CHAPTER ONE: Turning on the Light

continued from February 25, 2005

The tall grass prairie is the earth's most altered landscape. Before the arrival of Europeans, tall grass prairies extended as far south as Texas and extended north up through parts of Minnesota, North Dakota, and southern Canada. To the east they were found in northern Illinois and to the west in central Nebraska.

A never ending sea of grass is what greeted the character played by Kevin Costner in the movie Dances with Wolves when he reached the "frontier" in 1863, for hundreds of miles in any direction. In 1862 the U.S. Congress passed the Homestead Act. Anyone who was willing and able to farm the land would receive 160 acres. Slowly almost all of the prairie vanished under the farmer's plow. The planet's largest remaining tall grass prairie today is 20 million acres, covering parts of Kansas, Oklahoma, and Missouri.

These tall grass prairies make up only a small portion of grasslands throughout the world. In the state of Kansas alone you'll find the tall grass in only the eastern part of the state; the mixed-grass prairie is found in central Kansas; the short grass area is in western Kansas and eastern Colorado. Moisture is everything for the grasslands. Rainfall becomes more abundant as you move from eastern Colorado to western Missouri.

While parts of eastern Europe, Asia, southern Africa, South America, and Australia also have some remaining tall grass fragments, what makes these areas in the United States different is the amount of big bluestem grass. Big bluestem has a flowering stalk that will sometimes rise to more than ten feet tall. After a frost the bluish to purplish stems will turn a reddish-copper color. Big bluestem is the signature grass of the tall grass prairies in the United States and what makes it unique.

At one time, according to The Nature Conservancy, there may have been more than 700 plant species, 300 bird species, and 80 mammal species that called the grasslands home. Some 8,000 years ago nomadic groups of hunter-gathers likely traveled throughout the tall grass regions. The Pawnee may have been one of the first identifiable tribes in the central plains and lived there a thousand years ago. They established settlements, maintained gardens, and hunted the bison.

By some estimates nearly 30 million bison roamed throughout the entire Great Plains at the start of the Civil War in 1860. By the beginning of the twentieth century, only forty years later, there were less than 5,000 bison. More than a 120 years ago climate, fires ( natural and manmade ), and grazing bison still maintained a delicate natural balance on the prairie. But within a few years this balance had been overturned.

The ideal conditions that encouraged the development of tall grass prairies, such as rich soil and sufficient moisture, also led to its downfall. As the settlers arrived in the nineteenth century with their own culture and established homes and communities, these prairies were overwhelmed by the steel plow, turning over soil that had not been disturbed since the ice age.

But something is once again happening in the Great Plains today, possibly as momentous as what occurred a century before. A significant part of the region is losing population, as farmers and ranchers leave because it is becoming more and more difficult to earn a living and their children refuse to remain in rural communities. In some areas the census reports no more than six people per square mile, in line with the nineteenth century definition of "frontier"
territory.

At the same time, native prairie grasses and native buffalo are making a tentative comeback, along with something else. The 2000 U.S. census reported that, while half the counties in the great Plains were losing population, those counties that contain the region's Indian reservations were, in fact, growing in population.

The hard part does seem to be the looking or maybe the willingness to observe. My first visit to a tall grass prairie did make an impression upon me; I knew that at some level. What was here before? And while I still couldn't have called this part of the country home, it was no longer "unnatural." I had been living out here for three years. How time flies.



Did I want to spend a week in France with my son visiting the historical World War II battlefields in Normandy? It was my son's idea; he knew I'd always wanted to do that. My daughter-in-law, a travel agent, had some clients in Paris who wanted to thank her for the business. Who could refuse?

The first week in October of 1999, three months before the "end" of the world, we boarded an Air France flight to Paris, drank some wine, and watched a really bad movie.

What happened to Paris? I had last visited this incredible city in 1968. Charles DeGaulle was running the country and irritating NATO. Former members of the French resistance were still writing their memoirs. In fact, there were Frenchmen alive who remembered the "war to end all wars"--World war I. In 1914 Paris taxi cabs were commandeered to transport troops to the front to stop the "barbarous" Huns closing in on the city. The French knew that if Paris was captured the war was over.

In 1968 on the Left Bank, near the University of Sorbonne, U.S. Assassins was scribbled on walls everywhere, protesting the war in Viet Nam, while the dark eyes of Che Guevara on his pop-art poster followed you down the cobblestone streets. If you couldn't speak French, well, too bad. And the Parisians looked different in 1968 ... like Parisians.

But in October 1999? Everyone spoke "American," had a cell phone attached to his or her ear, discussed their stock options--and looked American. Globalization had arrived. Y-2K? C'est la vie. My son, who worked for Intel at the time, said January 1, 2000 would be no different from December 31, 1999, except for the date. The bubble didn't burst in 2000....

Almost as an afterthought we strolled into Notre Dame Cathedral the day before we were to leave Paris for the coast. My son wanted to see it. He didn't remember that his mother and I had taken him there thirty-one years before when he was three years old.

The construction of Notre Dame was begun in 1163 and dedicated to "Our Lady" the Virgin Mary. The late art historian Sir Kenneth Clark said Notre Dame Cathedral had "the most rigorously intellectual facade in the whole of Gothic art." Whether one agrees with this assessment or not, you can't but notice the carvings, which tell many of the traditional bible stories.

The one that caught my attention was the carving of God reminding Eve not to touch that fruit on the "tree of knowledge," which is in the center of the perfect garden--no weeds--and full of every plant and animal designed by God. But things did not go well in that perfect garden, as we well know.

Across the street from the massive emptiness where the twin towers of the World Trade Center once stood is St. Paul's Chapel. St. Paul's was completed in 1766, and is where George Washington worshipped on Inauguration Day, April 30, 1789. In a small graveyard, which is part of the church, there stood before 9/11, a 20-foot tall sycamore tree. The tree absorbed the full impact of a flying steel beam from one of the towers that day in September. All that remained after the impact was the tree stump. The last time I visited the site the stump had been removed in an attempt to preserve it. I think it's worth the effort.

We remained inside Notre Dame longer than we'd planned to. It was not especially crowded on that particular day. We observed a couple of tour groups, one from Germany and one from Japan, but mostly we just talked about a lot of things, something we had not done in some time.

I told him about my first visit to a tall grass prairie the year before. I mentioned that I had been back since then and had been reading a book on native plants of the region. He remarked that a neighbor had suggested some good plants to prevent soil erosion, which are native to the Northwest. Part of his backyard lies on a slope. We had never discussed plants before, but inside Notre Dame Cathedral seemed as good a place as any.

Before returning to the hotel we visited a memorial behind the church. Memorial de la Deportation is dedicated to the 200,000 French victims deported to the Nazi concentration camps. It was a jarring reminder of a far more recent history.

The following morning we left Paris in our rented Honda and made the required stop at Versailles, which I found--except for the gardens--no more interesting the second time I came to the home of Louis XIV. But as Versailles does play an important part in the search for weeds, we'll have to return at some point. We reached the city of Chartes in the early afternoon, which is home to what many people consider one of the most impressive cathedrals in the world.
to be continued....

Power to the Weed

CHAPTER ONE: Turning on the Light

Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field

Genesis 3:18

If the Earth were the size of a pinhead, the known universe would still be 6 trillion miles across. Who can imagine 6 trillion miles? The astronomer Alan Dressler suggests that we express distances in terms of time using the speed of light. Our own solar system, for example, would then be "only" a few light-years across, and light from the Sun reaches us in just eight minutes.

If we were to use the same analogy for our interests in plants, the time would be less than a blink of an eye. It is, however, within that "blink" that the weed first appears and assumes such an important role in human history, and where our story is ultimately headed.

In parts of Germany today small baskets of wild strawberries are tied to the horns of cattle each spring as an offering to elves. The elves, supposedly fond of strawberries, will help bring healthy calves into the world as well as plenty of milk. A happy elf is definitely a helpful elf.

Earth Pledge, founded in 1991, has as a mission to increase "awareness about the environmental and social benefits of greening rooftops in New York City." The organization wants to encourage people to start gardens on the roofs of buildings; its purpose is to promote, among other things, locally grown foods and "cultural traditions."

While there are endless, sometimes heated, debates on exactly what should be included in any discussion of culture, there seems to be a general agreement that culture is learned. We all have a biological need to eat food, but not all of us want cereal and bananas for breakfast. That's culture.

The word "culture" comes from Latin and refers to cultivation of the soil as well as the refinement of people. If one cultivates, one is preparing the land for growing crops, for developing and improving crops, and "destroying" weeds. To cultivate friends is to develop and to nurture relationships.

Some 10,000 or 11,000 years ago humans began developing a serious interest in plants. Within a short time we were neighbors and like most long-term relationships, changes have occurred in numerous ways over the millenniums. What may be different today is that the "quality" of the plant-human relationship is likely to become more important. The six billion Homo-sapiens currently living on the "pinhead" in the universe are going to need a few good friends, not just acquaintances.

The "greening" of the roofs in New York City and the domestication of the strawberry plant during the Middle Ages represents an unbroken line that goes back thousands of years.

Too bland, too flat, too much religious fundamentalism--and of course no ocean. That was my first impression of Missouri when I moved here from South Florida in 1995. But I thought I could probably survive the experience for a year ... possibly two years if I had to. This admittedly narrow view of the "heartland" changed unexpectedly in 1998.

On a hot July day a friend of mine, a Kansan, his twenty-two year old son and I left Kansas City, heading to Boulder, Colorado, a ten-hour drive. We intended to spend a week doing some climbing in the Rockies.

Whereas eastern Kansas has rolling, undulating terrain, the farther west one gets the flatter it becomes. Soon the only sign of life that I noticed from Interstate 70 was a lot of cows, as far as you could see. I remarked that it must have been a miserable place in the winter a hundred years before--for the Plains Indians as well as for the settlers.

Many of the fence posts in western Kansas appeared to be made out of some unusual material. "What don't you see?" my friend said when I pointed it out. It took a moment before the obvious became apparent. There were no trees. The early settlers who wanted to fence in their land had to tie the barbed wire around posts made from limestone, plentiful in the area.

Climate to a farmer is of paramount importance. That may seem self-evident to almost everyone, but the fact is most of us in this country are not noticeably dependent on the weather for our survival, at least not yet. The principal "weather" question for the vast majority is whether or not we'll need to take an umbrella to work or will it be too hot to barbecue the steak outside. But it does ultimately matter to all of us.

In the summer of 2002 western Kansas suffered a disastrous drought. More than half of the farms in the state were threatened by a lack of rain that resulted in at least $270 million loss in the wheat harvest alone. Wheat also happens to be one of the first plant crops to be domesticated more than 8,000 years before in Southwest Asia. The real real concern to the Kansas farmer is not the one bad year, but the possibility of three or four bad years in a row without sufficient rain. During the Dust Bowl years of the 1930's, soil turned to fine powder. Wind-blown sand created dunes, sometimes 30 feet high. Dark dust clouds traveled all the way to the Atlantic coast. There are people out here who have personal memories of those days.

The vast emptiness, at least what seemed like emptiness to me at the time, was both hypnotic and strangely compelling, as we continued toward the foothills of the Rockies. Finally, reaching Boulder, I felt I had arrived somewhere familiar; there were mountains and trees, and I couldn't see a hundred miles in any direction.

The week in the Rockies was well worth the long drive. It brought back times when I hiked through the White Mountains of New Hampshire, climbed with my son in Oregon, or walked out the front door of my house in Quito, Ecuador, where I once lived. Quito, more than 8,000 feet above sea level, is surrounded by snow-capped mountains.

Hiking up a mountain, it seems to me, is one of those human activities you either like a lot or consider one of the dumbest things a person could do. But for me, climbing to the peak of a mountain has always been a humbling reminder of what incredible splendor nature offers.

By the time we left Colorado and entered Kansas again, I was anxious to get home. I dozed off and when I woke up we were no longer on the turnpike. "Got something you need to see," was my friend's only comment.

"Where are we?"

"Near Manhattan." Manhattan, Kansas is where Kansas State University is located, and where my friend's son was about to enter his senior year of college. We were now driving through the Kansas countryside on a two-lane road, occasionally passing a solitary car or a pickup truck.

We eventually turned onto a narrow dirt road, drove up a slight incline, then down, then back up again. For maybe another half-mile we continued on this road, until we neared a solitary oak tree, rounded a bend, and came to a halt. In front of me, extending tp the horizon, was the first tall grass prairie I had ever seen.

Birds of prey circled overhead in a cloudless, dark blue sky, eight-foot tall native grasses rippled in the breeze, and blue, purple, yellow wild flowers swept across an incredibly lush landscape. No, it was not like a sunset in the Caribbean or a fall day in New England, but in its

own unique way it was one of the most beautiful settings I've ever seen in my life. "We still in Kansas, Dorothy?" was the one thing I could think of to say.

I was now gawking at pure wildness. There was no order and no sign of human manipulation, at least the obvious kind. Michael Pollan refers to "Dionysian revelry" in his book The Botany of Desire. Wild, untamed, and natural is the only way to describe what I saw on that July day.

The scientist and conservationist Edward O. Wilson invented the term "biophilia" to describe the natural tendency of humans to be attracted to nature and to have a love or craving for it. It's supposedly instinctive. At the same time, the opposite tendency also exists, namely a little-bit-goes-a-long-way feeling: the spiders, the snakes, and all those mosquitoes, especially the ones that could be carrying malaria or West Nile virus. It may explain, in part, out inclination throughout human history to plan and to sanitize nature and to keep it within "acceptable" boundaries.

No doubt what I found so personally compelling that day in 1998, when I first saw that tall grass prairie, was the lack of order and control and above all, no one had "planted" a damn thing. Of course that likely says something about me. But much more about "natural" later.

While I didn't know it at the time, I was also staring at weeds--a lot of them. But back then I doubt I could have identified more than six or seven different plants in that prairie. The other problem was that there were no cultivated rows or flowerbeds; all those weeds were hidden, disguised, and blended into the environment. It was impossible to pick out the "foreign elements."

to be continued....