Shining Light on Autumnal Prairie Drought

 

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.

The Creature at Our Gate

Fair to say that since we first came to being and maybe even before, humans have told cautionary tales. Eventually gifting those to the stars, with the telling and retelling reinforcing mystic belief.

The Greeks are legendary for their thrilling moral tales filled with dire lessons. Boy, there were a lot of ways to go badly wrong for a Greek, no matter how well-intentioned.

During the early 19^th Century, the Grimm Brothers earned their name. The 20^th Century of War later brought us Lovecraft’s fearsome Others. After which Orwell reminded us there's only one genuine monster astride the Earth and we're it.

The core lesson in this staggering array of cautionary tales, delivered unto us across all the great diversity of human cultures and their respective times, is ever the same:

Don’t invite the beast. Woe to us, if/when you do.

Now we’re somewhere well beyond all the ancient palaver. That stands manifest as in ruins.

Still whispering in each other’s ears, except gathered around a transformationally inclusive campfire, with yet another in the apparently endless line of creatures banging at our gate.

Many among us clamor to feed it. And this beast so little different than the old. Go figure.

Cultural pride bound to nostalgia is a hallucinatory drug. A bitter tale, sweetened by bits of true blue romance.

Truth is, especially given our awful long way to go as to make anything like a good end, we’re today collectively closer to great than ever before. Even despite the long-term costs of perpetual maintenance, against sorely stacked odds.

Don’t let the creature in. We know how that story ends.

And it never ends well.

Superior Autumn

 

For a couple youthful decades and more, each year we hurled ourselves against Superior’s late autumn wilderness.

 

Dared that to eat us.

 

Occasionally, it nearly did.

 

 

Yet every year we returned. Made stronger and more determined, by what we knew.

 

Superior woods whisper best in autumn, right until they don’t.

 

Certainly, the later we pushed our luck into October, the greater the odds of snow. It only took a couple times camping in spent woods laid low by snow, to know full well that’s not what we sought.

 

 

Timing was everything.

 

 

As of this writing, the official U.P. color tracker rates our old stomping grounds as 'partial'. Peak color, maybe next week.

 

Such a late would’ve been considered aberrant, back when. Today it’s definitely not.

In any event, we enjoyed no such informational resources.

 

Instead, every year required our best, increasingly educated guess. We had to recognize the right moment before it came, so we’d be there when it did.

 

In effect, we had to know.

 

 

Mostly that youthful learning curve worked out increasingly well for us, year over year over year.

 

Until we weren’t exactly youthful, evermore.

 

 

Seasons change. As do the times.

 

Once we’d earned our late season stripes and then some from the autumnal wilderness, we sensibly retreated to the late summer beach.

 

 

S’okay.

Because Superior autumn's perfect light lives inside me now, and always will.

 

Image Essay - Dancing Through Autumn

Or, making the absolute most of every last chance.