I love the fall. Cooler nights and cold air trickling in through the window. I love leaving Hill City in the dark, driving to Rapid as the sun rises. The candy-striped sunrises. The moon following us on the drive.
The cows wait for us in the morning light at our Cedar Pass field sight.
Bouteloua curtipendula (sideoats gramma) seed heads adorn the prairie.
In the prairie, the green is going. Everything is crunchy and sharp. My roomies and I are covered with little scratches from sweet clover stems and prairie dust. Overnight, like a field coming into a ghostly bloom, spider webs adorn the tops of dead standing stalks, or tunnel into the ground. The city of rodent and snake tunnels built into the litter layer is revealed, like a map of a tiny subway system. And we keep counting plants! Squinting even closer at their crispy, curled features, learning to identify them by their dying traits- Nasella viridula goes red on the stem. Bouteloua gracilis requires an intimate examination of multiple ligules.
The story of the prairie continues to reveal itself in the plants at this time of year. Which is, of course, exactly what we’re researching here. But it is striking to me that as everything fades into beige, the tiny shoots of green that persist, as well as the underground plant structures, have so much to tell us about how these grasses fared over the summer and how they are preparing for the time ahead. The grasses offer lessons to us as humans… How to conserve your resources through a hot summer, how to take advantage of late-season warmth, how to work together with your neighbors to survive the climate crisis.
Late season vine. Tribulus terrestris
Late season aster. Symphyotrichum falcatum.
I’m struck by the love present in our work. Returning to the same individual culms of grass every month since April. Recounting the same patch of grass 6 times over 6 months. Looking at plot maps and seeing every treatment that our team or last year’s team performed at this very spot. Scribbling our details, notes, and nuances in the margins for next year’s crew, so that they can continue to tell the story. How Jackie’s position allows her to bring seasonal techs together on this patch of South Dakota prairie to frolic and learn and record small parts of this great big tragic love story between the plants and the planet and the changing world.
These past few weeks, soil has been on my mind. Blowing in through my ears, landing in the crevices of my brain. I’m hoping it’ll fertilize my mind into feeling grounded, encourage some new growth. Inevitably, I’m always drawn to soil when in need of grounding. I appreciate how literal it is, to be connected to the Earth, dirt under my nails, nibbling on roots. And I can get lost in the wonder of it all when I consider soil, how it nourishes us, brimming with life and mystery, a hidden world under our feet, supporting us as the foundation of life.
This last month, our grasslands research has included preparing bud core samples that my boss harvested for analysis. The samples start as chunks of the earth- foot high grass culms and their dense, clayey root bundles. We hold the dried root bundles under the blast of the hose, breaking off chunks of clay, combing out rhizomes and fine roots the way you’d comb out hair or wash a dog. The reveal is beautiful. There’s an immediate recognition and appreciation that finally you’re seeing the whole plant. It’s like the floor washed away and you can see all the pipes and mechanics and innerworkings of your city. Like you can finally really understand where it all comes from. Washing the soil from Pascopyrum smithii’s below ground structures reveals a story, and our boss, Jackie, translates it for us. This is her language, and she tells the story with familiarity and adoration.
“Here is last years’ culm, and here it decided to put up a new shoot! I predict that drought will have less impact on the number of buds, but more so on their development and energy invested by the plant.”
She shows us three years’ generations of grass shoots, spaced neatly along the rhizome, the newest looking young and fresh, the oldest greying and soft. From above ground, you could never translate this familial story, but understanding roots entirely changes the way I see the prairie.
The metaphors are enough for me to get lost in. When I was in undergrad, I tattooed “as above, so below around my kneecap. Soil exemplified this for me. Ecology and geology lessons left me reeling, the interconnectedness of it all…the rocks, the soil, the plants. Nourishing, growing, dying, returning. The cycles, all the cycles… inducing a mania over all the love pouring from rocks. To me, learning the ways in which soil was alive was reflected in community structure, resilience, and cooperation, and a thread of love throughout all levels of life. It taught me about foundations, being grounded, and about putting down roots.
“The vastness of the grasslands inspires the openness of spirit”…
This seductive, ecophilic line echoes through my mind every time I lift my head from my work. Laying on my tummy, eyes immersed in the damp understory of the prairie, the sudden panorama of the grasslands stretching for miles around me keeps catching me off guard. At the horizon, Paha Sapa (the Black Hills) border our Hay Canyon research site, and the sedimentary formations of Mako Sica (the Badlands) border Cedar Pass. The effect of this setting on the nervous system is immense- I remember to breathe, I’m filled with gratitude, I feel myself smile. My coworkers and I echo to one another, “it is so beautiful here….”
Paha Sapa (the Black Hills) border the horizon of the Hay Canyon research site in Buffalo Gap National Grasslands. The mixed-short-grass prairie is dominated by yellow sweet clover (Melilotus officinalis).
I’ve thought a lot about the experience of wonder in everyday life while working here. Wonder in the everyday has been a growing theme for me over the last five years exploring the shores of Gitchi Gami (Lake Superior), and now living in Paha Sapa. Growing up, before I realized I could make a career in the outdoors, such experiences of wonder were novel. Visiting Paha Sapa and Mako Sica as a pre-teen with my family came in the form of a packaged vacation experience, complete with Mt. Rushmore and Devil’s Tower voyeurism and starkly colonial narratives. These trips of course contained stunning views and showcased feats of human and nature’s ingenuity, but always ended with a return to the ugly, concrete smothered suburbs of home, and the immersive wonders of nature would soon fall from my mind.
This last week, working solo in the field for 7 hours a day snipping and sorting grass culms, I listened to the audiobook of “The Body Keeps the Score” by B. van der Kolk, M.D. This book is about how trauma shapes our brains and bodies. Van der Kolk explains the disassociation that defines trauma; how our brain’s alarm systems become overwhelmed by incomprehensible stress, beyond our range of biological tolerance, resulting in permanent changes to our physiological functions. The experience of wonder is fascinating to compare- Similarly to trauma, wonder occurs when our experience is beyond what our brains can tolerate and what our minds have frameworks for. Both trauma and wonder occur as an involuntary surrender to incomprehensible experience. Neuroscience explains how both states stimulate the vagus nerve and the same areas of the brain, but in different ways; the effects on the body and spirit seem to be opposite.
Trauma creates a constant sense of danger and helplessness, trapping us in an over-active self-preservation mode that weakens our immune systems and internal functioning. It transforms our worlds into small, self-centered ones where we are in opposition to all. Wonder also transforms the way we see ourselves, making us small, but this occurs in a quiet, humble way. We feel small because the world around us is so grand, mysterious, and deliciously incomprehensible. We are struck by the sense that we are a tiny yet integral part of a greater whole. This connection to the Other and the All fosters peace within our minds and bodies, makes connection to others not only possible, but a driving and undeniable force of life. I see myself reflected in each flower, insect, lichen, cloud, and breeze.
Working outdoors and in ecological fields gifts me with wonder daily, though this is something I’ve had to work hard to access. Studies show that one of the prime ways humans experience wonder is in the moral beauty of others. Growing up, the philosophy of life on earth was presented to me in a “man vs. nature” way, the moral ugliness of which fostered misanthropy. I saw all the ways we interacted with nature as destructive and extractive, as if our role on this planet was antagonistic and hopeless. But education and commitment to ecological study requires in-depth understandings of land-management policy and guiding moral philosophies across time and different cultures. It reveals the multitudes of ways humans have co-existed with and stewarded this planet and our fundamental connection and roles in our home ecosystems.
We work with two Doctors of plant science. I collect such mentors gratefully, learning about how to exist sustainably in this work and taking note of the inspirations and drive of different personalities committed to land stewardship. The quiet confidence and gratitude in one another’s work is reassuring. Working along these professionals is an important reminder that as individuals and as a species, humans have always found life-sustaining meaning and relation to the plants around us. We are no less dependent on them physically and spiritually today than our ancestors were. The moral beauty of these understandings, guided largely by Indigenous wisdom, yet present in all humans, guides my daily experience and often leaves me at a loss for words- pure awe in the wonder of it all.
