Driving on long winding highways through cornfields (or fields of any type) is a relatively recent experience in my life. I’m not used to it at all, and it always makes any trip that I take seem like a journey, even if it’s only a 20 minute journey.

Sometimes as I set out through the fields I wonder what I’d be seeing if I were used to seeing these things. What would I notice about the health of the field, the type of crop, the irrigation decisions being made, and the types of pests and diseases that might become problems at different times in the season.

But this morning there was nothing subtle about the problems facing the fields that spaced themselves between me and my destination. Leaves blasted into deep oranges and bright yellows curled in on themselves, having spent their last hours writhing in agonies of thirst. Those fields whose farmers still pumped gallons and gallons of water onto their crops in desperate hope of a harvest, those fields maintained a predominance of green. But the green wasn’t that lush, deep, cool color that predicts bountiful harvests. It was the slightly manic green of a crop that’s really just in denial about it’s impending death.

I’ve never seen this side of a drought. I’m used to lawns shriveling to straw. But you never look at a shriveled lawn and wonder if that family is about to enter bankruptcy, or if the food you’ll be buying in another couple of months will be twice as expensive as it is now. (Speaking of lawns, I’ve never seen lawns gradually disintegrate into dirt quite like it has around here, either.)

Unfortunately, even though we just had about 24 hours of soft, gentle rain, I don’t think it was enough to change the life expectancy of this year’s crops.