horned heads

I am a child of the historic prairies which ran from horizon to horizon in my hometown. The tallgrass prairie soils now smothered by vast acreage of subdivisions, lawn upon lawn, so much cement, invasive pasture grasses, crop monoculture, and colonizing trees that should have stayed in the forests of the East... I did not know this until I went to school. I was ignorant to the prairie story of my home. Until I lucked into a research tech position studying prairie herbs in the Flint Hills of Kansas, which is the largest remaining stretch of North American tallgrass prairie still standing. Until my eyes were opened and the composite background of green weeds and grass became a sea of native wildflowers, tall and short grasses, and shrubs.

[Left: Hoary vervain, Verbena stricta; Right: great-spangled fritillary, Speyeria cybele, nectaring upon tall thistle, Cirsium altissimum]

Though my childhood was more-so in humble, remnant forests of an Eastern character, which are beautiful and true in their own way, it took twenty years to realize the rich prairie history of the landscape and the waters that grew my body and my mind; how those forests are meant to be the minority here, not the majority. Now I see the suburbia of my hometown colored in its history: where there are cattle and house sparrows today, there were bison and dozens of grassland songbirds of yesteryear. Where the indigenous prairie tribes like the Kanza and the Missouri peoples once hunted bison, elk, stewarded wild crops and farmed acorns with fire are now replaced by Walmarts and Chiefs football tailgates. But I also see a sparkle of hope in every coneflower some homeowner has chosen to steward in their garden, of every goldenrod and blazingstar that survive in the rural roadside ditches, in the meadowlark that sings in a 30-acre remnant prairie of the state's most visited park, of the prescribed burns that seek to prevent the further colonization of our prairies by the redcedars, locusts, and elms of the eastern forests.

[Some restored prairies in eastern Kansas]

Less than 1% of the tallgrass prairie remains. The Flint Hills persist by their rocky, untameable spirit, geology protecting ecology. The rest is sheltered in small pockets across the American Midwest, some protected, some stewarded, some forgotten and waiting to be found and saved. My prayer is that this number sees only increase, no matter how slow, no matter how tedious, no matter how much fight it takes, may we Midwesterners, colonized and colonizers, continue to restore and protect our ecological history and may the bison, the elk, the greater prairie chickens, the Henslow's sparrows, the ornate box turtles, the Great Plains skinks, the American burying beetle, the monarch and regal fritillary butterflies and all the other prairie creatures know only recognition, appreciation, conservation, and increase; hopefully with haste, but always with hope.

[Left: Carolina larkspur, Delphinum carolinianum; Right: more Flint Hills speckled with roundhead prairie clover, Dalea multiflora, and a riparian gallery forest of Bur Oaks in the valley]

I love you, tallgrass prairie, and all other prairies. Despite your unappreciated visage, your lack of shade, your modest demeanor, all those things that let the colonizers treat you like a blank slate to fill. May grasslands around the world know no further development, no other plow nor bulldozer. For they hold beauty and power hidden and hampered by so much extractive disregard. May all reading find yourselves lucky enough to gaze upon the scarlet and gold hillsides of the fall prairie, or the pink, purple, and orange spotted verdant plains in May. Thank you to the prairies for all their medicine, their carbon storage, their cleaning of water, and so much more. For their beauty, and resilience, and their unspoken abundance. If you read this all, I thank you, too.

[Left: maybe my favorite prairie flower, blue sage, Salvia azurea; Right: a famed prairie sunset across the October prairie]