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....
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....
posted by mumpsimus | 8:47 AM
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