A prairie spring
It’s a late spring day on the prairie. Rain has visited recently after the burn, and prairie bluestem rises from brown clumps on the hillside. It’s warm for this time of the year – more like a summer day, although the plant landscape tells it differently. We walk along a mowed path that circles the perimeter of the prairie, separating it from cultivated farmlandand suburban sprawl. It’s a majestic place for those with the imagination to see it as it might have been. Rolling hills, crossed by a glacial stream, occasional stands of elder with cottonwoods standing taller along the stream. It’s not difficult to imagine what it might have looked like when all of Nebraska was wide and open,...