Illinois Hydrology

Central Illinois is so goddamn flat.

I took a drive yesterday. The land is flat for miles around. Not Tom Friedman flat, but the real deal. There is some undulation in the farmland, but mostly it looks like a crumpled up paper that's been flattened out again: there are some creases there but no change overall.

This is the richest farmland in the world. Until the nineteenth century though most of it wasn't even passable in the summer months. Central Illinois is so goddamn flat that the winter snow and spring rain didn't drain until well past summer. The Native Americans farmed only to the south and east, along the river banks where the soil was still soft but the slope greater. When it was settled by whites they had to build networks of underground pipes to help drain the land. It's a giant sewer system. Most of the region is still covered in a series of taxing districts that go to maintain it.

Anyway, the only place I've seen that is similarly flat is the shore, and when I drove down the county roads in the heat yesterday I thought of it. I mean I felt it. Like the twinge of salt beneath my eyes. Like the haze of distant asphalt was ocean...