Iowa Savanna

Last month, I visited my birthplace, Iowa, and I learned that Iowa's pre-agricultural land was not just prairie, but also bona fide savanna.

I usually think of savanna as a place in Africa where you'd find lions, not pigs, but I can't deny that Iowa's savanna, its grasslands punctuated by bur oaks and, this time of year, black-eyed Susans, has a beauty all its own.

I've thought this before: growing up in a place that's not the splashiest tourist attraction in the world can help you learn to see loveliness wherever you are.

And, yes, there are more pigs than people in Iowa. A story appeared in the Washington Post to this effect while I was in graduate school, and a mischievous coworker from Boston teased me unmercifully about it. I checked it out today, and it's still true that pigs come in first by a longshot: people number just under 3 million, while pigs top 15 million, according to the Iowa Pork Newsroom.