I was in Alberta, Canada this last weekend leading a retreat called "Yoga and the Art of Inner Listening." I'm fascinated by the play of awareness and intuition and deeply enjoyed the immersion into embodied inquiry with such kind people. As I flew across the continent and watched the landscape shift from the wooded east to the plains of the midwest I remembered my years in college and grad school while simultaneously working on a farm on the Illinois/Wisconsin border.
There is a reason they call this the heartland. There's something about the openness of the earth that is reflected in the open hearted kindness of my fellow adventurers.
Here's an image from a little further north and west than where I was. (Thanks, Laurel.)
And here's a link to the image from NASA.