I was on an airliner flying over the Midwest on my way to a business appointment in June and it struck me that I had forgotten just how green it is in the middle of the country in the summertime. Southern California is a lot of things, but green in the summer is not one of them. I looked down on the neat section lines and remembered how easy it is to navigate when you have such a prominent directional reference. The roads in SoCal that do go straight, don't go straight for far before they run into a canyon or a mountain. Later, as I was driving through the countryside on the way to the printing plant, I noticed that the corn was well on its way to being knee-high by the 4th of July. My Grandpa told me that was a sign of a good crop. Looking at the corn also reminded me of a close encounter with corn that a student of mine and I had some 24 years ago.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.avweb.com/flight-safety/technique/the-corn-was-as-high-as-an-elephants-eye