Despite promising glimpses, it’s awful dry out there. When breezy, they call that a 'red flag day', and best be careful with matches.
One might even say it's ‘bone dry’.
Those wetlands, tallgrass and oak savannah pieces we have left together
present a staggeringly diverse, organically rich, yet intractably complex
landscape.
For all that, what I’ve long admired most about it is the perennial resilience, particularly telling during periods of drought. Which stress, upon
this landscape, only comes with the territory.
Used to be, a man on horseback could get lost in the tallgrass.
The entire place was maddeningly flat, irritatingly thick and grown so tall
the sea of grass might just swallow horse and rider right up, as sometimes it did.
Long time gone now. Just stories.
Every prairie, wetland and old oak stand represented on
these pages is but a remnant.
The sparest sliver of what it was before construct ruled the
roost. Given the dire circumstances, one might call them miracles. But I won’t,
‘cause they’re not.
Each bit of even remotely original landscape remaining
on this land today is down to a matter of human will, individually exercised.
Over time, any particular landscape naturally proves itself either
sustainable…
Or not.
When not, the greater world just shrugs it off.
It’s the natural way of all living things.
Been dry ‘round these parts quite the while now.
Terrible dry, season after season after passing season.
Still, life thrives. Even on isolated, postage stamp sized parcels. Remember, that’s no miracle, as we're not gods.
Just the same, we’re seriously overdue some normal.
Whatever the new normal turns out to be.
