October Serenade

“Mornings were cooler and crisper than before. The ever-lengthening shapes of afternoon shadows seemed drawn more irresistibly into the night. Fields were rough and tweedy, as though an old brown woolen jacket had been thrown over them to ward off the chill.” — Vincent G. Dethier

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Oh, wow, October. The prairie is stunning. Although it’s not to everyone’s taste.

Cup plants (Silphium perfoliatum) and sumac (Rhus glabra), Schulenberg Prairie, Lisle, IL.

“No flowers,” say some of my friends. Yes, the blooming flowers now are few. Goldenrods. Asters.

Sky blue aster (Symphyotrichum oolentangiense), Schulenberg Prairie, Lisle, IL.

They melt into the grasses, slowly becoming invisible. Going. Going. Gone—to seed.

Mixed wildflowers and grasses, Schulenberg Prairie, Lisle, IL.

Most prairie wildflowers have closed shop for the season.

Prairie dock (Silphium terabinthinaceum), Schulenberg Prairie, Lisle, IL.

Finished. Finale.

Compass plant (Silphium laciniatum), Schulenberg Prairie, Lisle, IL.

They surrender to the inevitable with elegance.

Late figwort (Scrophularia marilandica), Schulenberg Prairie, Lisle, IL.

Ravenous insects glean whatever is left for the taking.

Common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) with milkweed bugs (Oncopeltus fasciatus), Great Western Prairie, Elmhurst, IL.

So many insects.

Rattlesnake master (Eryngium yuccifolium) with unknown insect (possibly the four-humped stink bug Brochymena quadripustulata), Schulenberg Prairie, Lisle, IL.

They make themselves at home in the prairie wildflower remains.

Ball gall on goldenrod (Oligoneuron rigidum) Great Western Trail, Elmhurst, IL.

Seeds ripen.

Illinois bundleflower (Desmanthus illinoensis), Schulenberg Prairie, Lisle, IL.

Days shorten.

Sawtooth sunflower (Helianthus grosseserratus), Schulenberg Prairie, Lisle, IL.

Autumn trickles through my fingers.

Schulenberg Prairie and savanna edge, Lisle, IL.

Each day seems over before I’ve fully woken up. I remind myself, “Pay attention!” But—the prairie is beginning to blur. I rub my eyes and try to focus. So many seeds. So much grass.

Big bluestem (Andropogon gerardii), Schulenberg Prairie, Lisle, IL.

It’s all about the grass.

Prairie cordgrass (Spartina pectinata), Schulenberg Prairie, Lisle, IL.

Loops and whoops and swoops of grass.

Big bluestem (Andropogon gerardii), Schulenberg Prairie, Lisle, IL.

Even my old enemy, the invasive reed canary grass on the prairie, shimmers in the morning dew.

Reed canary grass (Phalaris arundinacea), Schulenberg Prairie, Lisle, IL.

In her eloquent essay in The Tallgrass Prairie Reader, Louise Erdrich writes: “Tallgrass in motion is a world of legato.”

Prairie cordgrass (Spartina pectinata), Schulenberg Prairie, Lisle, IL.

The wind sighs as it sifts the grasses. The coda is near.

Schulenberg Prairie in Lisle, IL.

What new wonders will unfold?

Natural hybrid between the compass plant (Silphium laciniatum) and prairie dock (Silphium terabinthinaceum)–sometimes referred to as Silphium pinnatifidum, Schulenberg Prairie, Lisle, IL.

I only know this: The wonders will be more nuanced. Less easily available as immediate eye candy than when in the growing season. But no less remarkable.

White wild indigo (Baptisia alba macrophylla), Schulenberg Prairie, Lisle, IL.

We’ll have to pause. Think. Absorb. Take time to look. To really look.

Switchgrass (Panicum virgatum), Schulenberg Prairie, Lisle, IL.

Why not go for a hike and see? Now. Before the snow flies?

Schulenberg Prairie, Lisle, IL.

The prairie is waiting.

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Vincent G. Dethier (1915-1993) was an entomologist and physiologist, and the author of Crickets and Katydids, Concerts and Solos from which the opening blog post quote was taken. This is a delightful book and accessible to anyone who loves natural history, or who has found joy in the grasshoppers, crickets and katydids of the tallgrass prairie. It takes a little extra work to find the book at your library. Well worth the effort.

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Thanks to Nature Revisited Podcast for their interview with Cindy about dragonflies and prairie! Click here to listen to it on Youtube.

Thanks to Benedictine University for airing: Conservation: The Power of Story with Cindy as part of their Jurica-Suchy Nature Museum “Science Speaker Series.” See it on Youtube here.

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Thank you to Mark and Jess Paulson for their tour of the Great Western Prairie this week. I was so grateful to see it through your eyes!

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Join Cindy for a Program or Class!

Tallgrass Prairie Ecology: Opens online Monday, Nov.1 –Are you a prairie steward or volunteer who wants to learn more about the tallgrass? Do you love hiking the prairie, but don’t know much about it? Enjoy a self-paced curriculum with suggested assignments and due dates as you interact with other like-minded prairie lovers on the discussion boards. Then, join Cindy for a live Zoom Friday, November 12, noon to 1 p.m. CST. Offered through The Morton Arboretum. See more details here.

Winter Prairie Wonders: Discover the December Delights of the Tallgrass! Dec. 3 (Friday) 10-11:30 am (CST): Make yourself a cup of hot tea, snuggle under a warm afghan, and join prairie steward and writer Cindy Crosby virtually for this interactive online immersion into the tallgrass prairie in winter. See the aesthetic beauty of the snow-covered grasses and wildflowers in cold weather through colorful images of winter on the prairies. Follow animal tracks to see what creatures are out and about, and see how many you can identify. Learn how birds, pollinators, and mammals use winter prairie plants;  the seeds for nourishment and the grasses and spent wildflowers for overwintering, protection, and cover. Then, listen as Cindy shares brief readings about the prairie in winter that will engage your creativity and nourish your soul.  This is scheduled as a Zoom event through The Morton Arboretum. Register here.

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Save Bell Bowl Prairie!

Please visit www.savebellbowlprairie.org to learn about the planned destruction of a special gravel prairie remnant by the Chicago-Rockford Airport in Rockford, IL. Ask them to reroute their construction. Discover how you can help save this home of the federally-endangered Rusty Patched Bumble Bee. The remnant is slated for bulldozing on November 1. Every small action by those who love prairies will help!

Prairie Literature 101: Reading the Tallgrass

Temperatures in the Chicago region continue to plummet below zero. The ice-slicked prairie trails glisten, hard-packed and unforgiving. It’s hazardous hiking even for those of us who are passionate about the tallgrass.

Time to curl up with a good book.

Two of my favorites, Journal of a Prairie Year and Grassroots: The Universe of Home—  both by Paul Gruchow — have been excellent companions during this week’s bone-chilling weather. Journal of a Prairie Year is a quiet, month-by-month documentary of Gruchow’s walks that begin in January and end in December; Grassroots, a prairie memoir of sorts, contains his seminal essay on tallgrass, “What the Prairie Teaches Us.”  Few people have loved and written about prairie the way Paul did, and his passion for the tallgrass lives on through his words.

Kudos to The Nature Conservancy for their work, documented in two beautiful coffee-table type reads, Big Bluestem: Journey into the Tallgrass  (Annick Smith), and Tallgrass Prairie (John Madson/Frank Oberle).  Each is filled with gorgeous photography and eloquent writing. When the gray days seem endless, I browse through the color photos of lavender coneflowers and orange butterflyweed. Spring feels a little closer. As I leaf through the images of prescribed burns and smoldering flames, I also feel a little warmer.

 

Louise Erdrich’s essay Big Grass, appears in The Heart of the Land, a general nature collection from The Nature Conservancy. It’s perhaps the most emotionally-charged piece of writing I’ve ever read, and I assign it to students in my nature writing classes. And any of us who has ever planted a patch of prairie has Stephen Apfelbaums’ Nature’s Second Chance on the nightstand or close at hand for reassurance and comfort. We find he’s encountered the same resistance from neighbors and nature as we have.

Want to know more about the history, biology, and politics of prairie? Grassland, by Richard Manning, is where I turn. In the same book stack is John Madson’s Where the Sky Began, many prairie lovers’ desert island book and one I find as comfortable as my favorite old fleece socks. Madson’s closing lines are a quote from Thomas Wolfe’s book, Look Homeward, Angel: O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again and are some of the most heartfelt words ever appropriated to describe prairie restoration.

I’ve only found a single anthology devoted to prairie; editor John T. Price’s The Tallgrass Prairie Reader from University of Iowa Press. One of the gifts of his volume is its diverse prairie literature arranged by the century in which it was written. The reader comes away with a new understanding of how tallgrass has been viewed over hundreds of years. I’m delighted to have an essay about the Schulenberg Prairie included in his collection; Price, Thomas Dean, Lisa Knopp, Drake Hokanson, Elizabeth Dodd, and Mary Swander all have terrific contemporary pieces about prairie represented here.

 

Prairie restoration is about restoring habitat and increasing diversity: pulling weeds, collecting seeds, and cutting brush. But preserving prairie also happens through planting words and images in hearts and minds. Each winter, when I hang up my hiking boots for a few days and huddle by the fireplace with my stack of books, I’m grateful for these “restorationists” who do just that.

 (All photos by Cindy Crosby. From the top: Willoway Brook in the Schulenberg Prairie Savanna, The Morton Arboretum, Lisle, IL; author’s stack of books; photo spread from Tallgrass Prairie; critter tracks, Glen Ellyn, IL; The Tallgrass Prairie Reader; coyote track, Quarry Lake at West Branch Forest Preserve, Bartlett, IL.)