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.

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.

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.