It may be less amazing than it sounds, but the facts, as I see them, read quite clearly. It took me 31 years of Iowa life to take my first steps on real native prairie, the kind my great-grandparents must have set upon when they arrived in northwest Iowa in the 1880s. Thirty-one years. Seems like a lifetime.
But then, real native prairie goes at a premium in this corner of the state. Out here, one might stumble on a few sloped patches of original grasses along the bluffs of the Big Sioux River, but for decades already the land—the arable land, as some might say—has been drawn-and-quartered by endless row crops that, come summer, turn the whole region into a gargantuan garden. People who can’t or won’t see beauty in interminable echelons of corn tassels should have their eyes checked. This Iowa prairie, no matter how you dress it, is beautiful ground. But having now taken baby steps in native prairie, I can’t help but think how strange and sad it is that it took me 30-plus years to take my first step.
Topographically speaking, the state of Iowa has the most fully transformed landscape of any of the fifty states. What was once tall-grass prairie, especially out here in the northwest corner, has been entirely transformed rituals corn and soybean. What was here, in this corner of the state so many years ago, was a forever grassland, a yawning landscape that grabbed Lewis and Clark’s breath the moment they set their eyes on its limitlessness. What was here was tallgrass prairie that, come fall, could, on its own, hide a six-foot man, the way hybrid corn can today. What was here so many years ago used to shiver in the wind, like a cat’s fur. What was here once blossomed kaleidoscopically all summer long. What was here used to blaze, literally.
Quite simply, what was here is gone, maybe forever, and gone more extensively, if I can say it that way, than the original landscapes of 49 other states. That’s why, I guess, it shouldn’t be surprising that it took me better than thirty years to take my first steps on native prairie.
Not long ago, I took some visitors on a little bus trip around this largely Dutch Calvinist section of Siouxland, a literary crawl of sorts, showing some out-of-staters the haunts of northwest Iowa’s most beloved Dutch-American writers—Frederic Manfred, Stanley Wiersma, and Jim Heynen. I told those tourists what I’ve been told: not only that Iowa’s tall grass prairie is the most destroyed landscape of any state in the union, but that Sioux County, where I live, may well be the most altered county of any of Iowa’s 99. Later, I couldn’t help think that if I’d been taking those folks on a similar little pilgrimage around the area fifty years ago—a group of fine Calvinist folks, most of them Dutch-American—I would have said what I did with a whole different spin, with a brimful of ethnic and even spiritual pride.
After all, the Dutch, of whom I am one, have dyked and tiled and drained the sea itself to make productive farmland. My people came from Holland to northwest Iowa with a collective memory full of creating productive land, of subduing the earth. “Look at this now—how these good Dutch farmers have taken this beautiful land and brought forth food for their families!” I have no doubt I would have been singing a song of triumph.
But no so today. Not really.
Today, for better or for worse, the recitation of the facts of a by-gone landscape comes out a bit more sour, even out here, where the descendents of Dutch immigrants likely manage their land as lovingly as any in the state. Even here the story of the long-gone prairie sounds more dirge than paean because it’s difficult to put a good spin on the truth of what’s here: “Isn’t it wonderful what we did here. After all, there’s nothing left of what was.”
But let me describe those baby steps I took not so long ago.
Dawn came bewitchingly, thick August haze running like some gossamer river through the land’s low spots, masking the brilliance of the sun, casting the whole world in darkening layers of mellow gold. I stopped the car at the side of the gravel road, took out the camera, and looked over a 140-acre chunk of land called Steele Prairie State Preserve.
“Looks like a weed patch,” some old farmer would say.
Maybe they’re not wrong. There are no parallel tassels, no shimmering bean leaves. The place doesn’t look at all managed, just as Dordt’s new prairie doesn’t. It’s looks daringly wild, the sedge meadow and marsh vegetation growing hither and yon as if answering to no one, like a classroom gone out of control, a chaotic caucus of plant life. A lot of people I know wouldn’t find Dordt’s new prairie all that attractive.
But those first steps into the patch of grass that day made me aware that if this wasn’t some kind of hallowed ground, it made, at least, a whole different walk than anything available on ordinary Iowa farmland. In August, the grasses on native prairie aren’t at all spindly or scattered, even though the compass plants rise like lanky teenage girls above the class beneath them.
In five steps—no more—my shoes were wet, pants legs soaked. Fifty feet in and I had a whole new vision of those long lines of prairie schooners moving west. Those folks were not walking on concrete; they were slugging through thick prairie grasses, taking their own baby steps on humpity-bumpity land that hadn’t been plowed and disked, planted and harrowed, but was, instead, a real live natural mess. Today, as then, anthills abound. You can turn an ankle in a minute. Let’s just put it this way: the earth is not at all subdued.
Even more surprising, at least to me, was the land’s generous coat, so much thicker, so much heavier than I would have dreamed. I had to slog through its shagginess. I had absolutely no idea Iowa’s natural bounty of prairie grasses was so flax-like.
In a matter of speaking, the place was a knee-high jungle. For most of those 31 years, I’ve thought of Iowa land as bountifully productive, unending August greens; but let’s face it: much of the year the land is flat, harvested, and, well, naked.
Native prairie is not naked. It’s flora is fur-like, that thick. One can only imagine what decades—centuries, in fact—of that kind of profuse growth offered the earth nutritionally. Conversely, one can only imagine what decades—and now more than a century—of its absence has taken away. Standing knee-deep and more in native prairie, I couldn’t help but think of how much has been stripped away.
I didn’t grow up on a farm, and I’ve never lived on one. I can’t rhapsodize about June afternoons pulling a rotary hoe across open fields. I don’t know the earth out here in the same way my father-in-law came to know it through seventy years of seed-time and harvest. And I know that his work on this ground has given me the right, in many ways, to see the world in the way I do today, even to say what I’m saying now. Only because he’s worked it as hard as he has, can a teacher in a college his harvests helped pay for stroll through this kind of old-fashioned prairie. Seventy-five years ago, if I lived here, this Saturday morning in October, I would have been milking not talking about what once was.
But I couldn’t help think, as I walked, totally alone through that museum, that out here in the bountiful northwest corner of the state we’d all be better off if somehow we gave something back to what was, if we’d reinvest in the area by divesting ourselves of at least some of what we’ve done. I couldn’t help wonder whether the quality of all our lives wouldn’t be greatly enhanced if Sioux County, Iowa, couldn’t find the wherewithal somehow to give up, say, four sections of this blessed land that has given so blessed much to bless us all. If our children could, on some Saturday morning in August, take a walk in the thick, restored prairie and look over, say, two miles of the great ocean of grass that once lay here, wouldn’t they—wouldn’t all of us—treasure more of what we have? Wouldn’t a restored piece of land like that help all the descendents of those hard-working Calvinists see their Maker more vividly?
I think so, and that why, right here, right now, I’m thrilled for the acres of restored prairie we’re holding close to us and to our hearts. This tall-grass prairie has been scalped away for us. With this prairie ground right out here behind the college, we’ve come to give some blessing back to an earth that gave us life.
With these fine acres of restored prairie, maybe we all can take a few baby steps towards a future that more fully remembers—and honors—what was.
To God be the glory.
But then, real native prairie goes at a premium in this corner of the state. Out here, one might stumble on a few sloped patches of original grasses along the bluffs of the Big Sioux River, but for decades already the land—the arable land, as some might say—has been drawn-and-quartered by endless row crops that, come summer, turn the whole region into a gargantuan garden. People who can’t or won’t see beauty in interminable echelons of corn tassels should have their eyes checked. This Iowa prairie, no matter how you dress it, is beautiful ground. But having now taken baby steps in native prairie, I can’t help but think how strange and sad it is that it took me 30-plus years to take my first step.
Topographically speaking, the state of Iowa has the most fully transformed landscape of any of the fifty states. What was once tall-grass prairie, especially out here in the northwest corner, has been entirely transformed rituals corn and soybean. What was here, in this corner of the state so many years ago, was a forever grassland, a yawning landscape that grabbed Lewis and Clark’s breath the moment they set their eyes on its limitlessness. What was here was tallgrass prairie that, come fall, could, on its own, hide a six-foot man, the way hybrid corn can today. What was here so many years ago used to shiver in the wind, like a cat’s fur. What was here once blossomed kaleidoscopically all summer long. What was here used to blaze, literally.
Quite simply, what was here is gone, maybe forever, and gone more extensively, if I can say it that way, than the original landscapes of 49 other states. That’s why, I guess, it shouldn’t be surprising that it took me better than thirty years to take my first steps on native prairie.
Not long ago, I took some visitors on a little bus trip around this largely Dutch Calvinist section of Siouxland, a literary crawl of sorts, showing some out-of-staters the haunts of northwest Iowa’s most beloved Dutch-American writers—Frederic Manfred, Stanley Wiersma, and Jim Heynen. I told those tourists what I’ve been told: not only that Iowa’s tall grass prairie is the most destroyed landscape of any state in the union, but that Sioux County, where I live, may well be the most altered county of any of Iowa’s 99. Later, I couldn’t help think that if I’d been taking those folks on a similar little pilgrimage around the area fifty years ago—a group of fine Calvinist folks, most of them Dutch-American—I would have said what I did with a whole different spin, with a brimful of ethnic and even spiritual pride.
After all, the Dutch, of whom I am one, have dyked and tiled and drained the sea itself to make productive farmland. My people came from Holland to northwest Iowa with a collective memory full of creating productive land, of subduing the earth. “Look at this now—how these good Dutch farmers have taken this beautiful land and brought forth food for their families!” I have no doubt I would have been singing a song of triumph.
But no so today. Not really.
Today, for better or for worse, the recitation of the facts of a by-gone landscape comes out a bit more sour, even out here, where the descendents of Dutch immigrants likely manage their land as lovingly as any in the state. Even here the story of the long-gone prairie sounds more dirge than paean because it’s difficult to put a good spin on the truth of what’s here: “Isn’t it wonderful what we did here. After all, there’s nothing left of what was.”
But let me describe those baby steps I took not so long ago.
Dawn came bewitchingly, thick August haze running like some gossamer river through the land’s low spots, masking the brilliance of the sun, casting the whole world in darkening layers of mellow gold. I stopped the car at the side of the gravel road, took out the camera, and looked over a 140-acre chunk of land called Steele Prairie State Preserve.
“Looks like a weed patch,” some old farmer would say.
Maybe they’re not wrong. There are no parallel tassels, no shimmering bean leaves. The place doesn’t look at all managed, just as Dordt’s new prairie doesn’t. It’s looks daringly wild, the sedge meadow and marsh vegetation growing hither and yon as if answering to no one, like a classroom gone out of control, a chaotic caucus of plant life. A lot of people I know wouldn’t find Dordt’s new prairie all that attractive.
But those first steps into the patch of grass that day made me aware that if this wasn’t some kind of hallowed ground, it made, at least, a whole different walk than anything available on ordinary Iowa farmland. In August, the grasses on native prairie aren’t at all spindly or scattered, even though the compass plants rise like lanky teenage girls above the class beneath them.
In five steps—no more—my shoes were wet, pants legs soaked. Fifty feet in and I had a whole new vision of those long lines of prairie schooners moving west. Those folks were not walking on concrete; they were slugging through thick prairie grasses, taking their own baby steps on humpity-bumpity land that hadn’t been plowed and disked, planted and harrowed, but was, instead, a real live natural mess. Today, as then, anthills abound. You can turn an ankle in a minute. Let’s just put it this way: the earth is not at all subdued.
Even more surprising, at least to me, was the land’s generous coat, so much thicker, so much heavier than I would have dreamed. I had to slog through its shagginess. I had absolutely no idea Iowa’s natural bounty of prairie grasses was so flax-like.
In a matter of speaking, the place was a knee-high jungle. For most of those 31 years, I’ve thought of Iowa land as bountifully productive, unending August greens; but let’s face it: much of the year the land is flat, harvested, and, well, naked.
Native prairie is not naked. It’s flora is fur-like, that thick. One can only imagine what decades—centuries, in fact—of that kind of profuse growth offered the earth nutritionally. Conversely, one can only imagine what decades—and now more than a century—of its absence has taken away. Standing knee-deep and more in native prairie, I couldn’t help but think of how much has been stripped away.
I didn’t grow up on a farm, and I’ve never lived on one. I can’t rhapsodize about June afternoons pulling a rotary hoe across open fields. I don’t know the earth out here in the same way my father-in-law came to know it through seventy years of seed-time and harvest. And I know that his work on this ground has given me the right, in many ways, to see the world in the way I do today, even to say what I’m saying now. Only because he’s worked it as hard as he has, can a teacher in a college his harvests helped pay for stroll through this kind of old-fashioned prairie. Seventy-five years ago, if I lived here, this Saturday morning in October, I would have been milking not talking about what once was.
But I couldn’t help think, as I walked, totally alone through that museum, that out here in the bountiful northwest corner of the state we’d all be better off if somehow we gave something back to what was, if we’d reinvest in the area by divesting ourselves of at least some of what we’ve done. I couldn’t help wonder whether the quality of all our lives wouldn’t be greatly enhanced if Sioux County, Iowa, couldn’t find the wherewithal somehow to give up, say, four sections of this blessed land that has given so blessed much to bless us all. If our children could, on some Saturday morning in August, take a walk in the thick, restored prairie and look over, say, two miles of the great ocean of grass that once lay here, wouldn’t they—wouldn’t all of us—treasure more of what we have? Wouldn’t a restored piece of land like that help all the descendents of those hard-working Calvinists see their Maker more vividly?
I think so, and that why, right here, right now, I’m thrilled for the acres of restored prairie we’re holding close to us and to our hearts. This tall-grass prairie has been scalped away for us. With this prairie ground right out here behind the college, we’ve come to give some blessing back to an earth that gave us life.
With these fine acres of restored prairie, maybe we all can take a few baby steps towards a future that more fully remembers—and honors—what was.
To God be the glory.
3 comments:
There's a thought our chaplain stuck into my brain (in the way that good preachers do...) - it came from C.S. Lewis and Narnia - something like... 'you know, Aslan isn't a tame lion'. Well, Aslan isn't a lion at all - he's a metaphor for Christ - and the thought is about Wild Christianity....
Last night, when I couldn't sleep - I tried writing some of my ideas down - after an hour, I finally gave up - I was trying to put too much into too small a space (if you know what I mean - so it will be continued later....). In this, your 'ode' to the untamed prairie - you have captured some of my thoughts about Wild Christianity and our God who won't be tamed. Gotta love Him! Thank you for teaching even when you don't know....
That restored prairie behind Dordt is absolutely fantastic. It just feels right, and it's really quite beautiful, even if its beauty is a bit more subtle than we're used to. I really wish we had something like that around when I was growing up in sioux center, but better late than never. Kudos to the people that saw the project through despite the many raised eyebrows and snide comments about weed patches that I'm sure they faced.
That wild grass is the carpet that many Native Americans walked upon in awe and reverence to a Creator who laid that carpet.
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