“It never completely gets dark on those back roads. There are stars, deceptively few. And velvet consumes and velvet erupts: the softness is the leaves and the dirt paths and stables and skin. And eyes. The dark places, the secret places: abrupt, always, fleeting but indelibly there, like a muscle memory. The ridiculous and impudent course of years means nothing: the touch is the same, the taste. Iowa's sweet ground. I close my eyes to the darkness and fall into it more and awake to the street disappearing into fields and lost time.” - an excerpt from the poem Iowa by Robbie Klein After spending our first months of the pandemic in Syracuse, New York, my partner Emily and I made our way to her family farm outside of Schaller, Iowa. These photographs are a visual diary of our time in relative paradise to our small apartment: amongst her hard-working family, friends and the lush green rows of corn and beans that stretch as far as your eyes can see.⁣