Whether or not one can hear corn grow — that is among the true mysteries of life in rural South Dakota. Some might liken the idea to snipe hunting or jack-a-lopes. But I’ve talked to farmers who insist that you can hear the corn stalks crackling if you spend some time in a field on a hot, still summer’s night.

South Dakota is one of the best places on earth to listen. We planted five million acres of corn this year. In dollars and cents, all that grain will sell for about a billion dollars — but corn means a lot more than money to South Dakota. It has become a way of life.

Some regions are known for fishing, others for mining coal or building cars. The eastern half of South Dakota is corn country, and has been for centuries. Native Americans brought the crop from Mexico as they moved northward. Pioneers planted their first crops by hand. Herbert Schell, the historian, once wrote that the settlers found “it was possible to raise a fair sod crop of corn from seed dropped in holes and chopped in with an axe.”

We’ve perfected the art of growing corn in the century since then, but the plant remains an enigma for farmers and the rest of us. Seldom are conditions in South Dakota ideal. Most 100-day growing seasons include periods of too much moisture and too little. A dozen things can go wrong, and yet South Dakotans persist summer after summer.

Some wit offered this advice in Funk and Wagnall’s Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology and Legend on how thick to plant a corn row:

One for the cutworm

One for the crow

One for the blackbird

And three to grow.

Whether by trial and error or sheer persistence, South Dakotans get better at corn-growing every year. Yields are higher. Crop failures are less likely.

We celebrate corn in our poetry, music, art and even our architecture. The Corn Palace in Mitchell has become a destination for travelers on Interstate 90. Without it, far fewer coffee mugs and t-shirts would be sold in that city and the high school basketball team (the Kernels) wouldn’t have a place to play.

But the mystery remains after 9,000 seasons of growing corn in the Americas: Can one hear corn grow?

Think of it this way. Corn grows from a seed to seven feet in about 100 days. What wouldn’t crackle and snap at that rate?