"There are people who think the prairie is boring. It's hard not to pity them…" Thus Candace Savage begins her beautiful volume Prairie: a Natural History. It's an attitude we flat-landers encounter all our lives. In the nineteenth century, the noted naturalist J.J. Audubon pronounced the western prairies of the USA a "barren desert," not worth the naturalist's time, nor the settler's, for that matter.
A wiser instruction comes from the Canadian writer W.O.Mitchell - a prairie boy himself: "to appreciate the prairie, you must look down…" He was referring to the countless tiny wildflowers that grow and replace themselves in the long grass every few days.
Walking the rolling hills of the Grassland National Park has been a kind of homecoming for me. It has been a long time since I have lived and walked on true prairie. Where I live now, the country is parkland, with lots of open land, but it was, and is, quite heavily treed. Few spaces are allowed to grow wild, and those that are "grassed" are covered with the invasive strains brought from Europe by arriving settlers.
When prairie is returned to its natural state, the land becomes covered with up to seventy different strains of grass and other plants. Small cacti sit waiting for dry years, when they can grow and thrive. Delicate flowers dot the landscape with patterns of violet, yellow and bright red. Sage bushes thrive, so the air is filled with their pungent perfume. These last days, walking on the flat, or into the curving uplands has filled me with a sense of peace that I have missed for a long time. It has surprised me! I hadn't expected to be so affected by the landscape, to have strings pulled that reach far back into my youth on the land east of Winnipeg where I lived as a boy.
As we enter our last two days of this visit to the Park, I am hopeful that the return to warm and sunny weather will afford us the opportunity to walk onto the uplands and perhaps encounter the bison herd grazing, as we did yesterday. Encountered…but not approached. They are peaceful, look gentle and bucolic, but they watched us…carefully. Five or six hundred yards was close enough. Then we moved on and away.
We spent some time over the last two days checking out other B&B's in the area, and have found two that are different from each other, unique and quite beautiful in their own way. Coming back here with boots and books would be a lovely way to recoup for winter. August would be the best time, when the nights are longer, and the dark, open sky more available for viewing. I was up in the night - 3:00 AM - and stepped outside to look up. When there is little light pollution, the night sky above us is overwhelming. I could see the full swath of the Milky Way, constellations unfamiliar to me because usually unavailable because of intruding earth-light. This aspect of the south Saskatchewan is hard to appreciate in June, when "night" is only full from eleven-thirty till about three AM. There was dawn rimming the horizon as I stared upward last night at that hour.
Today, it's more of Broken Hills, and at least another hike we can find north of us in the Park. We are to have a traditional German breakfast today - bread, cheese and old cuts. A strenuous walk is the only way to deal with such a delightful red-light meal. (See G.I. Diet on the Internet.) But I'm definitely up for that!
A wiser instruction comes from the Canadian writer W.O.Mitchell - a prairie boy himself: "to appreciate the prairie, you must look down…" He was referring to the countless tiny wildflowers that grow and replace themselves in the long grass every few days.
Walking the rolling hills of the Grassland National Park has been a kind of homecoming for me. It has been a long time since I have lived and walked on true prairie. Where I live now, the country is parkland, with lots of open land, but it was, and is, quite heavily treed. Few spaces are allowed to grow wild, and those that are "grassed" are covered with the invasive strains brought from Europe by arriving settlers.
When prairie is returned to its natural state, the land becomes covered with up to seventy different strains of grass and other plants. Small cacti sit waiting for dry years, when they can grow and thrive. Delicate flowers dot the landscape with patterns of violet, yellow and bright red. Sage bushes thrive, so the air is filled with their pungent perfume. These last days, walking on the flat, or into the curving uplands has filled me with a sense of peace that I have missed for a long time. It has surprised me! I hadn't expected to be so affected by the landscape, to have strings pulled that reach far back into my youth on the land east of Winnipeg where I lived as a boy.
As we enter our last two days of this visit to the Park, I am hopeful that the return to warm and sunny weather will afford us the opportunity to walk onto the uplands and perhaps encounter the bison herd grazing, as we did yesterday. Encountered…but not approached. They are peaceful, look gentle and bucolic, but they watched us…carefully. Five or six hundred yards was close enough. Then we moved on and away.
We spent some time over the last two days checking out other B&B's in the area, and have found two that are different from each other, unique and quite beautiful in their own way. Coming back here with boots and books would be a lovely way to recoup for winter. August would be the best time, when the nights are longer, and the dark, open sky more available for viewing. I was up in the night - 3:00 AM - and stepped outside to look up. When there is little light pollution, the night sky above us is overwhelming. I could see the full swath of the Milky Way, constellations unfamiliar to me because usually unavailable because of intruding earth-light. This aspect of the south Saskatchewan is hard to appreciate in June, when "night" is only full from eleven-thirty till about three AM. There was dawn rimming the horizon as I stared upward last night at that hour.
Today, it's more of Broken Hills, and at least another hike we can find north of us in the Park. We are to have a traditional German breakfast today - bread, cheese and old cuts. A strenuous walk is the only way to deal with such a delightful red-light meal. (See G.I. Diet on the Internet.) But I'm definitely up for that!
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