Describing the Prairie

Beautiful, harsh, breathtaking, difficult, inspiring. What do these words describe? The prairie.

With the arrival of spring, bright yellow sweet peas begin to open their petals to the sun, followed by bluebells covering the prairie with beauty and color. Not long behind, the cactus starts flowering, adding their brilliant colors to the palette.

An abundance of life can be found on the prairie. Throughout the day and into the night you can hear one symphony after another.

Life on the prairie presents challenges that take courage and strength to survive. Yet, once a challenge is met and overcome, a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction is felt.

Can you imagine what a homesteading family’s first sight and thoughts of where they would build their new home was like? Coming from an area where trees never left a person’s sight, the barren expanse of the prairie must have been overwhelming. No roads could be found through the tall grass. Every inch of the newly-turned earth that would be planted to wheat and oats had to be fought for.

Fences had to be built to keep livestock from wandering off. Driving posts into the hard ground took every ounce of the homesteader’s strength.

They were often overwhelmed by exhaustion from their daily battle with prairie. Yet, when they saw the emerald fields of their first crops, they had just cause for rejoicing.

Storms and drought that destroyed crops, loneliness, a feeling of isolation, seeing acre upon acre of grazing and crops consumed by wildfires, all combined at times to be more than some homesteaders could stand. So they’d pack up what they could of their belongings and leave. Livestock that couldn’t be sold were turned loose to forage on their own. Houses and barns, as well as farm equipment, were left to slowly return to the earth.

Those who refused to give in were richly rewarded for their days and nights of seemingly unending weariness. When they felt they could not struggle on for one more day, they often found a peace and renewed strength as they walked across the prairie. For the prairie has a way of seeping into a person’s being and making them fall in love with it.

At a yard sale some years ago, I discovered a small picture made of dried prairie wildflowers and a piece of linen with these words on it -- “Anyone can love a mountain. It takes a soul to love the prairie.”

How true that is.