Wisdom Prairie: Notes on prairies and connections

Submitted by David Kelly (he/him), Friends of Wisdom Prairie.

When I write about prairies, I’m torn. Either I’m penning an elegy – prairies in Wisconsin are a mere hint of their pre-settlement vastness – or I’m composing an ode to a place that defies awe. To enter a prairie is to enter the past, a time when prairies covered the land. If you go deep enough in today’s prairie, you get a taste of a prairies’ long-ago grandeur. I suppose this writing is some combination. To appreciate a prairie’s beauty is also to mourn its loss.

The early morning air hangs heavy with mid-summer’s dampness under freighted clouds. All around me water beads glimmer like jewels on the prairie’s leaves. Some hold their shapes, like silver necklaces reflecting the somber sky. I pause, thankful for a cool breeze on damp skin. I feel my feet, soggy in dew-soaked shoes as I step off the path and plunge into a verdant jungle. The ground is sponge soft underfoot as I dive deep into prairie thicket. I’m on a restoration mission to cull an overpopulation of Indian Plantain. But I’m soon distracted, diverted from my work by the call of the prairie.

I’ve entered an ethereal world of mist and life and bathe in the intoxicating aromas of Wild Bergamot, Mountain Mint, Prairie Sage. I breathe the scent deep into my lungs, wanting to hold it all inside before returning my breath to the plants. With each step, tall grasses tickle my arms, soaking me with water laden leaves. The prairie hums and buzzes as bees move from flower to flower. I visualize myself from above, a tiny being swaddled green. In my mind I’m visiting some remote and ancient realm, far from civilization. And for a moment, I’m isolated…alone.

Soon, my aloneness gives way to solitude. I’m at peace and right where I should be – part of the natural world. Calmness flows through me as I shed the city’s burden. I savor the moment.

Then something changes.

I’m being watched.

I turn in a circle, seeking the observer. Not knowing why, my gaze moves to a nearby cup plant. I observe her brilliant yellow flowers floating high above. I follow the stem downward. There! Where leaf joins stem in a perfoliate embrace, I spy him. A grasshopper is perched near the tiny pool of water formed by leaf and stem. I suspect he had been enjoying a refreshing drink when he sensed my approach. He’s brilliant green with an onyx stripe. He shifts and studies me through silvery alien eyes. His segmented antenna twitch and he’s poised to jump. For a moment our eyes meet, for an instant we are joined. I lean in for a closer look, and he bounds away. The moment is gone.

I’m now deep inside the prairie’s living heart. Urban sounds, heretofore inescapable, have faded, soaked up by the foliage. I’ve become a tiny bee, flitting from flower to flower. I wind through the towering greenery and alight on an incandescent yellow bloom and sip dew’s cool moistness from her petals.

I return to myself just as a butterfly jitters by, close enough to hear her tiny wingbeats. I follow as she alights on a nearby flower. She senses my approach and flutters to another flower, creating space. I inch closer. Again, she moves on. I sense she’s rebuking me. This game of leapfrog continues and I’m about to give up. At last, she pauses to grant me an enduring look. I watch her uncurl her proboscis to draw at length of the flower’s sweet nectar. Her wings close tightly like a silver leaf. I’ve overstayed my welcome and turn to find my way back to the world.

To stand in the middle of a prairie today is to inhabit a small part of a time long past, remote from modern life. Though cordoned by roads and homes, a prairie remains today a world of its own, of myriad interconnected communities, each a microcosm of the whole. A tiny grasshopper drinks from a pool served in the clasping leaves of a cup plant. A butterfly sips nectar from a generous flower. Bees buzz from flower to flower, nourishing themselves, spreading life giving pollen, and keeping the prairie alive and worth saving.