Exploring the Prairie – Reconnecting with a Nearly Lost Habitat

Prairie Pause

Prairie Pause © 2014 Bo Mackison

There was a day when the wind blew free and strong off the Gulf of Mexico and onto the prairies.

These vast grasslands offered no trees or mountains to stop the breeze and it blew from what is now Texas northward for 2,000 miles to the Arctic forests of Alberta.

The wind whipped the mighty land of grass into undulating oceans of green.
It blew dust into the eyes of a million buffalo and grizzled hair of the antelope. It whistled and whirled through a thousand prairie dog towns and rocked meadowlarks on their slender perches.

From the lands of the Blackfoot, Hidatsa and Pawnee to the domain of the Cheyenne, Kiowa and Comanche, the wind blew and the sun shone above. This was the prairie.

Then the ocean breezes carried Europeans to this new land. A million square miles of grassland became a million square miles of checkerboard grain fields and grazing lands.

The wind erased the last trace of the wandering buffalo and the native Indian who followed it relentlessly.

Today, the fences of zoos confine the former denizens of the grassland, and paved highways pass through the sterile lands of Indian reservations.

The plants of the prairie today can be seen only in forgotten corners of grain fields, along unused roadsides, or in a tiny tract of a university arboretum.

What the prairie farmer could not plow he used for his cattle, which ate the tender stalks of the tall grass and allowed it to be replaced by weeds and dust.

The wind still blows free, but it finds a different land today. The prairies are gone.

~ Richard Nelson,  from The Prairie Primer by Stan Nichols, Lynn Entine and Evelyn Hines

~~~~~~~~~

And so begins my prairie explorations. Photos are from Pope Farms Conservancy, one of the prairie restorations re-establishing a few parcels of prairie land. I am grateful for the mighty efforts of the dedicated Friends of Pope Farm Conservancy — through their efforts my imagination grasps a hint of the former grandeur of the prairie oceans, I am provided with a tantalizing taste of uninterrupted prairie — one for which I will forever yearn.

There is “No One Way” – Only a Multitude of Options to Explore

Looking at the Details © 2014 Bo Mackison

Looking at the Details © 2014 Bo Mackison

“Life on earth is a whole, yet it expresses itself in unique time-bound bodies, microscopic or visible, plant or animal, extinct or living. So there can be no one place to be. There can be no one way to be, no one way to practice, no one way to learn, no one way to love, no one way to grow or to heal, no one way to live, no one way to feel, no one thing to know or be known. The particulars count.”

~ Jon Kabat-Zinn

A Walk with Grace – While Struggling with Patience

A Walk around Strickers Pond

A Walk through the Woods © Bo Mackison

I am in wait mode, struggling with patience.

I walk through a wooded area heading towards Strickers Pond,
cross a street, a prairie grass restoration spreads before me,
the glacial pond is just beyond.

A Walk around Strickers Pond

Strickers Pond © 2014 Bo Mackison

I imagine walking with Grace around this pond.
I love the sound of that, the double meaning.
For I have an application in for a rescue dog,
a sweet four-year-old labrador/pointer mix.
Her name is Grace.

A Walk around Strickers Pond

Prairie Grasses © 2014 Bo Mackison

The process is excruciatingly long, understandable enough,
the rescue group wants to find the perfect home for Grace.
She was rescued from a Missouri shelter on what would have been her last day alive,
and transferred to a foster home in Wisconsin with only hours to spare.
(“She loved the car ride, by the way!)

But she’s been there since November,
and she needs a home of her own and I need a companion.

A Walk around Strickers Pond

Stickers Pond and American Lotus © 2104 Bo Mackison

We met, Grace and I, at her foster mom’s place.
Such a sweet girl, and still waiting for a home because, though she is a large breed dog,
she is small for her size, just forty pounds.
I find that a simply perfect quality. I find her quite perfect, too.

The questions in my head start.
Am I good enough? Will she be happy with me?
Will she like the desert as much as I do? Will she love to travel and hike and camp?
Am I good enough?

A Walk around Strickers Pond

Purple Martin Colony © 2014 Bo Mackison

She has the sweetest eyes, her look says I want to please.
Her foster mom gives her glowing reports. She sits and shakes hands, and looks at me.
Bright eyed, tail in perpetual wag.

I struggle with patience — on so many issues —
and I’m impatient with the wait for Grace as the adoption process slugs along.
Application, in and acknowleged. Now the papers are sent to “the board”
the vet is called, three references checked, and last, a home visit.
Another test of patience.

A Walk around Strickers Pond

Purple Martin and Colony © 2014 Bo Mackison

I’ve been searching for a companion dog since January,
and now that Grace and I have found each other,
I want her to be in a place she can call her own.
I’m seeking that same place – my place to call home.

A Walk around Strickers Pond

The Resting Place © 2014 Bo Mackison

Settling in is always a struggle after I have been in Arizona.
I know this. I expect it. I plan for it.
And still, I do the transition with many requests for the gift of grace.
For acceptance of what is, acceptance of what isn’t,
and the courage to embrace each day just as it is, just as I am.

Fits and starts, and ups and downs,
this practice of sitting with patience.
Of fitting in, of finding my place again.

I wait, and learn to wait with more ease as I practice.

All shall be well, I whisper. Yes, all shall be well.

A Lesson in Preparation – Rescue on the Toadstool Trail

Trailhead to Toadstool Trail - Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument

Trailhead to Toadstool Trail © 2014 Bo Mackison

Afternoon on Day Two of my unexpected travel adventure.
Rangers at Big Water recommend the Toadstool Trail on my drive to Kanab,
a mile and a half trek through balanced rocks and hoodoos.

“Go past the first toadstool,” one ranger suggests.
“The toadstool garden is quite the thing to see.”
It’s only a few miles down the road. Three pm. Great timing.

Info on Toodstool Trail

All the Details © 2014 Bo Mackison

A line from Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument brochure catches my fancy:
“offers…extraordinary insight into what sustains, maintains, and explains our world.”

Sustains. Maintains. Explains.

Trailhead. I check my pack. Standard Sonoran Desert gear works in the high desert, too.
Sign in at the registration stand.
I’m a dozen yards down the level trail when I reconsider,
and go back for my walking stick and extra water.

Toadstool Trail - Grand Staircase escalante National Monument

“No service” on my cell phone.
I can’t phone in my hiking plans to my trail buddy, but I’m on a popular trail. No worries.

The trail follows a sandy wash for the first half mile,
then weaves around sculptured slick rock, flowers bloom in abundance.
Formations of striped red and white make a stunning backdrop.

Toadstool Trail - Grand Staircase escalante National Monument

The First Toadstool © 2014 Bo Mackison

Hikers pass me on their return, marveling at the hoodoos and balanced rocks.
“The toadstools,” they thrill. “They really look like toadstools.”

I reach the first toadstool, a beauty standing in its solitude.
A couple reports the toadstool garden is just beyond the white escarpment,
exactly how the ranger described it.

How’s the trail? I ask.
A little scrambly up a few rocks; the garden’s worth the climb.
I’m good to go, glad I brought my hiking stick.

Toadstool Trail - Grand Staircase escalante National Monument

Cairns mark the trail, winds through narrow channels, crosses benches of rock.
The garden is a sight to behold, hard to photograph due to the shadows, but the scenery to the west is striking.
After hiking the trail a couple of hours, appreciative of the solitude and sights, it’s time to get back on the road.

Toadstool Trail - Grand Staircase escalante National Monument

Formations in Rock © 2014 Bo Mackison

It is solitude that gives us the opportunity to recover a sense of internal order, to develop new self-confidence for the day to come, and to experience the spiritual strength it takes for a person, if necessary, to face tomorrow alone.
~ Joan Chittister

Following the trail, I haven’t seen other hikers since the gardens,
and high in the chalky rock, hiking on the slick rock,
I realize I’ve passed these rock formations before, I’m walking in a circle.

Retracing my steps, I start again at the last cairn.
Again I end up traveling in a wide circle, half hidden in rocky crevices,
slip sliding. The trail disappears a third time.
For the first time on a solo hike, I am lost in a tangle of rock hoodoos.

Toadstool Trail - Grand Staircase escalante National MonumentLife is not meant to be a series of resolutions designed to make us something we’re not. It’s meant to be a series of explorations which, in the end, finally bring us home to ourselves. ~ Joan Chittister

I have time, late afternoon. Again I carefully trace the trail.
I am missing a turn or a step, a switch back. Still, it eludes me.
I am frightened, but at the same time, I am calm.

Deep breaths and I check my pack. Enough water and food, but I don’t have a light.
My mind gets busy searching for options. I pull out my whistle.

Toadstool Trail - Grand Staircase escalante National MonumentHaving the opportunity to be alone is an important dimension of learning to function alone. Having had the time to define our personal positions in life we can then go on with the confidence and certainty it takes to know what we think — and then claim it. ~ Joan Chittister

A plan? Sleep under a ledge for some protection and warmth?
Lean against rocks and stay awake?
It’s only one night, there will be hikers tomorrow.

I’ve never spent the night unprepared in the wilderness,
is this the night?

Toadstool Trail - Grand Staircase escalante National Monument

On the Trail © 2014 Bo Mackison

And then, across a small canyon, two hikers climb along on a bench, high above me.
I whistle three sharp blows. They look up.
Are you on the trail, I ask. They nod.

They have a height advantage, they consider the rocks, the paths.
They point, guide me through narrow ways, around boulders, over a shallow crevice
I can jump using my stick for balance.

Toadstool Trail - Grand Staircase escalante National Monument

This is life’s greatest moment, when the soul unfolds capacities which reach beyond earth’s boundaries. ~ Isaac Hecker

And then I scramble up a rocky wall and I am on the trail.
We walk towards the road. At the first toadstool, they ask me
to take their photo – they are father and son. Their annual visit.

Toadstool Trail - Grand Staircase escalante National Monument

Sego Lilies © 2014 Bo Mackison

It is easy to bounce through life — going here, trying that, tasting this. What is difficult is trying to figure out what we are supposed to do with what we find, or learn from where we go what will make life even richer. For ourselves, of course. But for the rest of the world, as well. ~ Joan Chittister

The trail is in the wash, they go ahead.
I think to myself, I was lost, and now I’m found.

Sustains. Maintains. Explains.

Toadstool Trail - Grand Staircase escalante National Monument

Getting stuck in life — refusing to experiment; being afraid to try something new; becoming cemented in what is, rather than excited by what could be — is the difference between living and being alive. ~ Joan Chittister

Toadstool Trail - Grand Staircase escalante National Monument

The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.
~ Henry Miller

Toadstool Trail - Grand Staircase escalante National Monument

When we know who we are, when we have confronted the spirits within ourselves against which we vie for dominance, we find ourselves more inclined to be so much kinder to everyone else. ~ Joan Chittister

~~~~~

Most of the quotations are from The Art of Life, Monastic Wisdom for Every Day by Joan Chittister

Flowering Cardon Cactus – Baja California’s Saguaro Look-Alike

Cardon Cactus in Bloom © 2014 Bo Mackison

Cardon Cactus in Bloom © 2014 Bo Mackison

Not a saguaro , but a relative!

The giant cardon cactus dominates many of the deserts of Baja California and the coastal region of the state of Sonora in Mexico. It is closely related to the saguaro of Arizona and Sonora, but cannot tolerate cold (unless carefully protected) so these two giant cacti occupy different geographical regions.

This specimen was in bloom at the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix on a visit in March, and it was my lucky day. It was the first of the year’s blooms.