Tag: prairie

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Growing in the Wind

By Christian Begeman

The last few years I’ve found myself in knee deep grasses, spongy fens and alongside muddy sloughs more times than I can count. Why? Well, photography would be the easy answer, but in reality, the reason is more nuanced than simply getting an interesting photo.

First of all, you should know this about me: I’m a bit stubborn. Don’t believe me? Just ask my mom. I have learned this stubborn streak has an interesting way of working itself out in regard to my photography. It takes me a while to get interested in something. I mean really interested. But once I’m hooked, I’m a goner. Put another way, I’m initially reluctant (stubborn) to take on a new interest, but after a while I realize the interest that has caught my attention is what I’ve been searching for all along. This has happened to me in regard to country churches, spring birding and now botany (wildflower photography in particular).

Three Junes ago, I remember sitting in the middle of tall, green grass that swayed and flexed on a warm wind at Oakwood Lakes State Park in Brookings County. I was surrounded by blooming meadow anemones, blue damselflies and flitting orange skipperlings. I had my camera, but just sitting there quietly under the warm, early summer sun watching a little bit of nature just be, just wonderfully exist, was a revelation.

Three years later, you’ll find me wandering a Nature Conservancy prairie preserve, national park or state park nearly any time I can in the warmer months. I’ve heard folks say that being in nature is their”church.” I understand that sentiment, but it is something different for me. My time in nature is a respite, a reminder and a teacher. I find relief from the daily grind, and I’m reminded of the intricate creativity and knowledge of the Creator. As for the teaching, let me try to explain.

As a photographer who enjoys macro photography, I have learned the importance of getting down to a wildflower’s level to look a butterfly in the eye. In order to obtain clear and crisp focus as well as the best composition, I’ve learned to wait out the wind, to pause under cloud cover and make the most of sunshine. I’ve learned to look behind and above, even though I’m focusing on what is right in front. I’ve learned to take my time and not be in a hurry. I’ve learned that our prairies consist of far more than grass.

Up until the last few years, I had no idea that both our tallgrass and shortgrass prairies harbor so much diversity. It is something we South Dakotans are taught from an early age, but it wasn’t until I looked long and walked slow upon the grasslands that the truth really sunk in. Growing up West River, it wasn’t hard to find pastures never put under the plow, but on the east side of the state, the remnant tallgrass prairies are a lot harder to find. Thankfully they still exist in places. I’m grateful to those who’ve strived to maintain the tallgrass prairie and all its intricate glory. They are not only lovely places to wander with a camera, but also places to learn and grow.

Christian Begeman grew up in Isabel and now lives in Sioux Falls. When he’s not working at Midco he is often on the road photographing South Dakota’s prettiest spots. Follow Begeman on his blog.

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Over 700 Years in the Making

Good Earth State Park at Blood Run, South Dakota’s newest state park just southeast of Sioux Falls, is one of the oldest sites of long-term human habitation in the United States. Rebecca Johnson, our special projects coordinator, visited the National Historic Landmark recently to hike the trails. Here are some of her photos.

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Prairie Isn’t Prairie Without Sky

By Linda Hasselstrom

Photography by Greg Latza

Sunlight illuminates the rolling prairie north of Mission Ridge, near the confluence of the Cheyenne and Missouri rivers.

To begin to see the prairie, walk away from buildings, power poles, asphalt, away from the sound of motors, away from anything electronic, especially anything that beeps. Walk in the grass that reaches perhaps to your ankles, lithe, whippy grass that has evolved with fewer than 16 inches of moisture a year. Walk until the only sound is the wind combing that grass and the chitter of a flock of horned larks somewhere above and behind you: the invisible birds of the plains. Walk and breathe deeply, inhale clear down to your toes, that clean, indefinable smell of grass that has never known chemical fertilizer, grass that holds man’s fate in its slender stems.

Prairie grass stands close to its ancestors; grass specializes in simplification. Wind-pollinated, grass flowers need no heady fragrance. No honey, no splashy colors. Some grasses do reproduce by flowering, but others spread by underground stems that creep sometimes through the grittiest, grayest, least fertile soil on the planet.

Of all the plants on earth, grass is most important to man. From grass like this evolved all the breadstuff we eat: corn, wheat, oats, rye, barley, rice, sugarcane.”It yields no fruit in earth or air,” said John James Ingalls, a Kansas senator,”and yet should its harvest fail a single year, famine would depopulate the world.” And Rumi, a Sufi mystic who lived from 1207 to 1273, said,”One half the planet is grass. The other half grazing.”

Only standing in undisturbed prairie grass can you truly appreciate prairie sky. Stand tall. Tilt your face to the sky; open your eyes wide. Turn your head from one shoulder to the other, and then turn around and do the same so you can see the whole bowl of blue, frothy with clouds.

Look carefully around you. You should see no sign of habitation. White settlers sensibly put their houses in valleys and low places close to water sources, following the practice of earlier Native residents both for practicality, and for safety from storms. And a low location offered concealment, too, from marauders, from wind. Most ranches in arid country lie down long winding gravel roads from the nearest highway, down in any available dip. Perhaps the house is sheltered by windbreak trees. The corrals are downhill, to protect the water supply.

“Only standing in undisturbed prairie grass can you truly appreciate prairie sky,” writes Hasselstrom. Such prairie can be seen in Harding County.

Only modern settlers are foolish enough, and rich enough, to plunk houses on top of hills. A hilltop house requires a deep well and powerful pumps to bring water to the surface. A house atop a hill must contain a monster furnace to fill it with heat when the thermometer reads 35 below zero and the winds are blowing 50 miles an hour. But most modern residents no longer earn a living from the land, so they situate their houses for the view without realizing that they have doubled, tripled the costs of their own living. They’ve also destroyed the prairie for everyone within sight of their misbegotten lodgings. If anything like this is in sight, walk farther. Use the time to breathe deeply.

The prairie sky. Standing with your eyes open, you must be able to see a harrier hawk rise up from that ridge to the south, wings extended and gleaming bronze in sunlight. Watch her fly, swoop, dip, glide and hover across the face of the ridge and down a half mile to the dam where the ducks scatter under her shadow.

Then the harrier tilts her wings and is lifted by the wind up to soar over your head, turning one eye then the other to see you clearly. Turn your head and watch as she leans first one way then the other against the wind, circling, pitching, angling down along fence lines until finally she drops on a vole or mole in the grass.

Wait. Wait.

The hawk rises, lifts great wings, ascends to the top of a tree at the very edge of your vision. With binoculars you can see the smooth neck bend as she begins to feed on a morsel of prairie life, a morsel of grass made flesh. Like yours.

Breathe deeply. Look around again. A few power poles may trace a lacy filigree at the edges of the blue, and a few trees may gather like seashore foam fringing the blue world overhead. But that’s all. A true prairie sky is clean, without neon, without smog, without the chatter of aircraft. No artificial lights shatter the perfect darkness of the night.

Only with the whole sky as background can you really see the great horned owl drop from the cottonwood near the house, swing around behind the windbreak junipers and alight on the branch of another cottonwood where she instantly looks like a broken-off stump. Only by watching for a long time will you see her glide out over the grass, drop on a rabbit, hold it down with one taloned foot while she turns her head, scouting for danger.

In the whole sky, you can really see the flock of red-winged blackbirds leap out of the cottonwood by the dam, and swing a mile around the hayfield, their gold and red wing patches signaling in the sun. Then they swoop, calling and whistling, into the branches of the two dead cottonwoods by the house. You can see barn swallows demonstrating their daring flying, zipping under the deck of the house, through the broken pane in the barn window, between the bars of the corral gate.

A thunderstorm approaches this otherwise peaceful prairie in Harding County, north of Buffalo.

Only the whole prairie sky allows you to properly see clouds. The Navajo have a proverb:”The clouds must look like many sheep before the rains will come.” Look up: When you see flat-bottomed cumulus clouds with puffy heads arranged as evenly as sheep in a pasture or as tiles on the floor, find your umbrella.

Late in the summer, look forward to the towering cumulus clouds called”cauliflower” because their crowns are boiling upward into blue sky like bubbles in a bathtub. Then watch out for the revealing shape of an anvil against the dark blue: ice crystals building into a thunderstorm likely to bring hail that can flatten a hayfield in minutes, killing birds, rabbits, damaging man’s possessions. After hot days, beware of the pouch-like formations called”mammy” clouds that may signal a tornado.

In the wide prairie sky, you can spot the undulating wing beats from a distance, and watch until they come close enough to identify a great blue heron, flying from the nesting spot on Battle Creek 6 miles to the north to this shrinking pond on the prairie where it will stand on one leg for a few hours while hunting frogs. In summer, the heron may be almost invisible among the crowds of sunflowers along the edges of the pond. In winter, the heron is a cultural icon, a Chinese painting against the silver water as it slowly freezes in the falling snow.

Only the whole sky is large enough so you can hear the shooping and chortling and chuckling of the sandhill cranes miles away. You turn your head this way and that, eyes straining for a sight of the wavering V shapes. Lie down; relax. Let your eyes slide over the sky. There, far to the north, the line thinner than a pencil leaves, growing closer and thicker as the sounds drop to you, hooting and cooing and laughing. The shifting line of birds, mighty wings outstretched, is headed south to gather on the Platte River in Nebraska. Only the whole sky is enough so you can see several V’s of them ó 20, 60, 200 cranes at a time, breaking into groups, circling up the sky until they hit a fast wind that shoots them south, deploying into another ragged arrow shape.

Only the whole sky will hold and amplify the thunder that begins somewhere to the north. The ground shudders as the clouds shimmer: a B-1 bomber takes off from Ellsworth Air Force Base, blasting upward until it is only a silver dot, trailing white vapor into the sunset. Headed perhaps for Iraq, it booms its message of war over this quiet landscape. Only the whole sky allows you to understand the immensity of its power, its importance. Think of it: filled with munitions, and with men and women whose job is to protect this prairie and everything connected to it. Only the whole sky can contain their gallantry, and their work.

The whole sky must be visible for proper appreciation of a sunset. I may be facing east when I notice puffy clouds turning from gray to pink. Instinctively, I look west, where the sunset is supposed to be. It’s there too: golden rays shooting up into the sky or turning the underside of a sky full of clouds pink and gold. When clouds are heavy in the west, sometimes the sunset can’t be seen at all where it should be, and the reflection in the east is so vivid I distrust my sense of direction.

While my mind wrestles with a writing project, I often search for a quotation, a summary, a comforting reminder that someone wiser than I am has considered the same subject. This time, I turned to Henry David Thoreau:”Thank God men cannot fly,” he said,”and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.” Oh Henry, did you speak too soon?

The decisions that can protect the prairie sky rest with us. Without the grass, without the harrier and the owl, the whooping cranes and the redwing blackbirds, the prairie can’t exist.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the July/August 2010 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Saving Our Native Prairie

By Jerry Wilson

Some ranchers protect native grasses for their exquisite beauty, but they also know of the prairie’s nutritional value.

I sprawl in tall prairie grasses on the Missouri River bluff, and inhale the purity of the universe. Big bluestem, Indian and switch grasses, still lustrous in winter, waltz in the wind six feet above my head. In their shadow glint purplish hues of little bluestem, the amber of sideoats grama and the drying heads of wild flowers.

From ground level this seems a vast jungle of grass, but in fact it is an isolated handful of acres, a remnant of the million square miles of wild prairie that 150 years ago stretched from Canada to Texas, including most of South Dakota. Two centuries ago Meriwether Lewis stood nearby and marveled at 3,000 bison in a single herd.

How did these grasses survive? The roots of prairie plants may reach 12 feet down, safe from drought and able to survive decades of overgrazing and chemical warfare. By weight, more than two-thirds of many native grasses are subterranean. In the 1930s, University of Nebraska ecologist Frederic Clements excavated a half-square-yard of prairie grass, and from the earth extracted 150 miles of root.

It would be a rare half-yard of earth that contained the roots of a single plant. More likely, in any scrap of native prairie, half a dozen grasses and forbs — broadleaf plants — would be in reach. That is by design.”The old prairie lived by the diversity of its plants and animals, all of which were useful because the sum total of their cooperations and competitions achieved continuity,” said Aldo Leopold in A Sand County Almanac.

The goal of modern farming is to replace that diversity with monoculture. Whatever is not corn or soybeans or the other chosen seed, is a weed. After 150 years of plowing, just two percent of the tallgrass prairie that once dominated eastern South Dakota remains, and the mixed and shortgrass prairies of our west are disappearing fast. Will we lose the last vestiges of wild prairie? Does it really matter? Is it possible to save some of what remains, and perhaps to restore and rehabilitate some of what we have lost?

In his autobiography A Son of the Middle Border, Hamlin Garland recalled his pioneering family’s arrival on the South Dakota prairie, and the first order of business:”At last the wide ‘quarter section’ lay upturned, black to the sun and the garden that had bloomed and fruited for millions of years, waiting for man, lay torn and ravaged. The tender plants, the sweet flowers, the fragrant fruits, the busy insects, all the swarming lives which had been native here for untold centuries were utterly destroyed.”

Linda Hasselstrom developed an appreciation for native prairie while growing up on the family ranch near Hermosa.”A lot of people would die for the mountains,” she says.”What we need are people willing to die — or at least fight — for the prairies.” Photo by Greg Latza.

In geological time, the age of America’s prairie is actually brief, a mere 10,000 years, the hundreds of grasses and flowering forbs evolving as the glaciers of the last ice age retreated. And yet in a fleeting fraction of that time, what nature wove has been undone.”The more we love this place as it is, the more we feel the pain of what it so recently was,” says Candace Savage in her book Prairie: A Natural History.”The wild prairie ecosystem is gone. And this tragedy is compounded by the realization that we don’t know exactly what it is that we have lost.”

In fact, the question wasn’t even asked until 1916, when Frederic Clements, focusing on the ability of native prairie to recover after fire, realized that prairie is a self-healing system, a community of plants and other organisms with regenerative power, the ability to reassert themselves, as Savage puts it, in an”orderly sequence, each wave creating the conditions required by the next, until the vegetation reached a stable configuration, or ‘climax’.” Clements recognized nearly a century ago what we today know as an”ecosystem.” But for regeneration to occur, modern man must provide minimal help — and then step aside.

My family and I arrived on the Missouri Valley bluff a century after the first settlers, Nels and Martha Oakland, took the land. Under terms of the Homestead Act, the Oaklands had five years to”prove up,” to plow so many acres and make other”improvements” to earn the land. About 1875, Nels hitched a one-bottom plow to a team of mules, and inch by inch, turned the waving heads of native diversity under. Even if he had wished to let the grasses grow and fatten his cows, he had no choice. The Homestead Act required that he plow his hilly land.

To pay interest on borrowed money and somehow survive on 160 acres of marginal land, the Oaklands no doubt took all the soil could give. Each season, inconsequential handfuls of topsoil washed away. Perhaps in his 37th and last spring, Nels’ plow still turned up darkish earth. Perhaps he didn’t know that the life-giving layer above clay and glacial debris had worn dangerously thin. But I suspect he knew that his generation was both a beginning and an end.

Thirty years ago we found the Oaklands’ hills depleted and eroded, producing imported grasses and weeds. One spring I stripped a handful of big bluestem seed, spaded a plot behind the home we’d built, and began a small experiment in prairie restoration. Two decades later we have restored 30 acres of prairie — in so far as that is possible — and are working to rehabilitate 30 more. And we are not alone. Alongside the rapid conversion of prairie to commodity crops, scores of South Dakotans are at work preserving and restoring native grasses and flowers.

Across the state, and particularly west of the Missouri River, conscientious ranchers still zealously protect the prairie. Perhaps some are motivated by the exquisite beauty of wildflowers in spring and the bronze and purple hues of prairie grasses in fall. Some protect native grasses and forbs because they know the plants that evolved on our sometimes unforgiving plains survive the fiercest cold and drought our climate can deal. But ranchers also know the superior nutritional value of native prairie for growing the most healthful meat.

The Mortensons have been rehabbing the native prairie for 60 years on their sprawling ranch northwest of Pierre. Cattle now graze where corn was grown.

The prairie has many friends — ranchers whose grandfathers homesteaded the land and who would sooner cut off an arm than plow under the legacy of 10,000 years, scientists, soil conservationists, hunters and fishermen who know that prairie produces wildlife, and city folk who plant tiny scraps of prairie in their backyards because its beauty thrills.

Many South Dakotans are familiar with the books of Linda Hasselstrom and Dan O’Brien. Hasselstrom grew up amidst her father’s Herefords near Hermosa; O’Brien raises bison on his ranch by the Cheyenne River. Both honor and defend the prairie ecosystem and the ranching way of life.”A lot of people would die for the mountains,” Hasselstrom says in Going Over East.”What we need are people willing to die — or at least fight — for the prairies.”

On the Pine Ridge Reservation near Allen, the Lakota buffalo herd thrives on intact native prairie. On the Mortenson ranch northwest of Pierre, Todd, Jeff and Curt Mortenson raise cattle on native grasses they and their father, Clarence, have maintained in good health for many decades. Clarence began rehabilitating his ranch’s natural ecosystem 60 years ago, combating erosion with sediment-trapping dams and revitalizing native prairie with rotational grazing. Gradually native vegetation reestablished itself and wildlife returned. Ecologically-conscious management increased both profits and sustainability.

Recent decades have seen the flowering of numerous private organizations devoted to preserving native prairie. Ranchers and conservationists of the South Dakota Grasslands Coalition, for example, provide scientific information on the virtues of native ecosystems, the conservation and management of grazing lands, and ways to exploit the prairie’s economic potential without compromising its health. The South Dakota Art Museum in Brookings and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service raise money for prairie preservation by selling prints of Harvey Dunn’s famous painting, The Prairie Trail.

Among the prairie’s oldest friends is The Nature Conservancy, a nationwide organization founded in 1951″to preserve the plants, animals and natural communities that represent the diversity of life on Earth by protecting the lands and waters they need to survive.” The largest South Dakota grassland under TNC management is the 7,800-acre Ordway Prairie, 50 miles northwest of Aberdeen.

The Ordway ecosystem includes over 300 plant species, says manager Mary Miller, from tall grasses and wetland species to short grasses on hilltops. Hillsides bloom with wildflowers from late spring through summer. Ordway’s fauna is also diverse, including badgers, ground squirrels, foxes, coyotes and 280 bison. TNC simulates nature’s management strategy, periodic controlled burns followed by grazing bison, a progression that for millennia kept prairie healthy. Surplus grass-fed bison are sold each year. Bio-control agents — insects that feed on specific invasive weeds — allow managers to limit chemical use.

The importance of the TNC preserve grows as surrounding prairie faces conversion to agriculture, heavy grazing pressure and invasive species. The preserve’s 400 wetlands provide nesting for thousands of waterfowl, shorebirds, grebes, rails and herons, while numerous grassland birds inhabit the mixed grass prairie.

Northern Prairies Land Trust takes another approach to preservation of native prairie and other vulnerable special lands. The non-profit conservation organization was established in 1999 to safeguard unique ecosystems of the Northern Great Plains by helping South Dakota and Nebraska landowners conserve lands for habitat preservation, agriculture, ranching, water, cultural and historical resources. NPLT has protected nearly 20,000 acres of unbroken tallgrass prairie in over 25 perpetual conservation easements.

Serious threats to the nation’s bird species highlight the urgency of conservation, says NPLT president John Davidson. According to a recent U.S. Interior Department report, nearly one-third of the nation’s 800 bird species are endangered, threatened, or in significant decline, including 46 grassland breeding birds, many of which depend on native grasslands for survival.

Bluestem now grows on writer Jerry Wilson’s Clay County farm. He has restored 30 acres of prairie and is working on 30 more.

Davidson also emphasizes the value of perennial grasses as”a stable repository of carbon. Grasses store carbon quickly,” he says,”providing an immediate mitigation against global warming.” Besides destroying habitat, plowing prairie releases stored carbon into the atmosphere.

Fortunately, protecting native grasslands can be financially profitable, since high quality grazing and hay production increase ranchers’ income.”The key to prairie conservation,” Davidson says,”is the sustainability of the ranching economy and culture.”

Private conservation and restoration efforts are assisted by federal entities like the Natural Resources Conservation Service, which pays landowners to restore grasses to floodplains and other marginal lands, and the National Forest Service, which 50 years ago set aside three sections of South Dakota’s shortgrass prairie as the Oglala, Fort Pierre and Buffalo Gap National Grasslands. Now Sen. Tim Johnson is taking the prairie protection effort to another level. If enacted, Johnson’s SB 3310 will designate 48,000 acres of the Buffalo Gap National Grasslands between the Badlands and the Black Hills as the first federal grasslands wilderness, in honor of outdoorsman and conservation advocate Tony Dean, who died in 2008. Wilderness designation provides long-term protection of a key ecosystem, while allowing multiple private and public uses to continue.

Noble and important as all these preservation efforts are, they may not be enough to balance the loss of prairie. Saving prairie also requires restoration, work that can occur on a landscape scale only if farmers and ranchers can make a living by replanting prairie while simultaneously freeing themselves and taxpayers from dependency on annual crop subsidies. That is what South Dakota State University ecology professor Carter Johnson and three colleagues hope to demonstrate on the EcoSun Prairie Farm southwest of Brookings.

The 640-acre project is funded by the Sun Grant Center at SDSU, whose mission is biofuels research. But Johnson and his colleagues have a broader mission, to demonstrate the economic and ecological sustainability of a working prairie farm. They leased the land from Bill Lee, curator of the Ag Heritage Museum in Brookings, who restored the big Case and other tractors at the museum and who still lives on the farm.

The farm was typical for the region — most of the wetlands drained, 400 acres in corn and soybeans, the rest in non-native pasture grasses. The Mortenson brothers will bring yearlings from their Stanley County ranch to the cool season pasture in spring, then move them to EcoSun’s native grasses in summer to produce grass-fed beef. The 400 acres of cropland are being restored to the native plants best suited to the particular terrain, hydrology and soil type of each field.

The idea was to develop”strategic mixtures,” diverse native species the conservationists think will have value for seed, pasture, hay or biofuels, and thus to maintain an income stream; if the price of one commodity is low, perhaps another will be up. Using their soil conservation district’s grass drill, researchers planted the first 60 acres of switchgrass and 40 acres of a 15-species bluestem mix in 2008. They also gathered 8,000 plugs of prairie cordgrass to plant three acres of wetland.

That fall professors and students hand harvested seed and started more cordgrass to transplant the next spring. In 2009 they added 30 acres of big bluestem and other warm-season native grasses and flowering forbs and renovated 10 acres of Conservation Reserve land. 2010 saw the largest planting, 150 acres, including 100 acres of mixed grasses and forbs, another 40 acres of renovated CRP and 10 acres of switchgrass. The last hundred acres of cropland will be converted this year, a mixture of at least 100 native species, using seed harvested from The Nature Conservancy’s remnant of unplowed prairie two miles away.

Progress is documented in several ways, including production records, a video taken from an ultra-light airplane, a feature-length documentary film produced by Carter’s sons, Tellef and Tor, and a time lapse video of the 40-acre mixed species field. One shot was taken every 20 minutes from June to September, so each three seconds of video illustrate 24 hours of growth and flowering.

A major economic advantage of perennial prairie grasses is that once established, annual inputs are minimal; typically no tillage, pesticides or fertilizer are required. Some plots may not gross as much as corn, but corn inputs can cost $400 per acre. The group can harvest switchgrass seed worth $3 per pound and four tons per acre of big bluestem hay worth up to $400.

To many farmers, wetlands are a nuisance to be drained. Johnson sees them as an opportunity.”Instead of draining and planting corn, we are planting things where they belong,” he said.”There are no sub-optimal conditions. We are using the water to grow harvestable wetland grasses instead of draining it toward the Gulf of Mexico full of nitrates.”

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has helped fund restoration of the farm’s 35 small basins that had been drained into a 20-acre central wetland. The new managers plugged seasonal wetlands with berms, and by July of a typical year, most are dry. The large wetland, where prairie cordgrass stood 10 feet tall when I visited, also sub-irrigates the surrounding prairie. After cordgrass seed is harvested in November they bale the hay, up to 10 tons per acre. At $100 per ton the cordgrass hay could gross $40,000 from 40 sub-irrigated acres with very little input cost. The professors and research students also laboriously hand collect sedge, whitetop and other wetland plant seeds for sale to Millborn Seeds in Brookings, seeds that can retail for hundreds of dollars per pound.

The other big value of wetland restoration, of course, is wildlife habitat. The first wetland restored in 2008 attracted over a thousand ducks the first season, with lots of nesting.”Typically small wetlands are drained or farmed through or around and have little wildlife value,” Johnson said.”But they can produce a perennial crop of seed, hay or biofuel as well as nesting and wildlife habitat. It’s a win-win for everybody, and it also helps recharge the aquifer.”

Those engaged in prairie preservation and restoration know that the dream of complete natural rehabilitation is out of reach. Some species are gone forever, and some, lacking the deep-rooted hardiness of big bluestem or purple coneflower, hover on the brink of extinction and are difficult to reestablish. But necessity and desire are strong. Along with patience and humility, Mother Nature teaches persistence and hope.

Editor’s Note: Jerry Wilson, retired managing editor of South Dakota Magazine, lives near Vermillion. Prairie restoration is among the subjects in his book Waiting for Coyote’s Call: An Eco-memoir from the Missouri River Bluff, available online or from the S.D. State Historical Society Press. This story is revised from the March/April 2011 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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From the Prairie

Jodene Shaw shared these photos from her ranch near White Owl in central Meade County. Shaw works at home on the ranch as a wife, mother of three kids, mixed media artist and photographer. She also incorporates photographs into collage art that can be purchased in her Etsy shop online.

“My Grandma Marj was a nature photographer and a birdwatcher. She shared both of those passions with me when I was a child. It has only been in the past three years that I have developed my love for art and photography into a business,” Shaw says. “My favorite subjects to photograph are wildflowers, birds, and rural life, and my family. My artwork weaves together my loves for faith in God, the beauty of nature and rural life, words, photography, and finding the sacred in ordinary.” View more of her work here.

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Rediscovering the Spirit of Exploration

By Christian Begeman


On a sweltering August day in 1804, Lewis and Clark led a small group of men from their camp near the Missouri River on a nine mile hike northward into the prairie. Their destination was Spirit Mound, the last hill on the extreme end of Turkey Ridge in southeast South Dakota. In the early 1800s, the names Turkey Ridge and South Dakota were yet to be, however, the Spirit Mound was well known among the Plains Indians in the region. Strange stories about the inhabitants of the hill enticed the explorers to make the journey.

Clark’s journal records,”… and by the different nations of Indians in this quarter is suppose to be the residence of Deavels. That they are in human form with remarkable large heads, and about 18 inches high, that they are very watchful and are arm’d with sharp arrows with which they can kill at a great distance; they are said to kill all persons who are so hardy as to attempt to approach the hill; they state that tradition informs them that many Indians have suffered by these little people. So much do the Maha [Omaha], Soues [Sioux], Ottoes [Otoes] and other neighboring nations believe this fable, that no consideration is sufficient to induce them to approach the hill. (DeVoto 1997, 22).

The expedition did not find the little devils of the legends but they did see a vast array of wildlife and beauty as they gazed in all directions from the top of the hill. Today, Spirit Mound is one of the few remaining physical features on the Upper Missouri River that is readily identifiable as a place Lewis and Clark visited and recorded. Nowadays it is surrounded by fertile farmland and bordered by SD Highway 19 to the east. At the southeast corner of the park, there is a trailhead to the summit with interpretive signs along the way describing not only the historical facts surrounding the mound, but also the recent efforts to restore the prairie at the base of the hill to what it once was.

Clark’s journal went on to reason that one of the factors that may have contributed to the stories surrounding Spirit Mound was that there always seemed to be a large assemblage of birds about the hill. That is still true today. From red-wing blackbirds to dickcissels and warblers to meadowlarks, the place is full of birdsong, especially in the evening.

Spirit Mound is located along one of the main highways of migrating Monarch butterflies. Every year as summer wanes, Jody Moats, a biologist with Adams Nature Preserve, conducts butterfly tagging expeditions in the small tree patch located just below the southeast shoulder of the hill. The butterflies gather to roost just before sunset. Those that are caught are gently tagged on the wing in order to study their journey as well as survival rates. Their final destination is Mexico, where it stays just warm enough in the winter for them to survive and start the whole migration over again.

Wildflowers also abound along the hiking trail to the summit. I’ve hiked the mound numerous times in high summer and always find beautiful colors along the way. From maximilian sunflowers to bright orange butterfly milkweed, it is a great place to take out a macro lens and explore. When you think about it, exploration is what places like this are all about. If you are like me, it is hard not to wonder what the landscape really looked like when Lewis and Clark climbed the hill. Time may have changed the view, but as I wander the hiking trail along the hillside, I can’t help but think that the spirit of exploration still lives on at Spirit Mound.

Christian Begeman grew up in Isabel and now lives in Sioux Falls. When he’s not working at Midcontinent Communications he is often on the road photographing our prettiest spots around the state. Follow Begeman on his blog. To view Christian’s columns featuring other unique spots in South Dakota’s landscape, visit his landmarks page.


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Wild Idea Buffalo Co.

Cheyenne River Ranch buffalo roam freely on thousands of acres of native grasses. The ranch is owned by Dan and Jill O’Brien with a focus on grassland restoration and humanely harvested meat sold via Wild Idea Buffalo Co. Dan has been a wildlife biologist and rancher for over 30 years and is author of Buffalo for the Broken Heart: Restoring Life to a Black Hills Ranch.

Bonny Fleming captured these photos by 4-wheeler this spring. View more of her photos or purchase prints here.

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Chicken Dance

By Rebecca Johnson

Spring has sprung and love is in the air. Well, it’s hormones really and now’s a great time to see the mating dance of the prairie chicken. I asked outdoor photographer Les Voorhis and he said the best place to view them is Fort Pierre National Grasslands.”They have blinds you can reserve on prairie chicken leks and [Fort Pierre National Grasslands has] one of the highest population densities in the state,” Voorhis says.

What is a lek, you say? Oh, it’s just the name for an assembly area where animals carry on their courtship behavior. The area looks no different than the rest of the prairie until the birds get together and start strutting around. Lek can also be used to describe the group of animals courting. During courtship, the males inflate air sacs on the sides of their necks. They also emit a very distinct call that you can hear in this video.

Three blinds are available to use at no charge on the Grasslands’ leks. You can make reservations for viewing times in April and May. The 8-foot long, plywood structures hold up to four adults and have small square windows for viewing and photographing. Blinds aren’t insulated, so dress accordingly for crisp morning air. You’ll want to get to your viewing spot a half hour before sunrise. If you arrive late, the birds will see you, flush, and may not return that day.

Call the Fort Pierre National Grasslands at 605-224-5517 to secure your spot. They’ll send a map so you know where you’re going. Ruben Mares, Wildlife Biologist with the Fort Pierre National Grasslands, recommends finding the blind the day before your viewing time. It can be hard to locate before the sun comes up. Mares says if all three blinds are full there are still several places people can view the birds from a distance. Just call the Grasslands office and they will recommend locations.

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Music to My Ears

Does anyone else think this is lovely? It’s the sound of chorus frogs and other wildlife at the EcoSun Prairie Farmnear Colman. The farm was established in 2007 with the “purpose of demonstrating how to make a sustained and earned living from restored grassland and grass products while protecting and enhancing the natural environment.”

At the center of their efforts is restoring tall grass prairie and wetland grasses. By the sound of this video, some small creatures are happy with their efforts.

Join a public tour of EcoSun Prairie Farms on July 15. Visit this page for more information.