Southbound

I knew I had reached Nachusa Grasslands when I stopped seeing corn. Four hundered some odd miles from Duluth I left the truck in a gravel parking area and stepped back in time. The Nature Conservancy's work here has preserved, through easements and acquisitions, 2500 acres of tall grass prairie that has never been touched by the plow. When I say tall grass I mean rolling hills of six foot tall grasses glowing gold and tawny. Interspersed are islands of broad spreading oaks. When E.O. Wilson makes his argument for the human affinity toward savannah landscapes it makes logical sense. Seeing the frontier vistas for my self, I fully understand. There is something so pleasing about it that I wanted immediately to live in it, to have a small home tucked in a hollow where the woods meet the grasslands. Walking along a few paths I flushed at least five pheasants, several ducks and caused scurryings I could not see. Prairie landscapes are overlooked so easily with our obsession with mountains. Imagining these grasslands stretching hundreds of miles around and you understand why volunteers give so much time to managing it, picking exotics and using controlled burns. A grain of salt on a road atlas would be sufficient in representing its size in comparison to the rest of Illinois. Prairies like this represent one hundreth of one percent of Illinois. Trevor Garrod of Tea Leaf Green writes in a song "I guess the meaning of holding on is what you're holding out against." I think the volunteers here would agree.

That first night I boiled water for a a pretty unsatisfying dinner of bowlappetite rice. Compared with the dinner Jamie and I had the night before (butternut squash ravioli and vegetable lasagna) at the New Scenic Cafe, it just plain hurt. The moon came out strong between broken clouds flowing over it like a river at ice out. Coyotes lit up the night, tossing their high pitched howls over the hills. They were everywhere, continuing their revelry as I talked to Jamie and heard about Chuck's outbursts from earlier in the day. A cold night ensued.

A badger hole maybe?