Exploring the Prairie – Reconnecting with a Nearly Lost Habitat

Prairie Pause

go to link Prairie Pause © 2014 Bo Mackison

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

https://aaerj.org.br/2024/05/13/2s91rta 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.

https://emduk.org/8328r7v 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.

https://templedavid.org/symons/b7d2df7hll6 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.

https://grannysglasses.com/?p=g936kz7p 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.

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

https://restoreredspruce.org/2024/05/13/13tncq9q Today, the fences of zoos confine the former denizens of the grassland, and paved highways pass through the sterile lands of Indian reservations.

https://domainebregeon.com/49vrfbz 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.

follow site 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.

https://pkuatm.org/2024/05/13/ihooerv632 The wind still blows free, but it finds a different land today. The prairies are gone.

https://photovisions.ca/hodjoorxmb ~ Richard Nelson,  from The Prairie Primer by Stan Nichols, Lynn Entine and Evelyn Hines

https://www.vertaglia.com/cahu4jqtb6 ~~~~~~~~~

Buy Yellow Valium 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.

The Silent Voice in the Wilderness — It Speaks

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Buy Xanax Legally Online In the Wilderness © 2014 Bo Mackison

enter site “…there’s a silent voice in the wilderness that we hear only when no one else is around. When you go far, far beyond, out across the netherlands of the Known, the din of human static slowly fades away, over and out.” ~ Rob Schultheis

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.

The Feel of the Path – A Prayer of Desert Petition

Palo Verde

I walk and walk and walk.
Through scrub land and foothills, through the desert, into the arroyo, up into the high canyons
where palo verde accent the desert green with yellow blossoms

Slowly. In an attempt to memorize each step,
consider the existence of each lizard that skitters under rocks at my approach,
study the tall saguaro, the one that speaks to me in our silent language.

Texas Canyon, Arizona

There are the Texas Canyon boulders that balance with delicate precision,
boulders upon boulders, the giants’ cairns.

There are the trees dead in the grasslands, choked dry

Road to Nowhere

There is the agave, its flowers long ago spent, its seed heads crispy brown,
standing tall in the ruts of an abandoned road.

Rattlesnake Courtesy

There is my reawakened respect for the western rattler,
most plentiful and most dangerous of Arizona snakes.

I watched it rise three feet and rattle like dried chimes,
then zip into the thick grasses of the arroyo.
Left me standing at the arroyo’s edge, breathless,
looking at the emptiness where it had flashed me warning.

A Day at the Gardens

There is wonder at my daily sightings of a mama and papa quail,
their brood of chicks darting like scattered billiards balls,
each pecking for seeds in the rocky soil.

On hot afternoons the adults settle upon the earth like ancient ocean puffer balls,
and keep watch over their babies tucked under a staghorn cholla, an unlikely nesting hideout.

Tree Gnarls

There are only memories of the gray dove perched upon the adobe wall
and the Coopers hawk’s swoop from behind.
Memories of the clutch of talons,
the dove’s disappearance amidst an explosion of feathers.

I gathered feathers from the tiled porch for a week
while pondering the order, and disorder, of nature.

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This is a rough land, yet it fits my temperament.

Its wildness is a comfort,
its unexpected lushness a gift,
its unrelenting demands a lesson in awareness,
its solitude a rarity,
its brilliant sun-drenched land a tonic,
its dark skies a reminder of the need for rest.

Montezuma Castle

How old the land upon which I walk,
ancient volcanic rock cold upon the hot desert earth.
And fossils of trilobites and shark teeth document this land’s history, how amazing the story.

Billions of years of tiny changes.

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And so I walk and walk, and walk more. Relentless.
And commit to memory what I see,
Reminders that though I leave, I will  return.

Arizona Sycamores at Montezuma Castle National Monument – The Trees and Me!

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Portrait with Arizona Sycamores © 2014 Bo Mackison

It’s not often that I post a photo of me. I am the one with the camera in hand and haven’t much embraced the practice of selfies. So I am seldom in a photo, and happy enough to be the one behind the camera.

But these trees — these Arizona sycamore trees were not only calling to me, they were singing my name! They were insistent. “Sit on my perfect little tree nook and smile for the camera.” And so I did.

Aren’t those trees magnificent? I can never resist running my hands along their bark, connecting the many puzzle pieces I see.

I am honored to have had my portrait taken in the midst of such grand company!