Just as I have on many other evenings, I wander into my living room and pop a certain movie into the VCR.  The one where Ray Kinsella hears voices that prompt him to plow under the cornfield on his Iowa farm and build a baseball diamond.  By doing this he feels the White Sox who were suspended for throwing the 1919 World Series will come back to life and play there.  As the film begins, I hear the opening theme…watch the opening scene fade in…and remember my visit.
     Even though I was thirty-something, I couldn't resist a childlike run around the bases.  From there, I hiked out to center field and tried to digest the setting.  Just past the far edge of the diamond, sat a large pale farm house, its paint peeling off like a reptile discarding its casing.  Several giant pine trees with limbs drooping downward flanked the structure on the left, like guards protecting the dwelling from intruders.  Across the driveway to the right was an ancient, faded red barn.  A small yard and short white picket fence separated the home from the field.  On the first base sideline was a tired makeshift grandstand and behind home plate an even more tired, weathered backstop.  Both were constructed of bare wood that cried out in need of luster.  I breathed in the fresh scents of the pines, the newly mown grass, and even the rich soil, all more pleasing than tainted odors of the urban ozone.  The silence was only disturbed by the occasional chirp of a cricket or the mellow wisping of a summer breeze across the gold tassels topping the corn.  I gazed skyward to behold a pleasing vast blueness, obscured only by an occasional white puff.  I closed my eyes but the sun was still too bright to view.  Its heat landed on my face like a rush of warmth from an open hearth.  It was obvious from the dull green grass and the tall, crisp corn stalks that the movie was filmed at that same time of year.  I strolled to the edge of the cornfield.  Its straight stems stood smartly like the three dimensional rank and file of an organized group of soldiers.  I looked down one row, then the next, then the first again.  Did I really expect to see the spirit of Shoeless Joe or Moonlight Graham?  I took several steps into the peaceful woodsy abyss.  The sharp, rough leaves brushed against my unclad arms.  I actually felt as though I might disappear.
     Autumn will soon bring the browning of the stalks and harvest of the yield.  Winter will follow, depositing an ivory powder and a brisk stillness on this scene.  Spring will sprout the bright green rebirth of the players' playground.  And next summer the corn will rise up once more and form the place where home runs fall, where angels fade.  It all seems so simple--yet so enchanting.  Maybe this is Heaven.
     I had seen the picture a dozen times when I learned that the field still existed.
     "Why don't we take a detour to Dyersville, Iowa?" I asked when we planned a long weekend trip to Galena.
     "Dyersville, Iowa?  What's in Dyersville, Iowa?"
     This small farming town, twenty-five miles west of Dubuque, was one site for the filming.  The drive along the open country roads toward the locale was under whelming.  A cornfield.  A crossroad.  A cornfield.  A crossroad.  A cornfield.  A cornfield.  A cornfield.  The monotony of the trip actually added to the anxiety of our arrival.  As we pulled up the long dusty driveway, my heart was pounding.  As we parked and got out, it pounded harder.  As we stepped up to the field, it stopped.
     I'm really here.
     The place in itself was nothing spectacular.  Being there was the real thrill.  To walk where the ghosts had walked.  To look over a display of photos taken during the production.  And to peruse an intriguing letter written by the director about how he chose the site.  We didn't stay that long.  There wasn't all that much to see or all that much to do.  But now I can say, I was there.  Now I can know I was there.  Now when I watch my favorite movie I'm not just a spectator on the sideline--I'm a player on the "Field of Dreams."