Summer 1998

[TEXT ARCHIVE WEB-PUBLISHED MARCH 2002.
ORIGINAL PRINT PUBLICATION DATE: SUMMER 1998.]

Encountering a Prairie

By Verie Sandborg

I traveled a long way in life until I came to a prairie. Perhaps there were some prairie patches in southwestern Michigan where I grew up — or the Chicago suburbs I lived in after college. But no one ever told me about them. Though I learned the geography of faraway places, there was no mention of prairie in any of my schooling from kindergarten through a master's degree. I enjoyed nature and traveled to see mountains, seashores, caves, forests, rock formations, lakes. I didn't meet any prairies there.

While I knew the value of faraway rainforests through television, I never saw a Nature or National Geographic television program on prairies, the natural heritage of this area. Prairies were not part of my roles as a housewife, single parent raising two children, and as a professional environmental manager. The culture I had lived in had such little pride and knowledge of its natural heritage that it had been unable to give itself, including me, a prairie experience.

I first walked a prairie in August 1990 when I was in my fifties. I had been contributing to The Nature Conservancy for several years and decided to take the Markham Prairie walk they offered members. The guide told us that the misfortune of the Depression had saved the Markham Prairie from the development which surrounds it and that people had discarded trash on it for years.

It was a hot day. Walking along trying to hear what the guide said, I distractedly waved and slapped at the mosquitoes attacking me from a nearby ditch. There were no defined paths on the prairie, and we were enveloped by the tall grasses and flowers. Being inside of nature instead of on the outskirts was a new, multi-sensory experience for me, which my conscious mind could not digest. Outwardly, I was sweating and slapping and pushing grass out of my face, not a promising first encounter. But at another level, only realized in retrospect, I liked being close to nature.

Not knowing anything of prairies, I had no knowledge to build on. I didn't learn a lot on that first prairie walk. I did learn that a tall, rose-pink, spiked flower was commonly called a blazing star and that its flowers bloomed from the top down instead of from the bottom up. Shortly thereafter, I felt proud of myself when I could identify a blazing star in a bouquet at a funeral I attended. But I also wondered why they were in a florist's bouquet and not in local gardens when they were native to the midwest? Why didn't I know about these beautiful flowers sooner?

The other thing I remember is touching a green snake, a resident of the prairie. One of the guides was an herpetologist. He had brought a green snake and let us touch it. He coaxed us out of our deep fear of snakes by telling us that touching the brilliant neon green snake would be a sensuous experience. I was intrigued by that. He was right: the snake did feel good.

Like Eve interacting with the snake in the Garden of Eden, meeting that snake in a prairie was for me a seminal experience. It awakened me to the joy of prairies and ignited a passion that would determine my path in the years since then. Trying to make up for lost time, for not seeing prairie flowers in bloom more than half my life, I have walked that path with ardor. I have taken nature hikes and naturalist classes. I have poked around in wild-looking places searching for evidence of prairies. Soon I recognized a common thread among prairies in our area. While there were patches of virgin prairie, there were no pristine prairies. They all seem to have been degraded, if not destroyed. Functionally on the edge of extinction, the remaining prairie remnants are all in some state of rescue, restoration, or reconstruction.

I have read books and written letters to government officials and newspapers concerning natural areas. I became a volunteer worker at two local prairies, Liberty Prairie in Grayslake and Buffalo Grove Prairie in Buffalo Grove. Outraged that it took me more than half a century to discover a prairie, the natural heritage of the areas where I've lived my whole life, I am determined that prairies should thrive. I am determined that today's children can experience the prairie many times before they are 50.

What the prairie tourist learns is that prairies are exciting places — a true secret garden — rich with diversity, alive in the rhythm of the seasons. Experience the prairie in June and bask in the cream colors of wild indigo. Experience it a few weeks later dressed in yellow and pink as the grasses start to rise. Then, by August, you're in it instead of over it, turkey-foot grass over your head and ladies' tresses orchids at your feet. Charles Darwin notwithstanding, prairies are a testament not so much to survival of the fittest but to harmony of the diverse. And as such, they are models to human organizations.

Many midwestern towns have a historical museum depicting the lives of their settlers. Few, however, have a living museum of the area's natural heritage. This is particularly strange considering how tallgrass prairies have supported human advancement. The decay of the roots of prairie plants over millennia built the black soil of the midwest. The invention of the steel plow enabled settlers to break through the thick prairie sod and to plant crops. Prairies rapidly became this country's breadbasket to feed an expanding country, to feed the world. Despite this tremendous contribution prairies have made to human history, we are culturally illiterate about them.

As I have come to know prairies, the natural heritage of this region, I have come to love this place where I live. Before, I always had an itch to travel and see the natural wonders of faraway places. I accepted the harsh assessment people gave the northeastern Illinois terrain. Like others, I called our landscape flat and boring and, in doing so felt a low self-esteem for living here. As I've become familiar with prairies, I realize that whatever boredom exists in our landscapes is recent and unnecessary. In learning the inner and outer stories of prairies, I find I don't want to go away or I may miss the bloom of butterflyweed or the seeding of big bluestem. Like the long, long roots of many prairie plants, I have become happily rooted in a wonderful place, Chicago Wilderness.