grew up in rural Illinois but haven’t been back for a long time and can’t say I’ve missed it—the yeasty heat, the lush desolation of limitless corn, the flatness. But it’s like bike-riding, in a way. The native body readjusts automatically to the flatness, and as your calibration gets finer, driving, you can start to notice that the dead-level flatness is only apparent. There are unevennesses, ups and downs, slight but rhythmic. Straight-shot I-55 will start, ever so slightly, to rise, maybe 5° over a mile, then go just as gentle back down,
