When I first described my love for the Aboriginal concept of songlines, the paths taken by the First Beings as they sang the world into existence, I said that one of the ideas I love best is that we are tasked with continuing the work in our own lives. As we walk through our days, we […]
Songlines 2016: landscapes of love and prairies Read More »
When I first saw the picture of the trollius above, I was struck by how ferocious it looked, though the trollius itself didn’t inspire that thought when I took it. It was the only time I’d ever associated the word ‘ominous’ with a flower. I was reminded of it this fall, as I took pictures
Happy Halloween: slightly ominous, very orange Read More »
After my happy sojourn in Missouri, I went to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, for a family reunion. My brother and one of my sisters live there, and both have large families, so when we gather, that’s the sensible place to do it. Nineteen years ago, after another reunion, I’d gone to Madison to see the oldest restored
Love, grief, wildflowers Read More »
I’ve been a walker all my life. From grade school through college, I walked to school. As teenagers in a small town with nowhere to go, we would take walks to hang out together. I walked to my first job after college. There were a couple of years, after moving to New York City, when
Two months before, I hadn’t even known there were prairies in Missouri. But there I was, in early August, swerving all over the place on a dirt and gravel road, on my way to one. I wasn’t swerving because the surface was slippery after the night’s rain, but because large, soot-black butterflies with luminous blue
Surprised by delight in Missouri Read More »
Laudato si — Praise be! — are the opening words of each of the verses in Saint Francis’s beautiful Canticle to the Sun. It is also the title of Pope Francis’ 2015 encyclical defining the Catholic Church’s doctrines on the care of the earth. This year, September 1 is the annual World Day of Prayer
Laudato si: wonder and care Read More »
In the middle of the 19th century, the tallgrass prairie covered 170 million square miles. It stretched from Canada to Texas, and from the middle of Nebraska to an outpost in northern Ohio. The vast ocean of gigantic grasses was the first thing people coming west saw, as the mountains and forests of the east
Saved by stone: the tallgrass prairie of the Flint Hills Read More »
Smoky Valley Ranch was the place I didn’t go to see. I went to Oakley, Kansas to see Monument Rocks and Lake Scott State Park, both recommended by a man named Mike Haddock, who runs a wonderful Kansas wildflower website. Oakley is not a destination site, but there are some interesting things to see there,
Smoky Valley Ranch: preserving a prairie Read More »
I first saw a paintbrush, a member of the Castilleja genus, in Idaho. Then again in southern California, and then northern. Then Colorado and Utah, British Columbia and Alberta, and then Alaska. I haven’t yet seen them in Wyoming, but it’s the state flower, so I know they’re there. If you’re west of the Mississippi,
Beautiful vampires: the castilleja genus Read More »
The Pawnee National Grasslands were born out of grief. After years of drought, farmers of northeastern Colorado, already suffering through the Great Depression, watched as their soil literally blew away. Clouds of dirt rose 20,000 feet in the air and blew so far east that they eventually settled on boats crossing the Atlantic Ocean. Left
Parcels of prairie: the Pawnee National Grasslands Read More »