vastness

The missing-person case in Iowa, where 20-year-old Mollie Tibbetts disappeared, draws attention of so many Americans, and even people from other countries Comment-in, on the Internet, with concern for the young lady and her family.

In photographs, Mollie just looks so happy and brimming with enthusiasm, everyone relates to that on some level, I think.

She went out for a run, in the little Iowa town of Brooklyn, 60 miles east of Des Moines.


People write in and Comment:

------------- I live in Iowa, and sometimes I wonder, there is a creepiness to the place at times.  Too wholesome, and it covers up the weirdness that is happening under our noses....just a feeling.

--------------------- I feel it too.  I got robbed at gunpoint like 20 hours before Mollie was last seen and before that happened I had always felt safe.  There was a weirdness ever since the Evansdale murders but Mollie missing and getting robbed definitely changed my perspective and the way I look at everything.  

There's a lot of secrets and a lot of people who know them, you just gotta find the ones that have reason to talk.


-------------- Law Enforcement has nothing.  I don't want to speak about incompetence, but my faith in both the justice system and the agents of that system is at an all time low.


------------- Born and raised in the city of Chicago this video looks so desolate to me.  I'm a runner and running out there would scare me outta my mind.  But I get it...lotta people are afraid of Chicago I'm sure.

---------- wow, thanks for this video! really helps get my mind around the area and exactly how desolate it is

---------- Your comment really highlights something very interesting to me.  That being, how differently people perceive seeing the same exact thing.  I am from Iowa and I thought hey this is a great video to show people not from Iowa, how it's not just some big flat field lol.  

Iowa to me, is quite hilly, has a lot of vegetation, and roads are fairly curvy.  The hills out here are more the rolling type until you get closer to main waterways then you will find steep, tall, and rocky bluffs.

I used to walk the desolate roads around my house and walking trails in nearby parks by myself, until someone in my area was murdered while fishing alone in an access area in broad daylight.  That happened 3 years ago and it's never been solved.  Up until that happened, I never thought twice about my daily walking routines.


------------- I've been thinking hard about who would be driving on these roads between 8 or 9 on a summer night because very few people are usually out driving around in a town of this size after 7:30 p.m. or so.  

So...who was at Casey's that night getting food?  Does Casey's have a surveillance camera?  What single males ate there and left alone between 7:45 and 8:45?


-------------- I lived in Iowa for 4 years and the video brought back lots of memories.  I agree with you that the state is not as flat as people think and I thought the video did a good job of showing that.  Now Nebraska...that state is flat!!

-------------------- And Kansas.  Like pancakes.

----------- Omg yes Nebraska is sooooo flat.  Especially going west on 80.

------------ Good point, flat wasn't the right term... but in this video, and what I remember from the first half of Kansas, there is a very strange, almost haunting, feeling of vastness and silence.  I'm from upstate New York which is mountainous and I'm so struck by how open the Midwest is.  Maybe it's also because the trees aren't as tall, too....

----------- I think vastness is an excellent way to describe Iowa terrain.  It also really emphasizes how many places there are to look.  At some of the higher points in an area, you can zero in on someone who is quite far away, with rather cheap equipment if you really wanted to.

------------------- I didn't see one single person on the streets or sidewalks.  Where is everyone?

--------------- You ever been to that part of the Midwest?  There's nothing, nothing at all.  There's not even a pop  machine that takes dollar bills let alone cameras at a motel.  Most cameras can't even tell if the robber is a man or woman.  There's no way a camera at a gas station or convenient Mart could see a vehicle on the road in the dead of night.

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