Beware of walking on the prairie: The plants’ beauty may be contagious.
A healthy prairie is characterized by the diversity of its plant species, as well as its variety of insects, reptiles, birds and mammals, often invisible in the thick carpet of green grasses and rainbow of colorful flowers. That is why I will be voting Tuesday to increase the budget for the DuPage County Forest Preserve District.
Throughout the summer, the prairie blooms with a variety of coneflowers and sunflowers, asters, and white and purple clovers, which swarm with bees and butterflies. The deep root systems have, over the vastness of time and space, created the thick prairie sod that produces waves of unique grasses such as Indian grass, switchgrass, sideoats grama, wild rye, prairie dropseed, little bluestem and big bluestem.
Big bluestem, the state grass of Illinois and one of the dominant grasses of the tallgrass prairie ecosystem, may reach 7 to 8 feet high in late summer, culminating in a blueish three-pronged head shaped like a turkey foot, with a root system reaching down into the soil 10 to 12 feet deep. This grass structure passes its contagious power to you in subtle ways. Standing in what seems like an endless patch of big bluestem, you may notice another grass just as tall, with a head like a golden tassel. In comparing the Indian grass to big bluestem, under a hot August sun, you instinctively compare which is more beautiful in its individual appearance and which is more impressive as a group, swaying in the wind. You may wonder, while you admire the yellow flowers of the tall compass plant, why its leaves tend to point north and south, hence its name.
If these questions arouse your curiosity, then you know you have the prairie virus in your blood. As a result, “watching the grass grow” transforms from a cliche about retirement into a vital aspect of your daily experience. Depending on the rainfall, in late May, the tallgrass species will be knee high; in late June waist high; in late July, chest high; and in late August, it will be over your head. In late September, the waves of green turn into shimmering copper gold under the autumn sun.
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These specialized grasses and forbs spread and evolved over tens of thousands of years to survive drought, fire, and the extremes of winter cold and summer heat, before finally falling victim to the technology of Illinois resident John Deere’s steel plow in 1837, which could cut through the thick prairie sod. President Andrew Jackson had signed into law the Indian Removal Act in 1830, which led to an increase in violent clashes between the U.S. military and Native Americans, including the Black Hawk War in 1832. The vast network of Ojibwe, Odawa, Potawatomi, Miami, Sauk and Fox villages that had thrived for centuries in the prairie region around the Lower Great Lakes vanished after the Treaty of Chicago in 1833, culminating a policy of forced evacuation that started with the Treaty of Greenville in 1795.
The waves of grass soon enticed settlers from the Eastern United States and Europe. Within decades, millions of acres of native tallgrass prairie were converted by the steel plow to cultivated farmland over most of what is now the Midwest, permanently altering the culture and the landscape of the region. These changes are presciently portrayed in the 1835 short story “The Pioneer” by James Hall, who traveled frontier Illinois as an editor and politician.
Remnants of the original prairie still exist in Illinois in fragments and remote cemeteries, and prairies are being reestablished through large-scale restoration projects such as the Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie near Wilmington, Nachusa Grasslands near Franklin Grove, Goose Lake Prairie near Morris and on a smaller scale in state parks, forest preserves, and roadside medians. Among my local favorites are Springbrook Prairie, Danada and Blackwell, all maintained by the Forest Preserve District of DuPage County. In appreciation of its efforts, I will happily be voting Tuesday to increase the tax levy for the district to allow it to purchase and preserve more land for the benefit of all.
Your feet may take you to other natural places, for work or for pleasure, and you may learn to love those places. But if big bluestem is planted in your DNA, you will always feel the strength of those 10-foot roots around your feet, pulling you back to the beauty of the prairie. This beauty must be preserved for future generations before it also vanishes.
Franz Burnier is an emeritus professor of English at the College of DuPage. He has traveled to numerous American prairies, as well as the vast grasslands of the Russian steppes and the African Serengeti, and enjoys hiking, fishing, and photographing the forest preserves of DuPage County and Cook County.
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