Big Blue Stem

You got to hunt. It's tucked away a ways. It's been there for nigh unto forty years, but it's there, a big square historical marker a mile or so from land Ole Rolvaag, the novelist, used to work when he was a kid out here on wide open prairie. It's not far from Elk Point, in Union County, South Dakota, on 476th Avenue, ¼ mile north of Groethe Rd., on the right when traveling north. Got that?

Rolvaag's Giants in the Earth tells our story better than anyone, and the prairie story starts with sound, of all things, a landscape of sound. Listen:

It was late afternoon. A small caravan was pushing its way through the tall grass. The track that it left behind was like the wake of a boat--except that instead of widening out astern it closed in again. 

"Tish-ah!" said the grass. . . . "Tish-ah, tish-ah!" . . . .Never had it said anything else--never would it say anything else. It bent resiliently under the trampling feet; it did not break, but it complained aloud every time--for nothing like this had ever happened to it before. . . ."tish-ah, tish-ah! it cried, and rose up in surprise to look at this rough, hard thing that had crushed it to the ground so rudely, and then moved on.

Today, Rolvaag's opening scene needs a footnote. That swishing sound is the sound of tall grass--right up to a horse's withers, tall grass that once, in a breeze, made the world all around us wave like an ocean. What kind of grass, you ask? 

Big Blue Stem. Big Blue Stem. Used to be, there were far more of them than there are of us. Tall and spindly, it grew up every summer from a thick bundle of shorter stuff at its base, like a grass skirt, a thicket that a host of critters thought of as home. Spindly and thin up top, Big Blue Stem, the tallest of our native grasses, gets tossed around so mightily by gusty winds that not even a goldfinch can hold on. But it doesn't break, it just waves, waves hard, waves beautifully, waves like an inland sea.

You can still find it dancing here and there in restored prairie or in forgotten corners of the country too steep or crooked to take a plow. You can pick up a bunch from a garden shop and put it in your backyard. Don't worry--it'll take. It does most anywhere. It's not picky. In fact, people who know such things claim it can still get aggressive if you let it alone somewhere, if you let it be. But it doesn't make for a great pasture because people say cattle love it too darn much--some ranchers call it "ice cream for cows." Way back when, it suited our buffalo just fine, but they stopped to graze only every other year or so. Big Blue won't stand up to constant grazing.

Some call Big Blue "turkey foot" for the three-pronged head it grows like a little joke late summer. It's especially beautiful this time of year--late summer to fall--when it takes on its own royal robe: those long stems turn purple, and amber once the snow flies. But I'll admit it--beauty in native prairie is an acquired taste. It can be a real flower shop, but it'll never be a greenhouse. There are no hybrids, just a colorful bunch of old friends.

Wouldn't hurt us to remember that we'll be indebted to Big Blue Stem for a long, long time because it once stood all around and grew remarkable roots so thick and deep that it created our own rich prairie sod.

Here's the poet William Cullen Bryant the big blue stem prairie our world once was:

As o’er the verdant waste I guide my steed,
Among the high rank grass that sweeps his sides
The hollow beating of his footsteps seems
A sacrilegious sound. 

Tish-ah.

Still not convinced? How about Walt Whitman, who wanted like nothing else to be "America's poet." Listen to him from "Specimen Days":

As to scenery (giving my own thought and feeling), while I know the standard claim is that Yosemite, Niagara Falls, the Upper Yellowstone and the like afford the greatest natural shows, I am not so sure but the prairies and plains, while less stunning at first sight, last longer, fill the esthetic sense fuller, precede all the rest, and make North America’s characteristic landscape.”

Let me remind you that right here Walt Whitman is talking about home. Ours.