“Prairie School"

A sermon by Colleen McDonald

delivered at

The Unitarian Universalist Church

Rockford, Illinois

05/7/05

As humans exert greater and greater influence on natural systems, it results in a phenomenon scientists call “species homogenization.” [species of the same or a similar kind of nature]... Species homogenization leaves us with a sort of dull, picked over version of the original system. It is as though we took all but the bass, cymbals, and one tuba from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. We still have a sort of music, but it falls drastically short of the complete orchestration.

Like members of a symphony orchestra, some members of the animal and plant kingdoms are specialists. They require certain habitats to exist. Others are generalists in their requirements for survival; they can adapt to highly modified landscapes. The collection of species that remains after many of the specialists have disappeared is broadly adapted and able to withstand the onslaught of human influences. Those species that are unable to survive the often heavy-handed humanized landscape decrease in number. One could argue that this is simply the product of adaptation or survival of the fittest. However, at no other time in our planet’s history have so many species been on the brink of extinction at the hands of one– Homo Sapiens.

The potential loss of so many species has ramifications for our long-term survival, our ability to find new cures and remedies, our sense of natural exploration and wonder and the simple stability that comes from having all the parts. It is the difference between earth’s most beautiful music and a dull cacophony of missing parts.

In her preface to Big Bluestem; Journey into the Tall Grass, Annick Smith writes, “When I decided to write a book abut the bluestem prairies of... Oklahoma,... I had no idea how high the grass grew or what stories lay under it. I walked into the grass and it has taken me three years to find my way out.”

My own journey into the prairie began in similar ignorance about a year ago; and I don’t expect to be walking out again anywhere near as soon as three years.

Spring 2005: It was around this time last year that Bob Arevalo initiated our involvement in the Green Sanctuary project-- a program by which UU congregations make a commitment to practice and promote good stewardship of the earth. I was excited by the enthusiasm of the several dozen church members who attended the initial, exploratory meeting, and I began thinking about Green Sanctuary’s implications for our children’s religious education. It suddenly dawned on me that our church has a fairly unique ecological resource that we have been ignoring in the church school-- and that is our restored prairie.

Soon I was proposing to the R.E. Council that we create a four-season “Prairie Curriculum” for the entire church school, Pre-K through Senior High, and they readily agreed. Nature educators Cliff Knapp and Lena Verkuilen generously offered their time and expertise to the curriculum development team, and I accepted the assignment of writing the preschool segment.

At the time I couldn’t tell you what a “forb” is. I had never heard of a “rain shadow.” I couldn’t point out Big Bluestem, or even identify a Pale Purple Coneflower... But I would learn.

Summer 2005: My “discovery” of prairies has brought me many unanticipated rewards. Thus far my most significant “find” in this interesting new world has been Fran Lowman, a long-term member of our church with whom I had only briefly crossed paths during the first fifteen years of my ministry here. But once Fran became aware of my awakening interest in the prairie, she quickly became my teacher and companion, answering my questions, offering me material to read, and bringing me milkweed pods and polyphemus cocoons. In June she called my attention to a weekend workshop in the Peoria area which was built around a curriculum for elementary and middle school students, entitled “Prairie School.” The price of the workshop was right-- about $30, which included a copy of the curriculum manual-- and I was off, accompanied by Allison Lakey, who would be teaching one of the church school classes in the fall.

We read historic documents by explorers and pioneers describing their first encounter with the prairie, and the feelings it gave them; imitated prairie animals; measured roots; prepared seeds for cold storage and eventual germination in the spring; identified forbs-- the wildflowers that exist alongside the prairie grasses; and participated in many other hands on experiences geared to preparing educators to teach children about the prairie. From earth science to history, from entomology to Latin as a scientific language, I was amazed by the broad mix of disciplines involved in prairie study, and I left the training with renewed awareness of how much I didn’t know. Still, I had begun to absorb some of the basics of Prairie 101.

About 65 million years ago, as far as we can tell, there were no Rocky Mountains or prairie grasslands. Instead, North America was a flat and forested continent, warmer and wetter than it is today. After massive upheavals in the earth resulted in the Rockys, the climate changed. The eastward spread of moisture from the Pacific was now curtailed by the mountain peaks and slopes, resulting in a “rain shadow,” or expanse of relatively dry land east of the Rockys.

Forests began to wither. Dry soil eroded, and high winds made it all the more difficult for woodland plants to maintain their hold. The plants that survived and began to proliferate were those that could tolerate heat and dryness, as well as the dry lightening fires that were spreading across the landscape; these grasses and forbs had adaptions that included roots as long as twenty feet, water-trapping leaves and stems, and underground growing parts. “About 25 million years ago,” writes Annick Smith, “the great North American grasslands began. For eons they seeded their slow way eastward,... devour[ing] forests in a continual movement across the continent.” (26)

The driest, and least arable, segment of this grassland, located farthest west, was constituted as “short grass prairie.” The easternmost edge became Tallgrass Prairie, with the greatest amount of rainfall to support the largest plants. Between the “Short-” and the “Tall-” Grass Prairies was an intermediate grassland that became known as “mixed grass prairie.” Here in Illinois, we have the Tallgrass variety.

Back home from the workshop, I resolved to use part of my summer vacation learning to identify the 29 different species of plants in our newly planted mini prairie under the church sign at the entrance to our driveway. That goal was too ambitious, particularly since many of the forbs were not blooming at the time, making them harder to identify; but I did learn to recognize Pale Purple Coneflower and Rattlesnake Master, among others, and I spotted the Cardinal Flower in bloom-- which Fran said was a marvelous surprise, as this species prefers relatively wet conditions and we were in a period of drought.

Fall 2005: Our prairie curriculum for the Pre-K - senior high groups began at the end of September, with a series of four lessons focused on the prairie in autumn. Finding few picturebooks basic enough for the Pre-K/Kindergarten level, I found myself creating my own– and in the process, discovering some marvelous websites, deepening my appreciation of nature photography, and advancing my fairly primitive computer skills so that I could create collages out of downloaded photos.

I have faint memories of pressing leaves for an 8^th grade science project but not of honing in on the detail that the Prairie School workshop taught me to see. Collecting leaves for my fall, “Prairie Leaves” lesson brought home the point that the prairie’s diversity is one of the keys to its vitality. One hundred of more different species can occupy five acres of prairie because of their distinctive qualities and their relationships. For example, the 4-foot high Wild Quinine has very large leaves which allow maximum exposure to sunlight as well as to rain; it shades the low to the ground forb known as Pussy Toes, which catches run-off from taller plants and holds onto it in cup-shaped leaves.

Teaching, of course, is a wonderful way of probing and crystalizing one’s own knowledge; and writing lesson plans about the prairie for 4- and 5-year-olds and their teachers was a perfect vehicle for articulating and furthering my discoveries as a beginner.

“Have you ever taken a good look at a prairie?” I wrote, in the “Teacher Background” section of Fall Session 1. “Many people think of prairies as big patches of weeds. But if you take the time to observe a prairie more closely, and watch it over the course of the seasons, you may begin to appreciate its wild form of beauty. Prairies are diverse and dynamic habitats-- home to hundreds of different kinds of plants and animals which are ingeniously adapted to the hot, cold, and dry conditions of the prairie.

“Some scientists spend their entire careers studying just one aspect of prairie ecology! Most church school volunteers are not prairie experts, but that is not important when you are teaching young children about the prairie. Much more important than extensive knowledge is a sense of your own curiosity and wonder about the world of nature, and a willingness to take a closer look at things you think you have already ‘seen.’”

Suddenly, I found myself taking a closer look at lawn grass, as well as prairie grass, and wondering how this non-native vegetation came to take over so much of the former prairie landscape.

The Prairie School teaching manual indicates that the prairie habitat has been around for about 8000 years ago and that it once covered about two thirds of Illinois. For hundreds of generations, it was the home of diverse Native American tribes, who hunted the prairie wildlife and used the plants for both food and medicine. Though the common perception is that Native Americans always lived in balance with the land, there was some threat to the natural resources once tribes like the Mississippians developed an agricultural lifestyle. Communities which could grow their own food and store large quantities of it over the winter could support larger numbers of people for longer amounts of time; by staying in one place, these larger communities depleted more of the local wildlife and started wearing out the soil. “However, even at the level the Mississippians used resources,” the Prairie School Curriculum points out, “they had neither the means nor the need to exploit the landscape as the Europeans did over the course of... 320 years.”

After the Public Land Survey of 1817, European settlers came out to the Tallgrass Prairie to stake their claims; the tremendous fertility of the soil attracted hoards of homesteaders, who drove out the Native Americans, decimated the wildlife population, and cut down the tall grass. For a brief time, the toughness of the prairie sod-- dense with the massive root systems prairie plants develop in order to survive drought-- slowed down farming; but John Deere’s self-cleaning steel plow– first marketed in 1837– eased the labor, and by 1900, most Illinois prairies had been converted to agricultural use. Today, less than .01% remains of the original tallgrass prairie.

But even farmland began disappearing in mass quantities, as Illinois became more industrialized and more urbanized, and the paradigm shifted from growing one’s food to buying it. Now most homeowners’ land could be decorative, rather than productive, and the beautiful green lawns of England were replicated here in the States by bringing over non-native grass seed. But unlike the prairie, a healthy lawn is not self-sustaining, because it lacks the diversity of plant life which renews the soil, and the diversity of animal species which protects the plants from disease and over-consumption. As the Prairie School writers put it, most lawn care enthusiasts (as well as farmers and gardeners) “use chemicals in the form of pesticides and fertilizers to perform the same roles that a diverse community such as a native prairie would naturally accomplish.”

Winter 2006: In January most of our church school classes began their winter unit of the prairie curriculum. “It can be easy to ignore the prairie during winter,” I wrote, in my Winter background to the teachers. “The colorful flowers are gone, none of the plants is getting taller or starting to bloom, and the brown leaves, stems, and grasses give the appearance that everything is dead.

“One of the wonders of the prairie is that its plants and animals know how to survive the cold, harsh conditions of winter. The extensive roots of the grasses and forbs are absorbing water deep inside the earth, in preparation for the growth season. Seeds operate on an internal “clock” which protects them from being fooled by pre-mature warm spells, as it ticks off the months until spring. Despite the scarcity of sunlight, some of the plants have basal leaves-- leaves that grow close to the ground-- that are remarkably green. And mammals like the raccoon, the fox, and the rabbit are keeping warm and dry in their burrows.

“The winter snow adds a new dimension and a different kind of beauty to the prairie landscape; it is also a ‘canvass’ on which to spot animal tracks. The thinning out of the prairie in winter can make it easier to find the openings to burrows, as well as skat left by the animals that live in them.

“Walking the prairie in winter can stir our imagination, as we compare the plants in their dormant state with our memories of the prairie in autumn, and look forward to the burst of growth and the flash of color that the spring will bring.”

The highlight of my winter prairie studies came on the heels of a lesson about animal tracks, when I walked our church grounds after a light, February snowfall, looking for fresh prints. Along the edge of the woods and the prairie, I found an extended trail of tracks that I finally identified as coyote. This evidence of “things unseen” gave me a wondrously spiritual feeling, as the prairie– in addition to the woods– suddenly came alive with the breath of creatures invisible. Once I knew to look for them, the prints became obvious, but I would never have noticed them before.

Certainly, an appreciation for nature sharpens one’s observational powers, and it was Norah Bourland’s keen eye that got our church prairie off the ground, so to speak. In a short history of the prairie that she wrote last fall, she explains:

Shortly after this building was completed [in 1966], I was walking on the property... and noticed, growing quite close to a row of unwanted apple trees... some Liatris-- or blazing star. Further along I found a few clumps of big blue stem and was quite excited. I asked Doug Wade to come over. He and his wife were two of the most knowledgeable and sharing prairie people I have ever known. He took a look... [at the] remnant of prairie [and] he encouraged us to try to restore prairie grasses and forbs... and we did... [We] acquired some [plants]... from Dot Wade... and on a beastly hot and humid day, Jerry [Paulson] dug and dug and we planted. The previous fall I had spread sheets of black plastic to kill the unwanted grass and clear a place for the new stuff... Over the years, we added plants... In 1990, [for] Earth Day, Ed Foster and his 6^th and 7^th graders bought and planted... a wonderful selection of forbs... There were many shrubs and grape vines which need to go-- teams of people (I wish I could remember all their names) clipped them back and treated the bare ends of their stems with Round Up-- laborious work-- but it was quite successful.”

Spring 2006: I had mostly ignored the eight burns that have taken place on our prairie since my arrival in 1989; but when Dean Tollefsrud scheduled another one last month, largely for educational purposes, I was eager to attend. I have a fear of fire, so I was an observer rather than a participant, and I appreciated the volunteers who came out to do the job. (It was great to see four of our youth joining in.)

Naturally occurring fires have contributed to the prairie’s vitality for thousands of years. Native Americans-- whom Annick Smith describes as the “first human land managers”-- also set fires in the prairie-- for defense, for hunting, and for promoting the growth of the plants they ate, and the plants which fed the large animals (such as bison and elk) on which Native Americans also depended.

Now, you may remember that the living, growth propelling part of prairie plants lies below ground; for native species, then, fires are cleansing rather than lethal. They burn away the dead stems and leaves above ground and quickly release the nutrients back into the soil. At the same time, the fires eliminate most of the species that have invaded the prairie from other habitats and which would threaten prairie plants’ survival if allowed to encroach-- most trees, for example.

“Orange are the flames rising from a prairie fire. Black are the ashes that remain. Green will be the renewed growth,” wrote Dean Tollefsrud, in the poem that inspired our wonderful “Prairie Burn, Prairie Bloom” banners. And it is remarkable how quickly the soot is superceded by the emerald sheen of emerging leaves. I know, because for the first time, ever, I am watching a prairie awaken in spring.

In our “man-made” culture, it is so easy to ignore, to take for granted, the miracles of nature that are happening around us every day-- to lose sight of that larger Whole, on which our lives depend. This spring, preparing for another one of my prairie curriculum lessons, I have observed the wonder of seeds germinating on paper towels, in plastic bags. I have taken photos of blooming forbs and sprouting grasses, and I have started a diary of the prairie’s resurrection:

May 3– Sulphur butterflies; shooting star blooming, cricket heard. (Fran says it must be a grasshopper-- crickets are nocturnal-- but it sure sounds like a cricket to me!);

What a joy it has been to say hello to these various prairie denizens as they return to vitality-- how healing it is to know that despite all the damage we have done to our natural world, there is still enough health in our planet that the rabbits have been able to survive another winter, that the wild indigo plant will soon be making flowers of the shoots that have the look of asparagus. And on it will go, with new species going into bloom (even the grasses) for the next few months, well into August.

The prairie can teach us many things, but perhaps its most vital lessons have to do with sustainability. According to the Prairie School Project:

The prairie provided one of the most sustainable systems ever to exist in Illinois. Prairie have withstood severe drought, flood, fire, and grazing for thousands of years... we should look at this sustainable natural systems for clues... ‘Some middle ground... must be found between the extremes of environmental destruction and an untouched, unpeopled planet. Finding the middle ground is the goal of sustainable development... We must find the comfortable balance between the needs of the human race and the needs of all other organisms on the planet...’ To survive as a species, we need to realize that our existence should not be, and cannot be, at the expense of all other living things.

One of the ways that we, as a church, can contribute to the goal of sustainable development is to be good stewards of our prairie. Norah Bourland concludes her short history of this part of our grounds with the “hope there will be people who want to continue to share the vision and do the work to make our prairie grow.” Our prairie, like most in Illinois, is too small to remain viable without our continuing care-- monitoring its health, eliminating invasive species, planning for new growth, observing its animal life, and simply enjoying it. As you heard during announcements, right after the congregational meeting, you are invited to join our “Planting Party,” so that we can add 64 plants– 16 new species-- to bolster our diversity and claim the space where invasives have been removed. We’ve made the process as easy as possible– with holes pre-dug, thanks to Allen Penticoff, and labeled according to species-- because we really want to involve all ages. After the planting, the plants will need to be watered, once a week, through August, until they become established, and we need volunteers who will take a day; you’ll find a sign-up sheet in the Narthex, along with some instructions. There’s also a sign-up sheet for volunteers willing to start a Prairie Subcommittee of Building and Grounds, so that maintaining our prairie will become a permanent part of our church agenda... though of course, I have to warn you, that stepping off into the tallgrass can become habit-forming.

I close with the admission that when I came to live in the midwest almost two decades ago, I was a reluctant transplant from the west and east coasts. And over the years, I have frequently criticized the Great Creator for an appalling lack of judgment in designing a landscape that had neither mountains nor ocean. Now that I have discovered the prairie, I ask you to be my witnesses as I humbly apologize to the Spirit of Life and admit that I was wrong.