"But the prairie, despite the early coming of spring, was still mainly clothed in the brown and severe dress of winter. The prairie is late sleeping and late-blooming."
–Paul Gruchow, from Journal of a Prairie Year










April 27

I have learned that there is the prairie from the outside and the prairie from the inside; one is a vantage point that that we can see from the road or along the trails that are often provided us through some of the remaining remnants or those that we have chosen, fortunately, to restore; the other view is something far more intimate, through its very raw center, where the stalks and thistle, the grit and pollen – on a bad day the biting chiggers – lost their status of display and become something more like work mates, close in proximity, each plant or sedge showing you their distinctive character. I learned this last year in a monarch monitoring class at the Arboretum where we were eventually allowed to plot monitoring lines directly through north end of Curtis prairie. As we walked and kept our eyes on high alert for the activity of both milkweed and butterflies, I realized it felt a little like parting a sea of diversity, sometimes actually keeping my hands up above the belt line pushing away goldenrod and Big bluestem. Stop and stand here for a moment and it feels like history finally reveals itself, or at least the natural history of the prairie zone of habitat that had stretched all through this corridor of the midwest: minnesota, wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa. We see from the center of the prairie with eyes that would have far more in common with previous generations eyes than our own, which, I believe, are for more often beset with a kind of longing for what they know should stand where the vacant lot now exists. We know this because, as 'get inside' the prarie, and as the sounds of the highway hopefully fade, and we are surrounded by a kind of growth that comes from deep remnant wells of soil and nutrients, and that shoot up a colorful display of useful plants (we hope, for pollinators!) our eye and mind and spirit, I believe, know it...we understand the diversity of the growth and display. It is not a shocking spectacle, but more likely something we sense we deserve! Today we have replaced the wildly vast features of the organic prairie with digital screens, and have certainly tried our hardest to diversify those colors, turned them useful, touchable, shiny, and responsive. The old prairie in technicolor. And yet there is no comparison. For underneath our prairie path is the entirety of earth geology, glaciation or not, the gradual accumulation of inches upon inches of dense and beautiful topsoil, the evolution, naturally occurring, of plant pairs or full communities. It is out of our hands, it is alive, and it is mystery in the fullest, deep, rich, wild, pulsing with growth, and creativity. I always bring this up because of the numbers that we confront: we have relatively few acres of real prairie left as as, of course, the screens artificially increase; and yet it would be the prairie itself, in full singing bloom, bouncing with bees, flitting monarchs, twisting in all shapes and colors and capturing a slight breeze that tussles and itches a sort of inborn understanding of such a chorus that would, could and should stack up to the power of the iPhone. I don't think there is any need to toy around with the claim that it is the technologists of the earth that has up to this day won out. How do naturalists take back a few minds? There is one way – gently assist as many people as possible into a bike seat, or car seat where necessary, and drive them to a blooming prairie, and ask that they walk around its edges for a moment, just a moment really, that is all it will take, and then, when the time is right, have them take fifteen steps carefully inside the a small stand of dogwood, sumac, goldenrod, lazy susan's and milkweed. When they stir up their first monarch and as it flits lazily up and around their head, and they see that majestic stained glass wing tandem, hope that it might land on their shoulder to which they can claim a new friend. When they are home later that night, just a generations prior have ousted the edges of prairie to turn them to parking lots, the iPhone this time might get imaginatively inched off the table into some dark drawer, cast out of favor for a few days.