The prairie has a never-ending appeal for me. A place to be in the present, although the past swirls around me. The footsteps of ancients, I cross their paths and see what they see. The moving wave of vegetation dotted with tall compass sentinels. The gurgle of a glacial stream running beside a new yet old trail. I may hear voices speaking softly in an unknown language, yet some part of it I understand. "This is where we belong, the land that provides for us. We will always be here. You must know this."I'm here to lead an herb walk through this beautiful space. To a group of knowledgeable master naturalists. I feel the gnawing of my inadequacy - how...
Our belief system can limit us, or it can set us free to experience our own limitlessness. OK, stay with me on this, dear reader. You might be like me. Growing up, I believed that tea was something made with hot water and a tea bag. Tea, as defined by Webster, is a drink made by infusing, or soaking, the dried leaves of an Asian plant, Camellia sinensis, in hot water. My mother had a tea revelation at some point in my growing up, and started to introduce many different types of teas into our pantry, some flavored with aromatic spices and herbs. I left for college, accompanied by my love for coffee, while tea was demoted to a weaker...
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,...
