Thursday, August 29, 2013

Re-Prairie Lincoln

Prairie is my home. Nebraska is my home. Yet there is so little prairie. Therefore I feel homeless. I finally began to articulate this idea the last few days as I've prepped tonight's Ignite Lincoln talk. I have less connection to this ground precisely because so much of its ecology is not local. I can't begin to make Lincoln my home without prairie, but everything we do works hard to destroy the last of the prairie spaces (and certainly not to restore much of it). So I begin to loathe the place, I get angry, I get depressed, I shut down, and then I lash out. And then I dig. Toss seed out my car window. Ignite.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

For some reason the image of you tossing seeds out the window is very hardcore and defiant! And I love it! Re-prairie Lincoln!

Dawn said...

Gorilla Re-Prairie-ing. Start a movement! (I know you are trying!)

Anonymous said...

Born in Nebraska, I agree. And of the many at a Denver presentation I gave in 1/13, more than one noted to me afterwards, "all the bad landscape models you point to come from NEBRASKA, and so much of this area was settled from there." I added Iowa, Kansas, etc.

I forgot to spread mesquite seedpods to the prperties of all the desert denialists I knew in Abq. Well, not all, or is it not yet?

Go get 'em!

Benjamin Vogt said...

Gorilla prairie-ing out car windows should be a thing, man, a bona fide THING. And yeah, D, bad landscape modesl certainly started in the eastern plains -- hello big ag? Industrial farming?

Susan in the Pink Hat said...

I'm kind of that way about mountains. Fortunately, they are harder to get rid of than the prairie.

Benjamin Vogt said...

Susan -- mtn top removal!