually used for burial or ceremonial purposes, are located across North America where Indian communities (In this case, most likely, Fox or Sauk tribes) flourished. One of my friend’s favorite things to do is to dig in the dirt around these grassy bumps on the plains and look for arrowheads and remnants of pottery or tools.

Well, digging in the dirt was never an activity I sought out, but the weather was not nasty cold, and the terrain was easy, so I walked. I walked. I walked in a big circle around what might have been a village a thousand years ago. I don’t normally think of anything in Illinois as being that old, but communities from the Woodland Period date anywhere from 2000 years ago to 1200 AD.

Occasionally, a hawk flew overhead. Adam seemed happily engaged. He had an uncanny sense for spotting ancient arrowheads from twenty paces away.

I looked around. I was able to pick out a squirrel, colored to match the tall grasses, scampering across the mound on his way to explore an abandoned trailer home nearby. It was amazing how well this speeding fur ball with tail blended in so perfectly with everything around him. It was heartening to think that this made his life safer. I looked at how the very nondescript, anything but vibrant grasses looked against a shamelessly blue Midwestern sky. The contrast made the pure cerulean sky pop. And, as I noticed, the bluestem and switch grass shoots sway in the wind, I thought about how their movements actually enabled me to see the wind.

It seems that in any group of people, there is usually someone who makes the group function better. In a feast, a palette cleanser can transform the first taste of the next course. Background music at an event can stir your emotions and actually help imprint details of an experience in your memory. Here, it seems the plain grasses, the grasses of the plain, drew me in to a sense of place that made me aware of a special beauty.

Recognizing the special beauty of something that allows you to better see the beauty of something else is no small thing