Crater Lake To Stanley, Day 12 : Curiosity

I’m passing through Fruitland, heading southeast away from Ontario, towards the town of Emmett, my next designated sleeping place. The land is divided into big squares, and it seems that each one is growing a different vegetable.

• Dense short, golden wheat
• Tall, light yellow wheat
• Thin, bendy medium-sized wheat
• Deep green wrinkly leaves of kale
• Big purple-leafed cabbage plants
• Short tangly green herbs
• Tall spindly light-green herbs

I find it amusing that I could probably recognize these vegetables if they were cut, washed, ripened, and sitting in a supermarket, but out here in a field, clustered together and halfway mature, I have only a vague idea of what they are. Every day of this trip I see another thing that reminds me how little I actually know — even about important things, like, what food actually looks like when it’s still in the ground.