Praire Views

"All I am saying is that there is also drama in every bush, if you can see it. When enough men know this, we need fear no indifference to the welfare of bushes, or birds, or soil, or trees.  We shall then have no need of the word 'conservation' for we shall have the thing itself. The landscape of any farm is the owner's portrait of himself." – Leopold, "The Farmer as Conservationist"









It is early morning, the sun has begun to warm the very tips of the big bluestem at Curtis Prairie, but they are still heavy by night dew and lean in over the narrow trail as if at either side slowly straightening back to their assigned daily positions after a night of long whispering.  To run through this bluestem archway could be done in a couple of ways.  If I bent down on my haunches, I might just slip through unblemished or I might dash through and take the mildly sharp slap of the wet racemes across the cheeks. I raise both of my arms up and find that my forearms are capable guards against any light injury.  Back in among the big blue are bright yellow clouds of the goldenrod, still, like a fixture, and what defines the field palette at this moment.  I realize that the prairie is made for many speeds, and that we could all be thankful, for not everybody is going to willingly dash through. The prairie is a maze made for walking, searching for milkweed and the monarch; it is made for the examiner's careful review, as she might lift up the milkweed leaf seeking to determine the difference between the fledgling instar egg and the aphid. Even the motorist, buzzing by at 65, might awe and wonder whether there is a more peaceful slice of time out there than the belt line.  That there is "drama in every bush," I see, isn't necessarily the story line. The story has more to do with setting foot on the farm or prairie in the first place.  Take the turn into Olbrich Gardens parking lot tomorrow, take twenty minutes to walk through the treasure hunt of foliage and serpentine secrecy of the hidden chairs or benches, and by the next week that twenty might turn to forty, the next, an hour, and so on. The prairies are near extinct not for any more reason than the mind's inability to give oneself self-permission set inside earth time and participate in the drama of every bush.  The farmer might be one of the last few remaining who stand inside earth time, looking out, no doubt, to the rush of the rest of the machinery of the world and wondering himself, in reverse logic, I wonder what that is like?  The answer might not be one or the other by itself. The city man must here and there take a jog through the bluestem. The farmer might miss his remnant prairie that much more as he passes by from a distance, hand tight on steering wheel, watching for merging traffic, and wondering what he might do without.