Birdsong and Prairie Smoke: abundant, wild and perennial.

An afternoon and an evening at Zumwalt Prairie Preserve

I cannot possibly guess what will be food for you, your soul and eyes—your ears, of a given morning or evening. I make that mistake sometimes, trying to guess, but it only really attests to my own stubborn foolishness, my willingness to lead myself astray.

Zumwalt Prairie Preserve: the view from Patti’s Trail. 06-03-3024: 4:18:38 PM. It had rained steadily from late afternoon, the day before, through the night and until nearly noon. Four hours later, with the tail end of the front that had moved through still evident in the skies above, the surface of the ground was dry enough that one could kneel without dampening the knees of one’s pants.

I forgive myself, of course. That, at least I’ve learned to do.

Well, …sometimes. Most of the time.

It does not seem wrong to want to be a helper. And it is help I’m trying to sort out. It’s just that nothing really works that way…

There were several kinds of wildflower in bloom across that wide expanse, but none so prevalent, so abundant as Prairie Smoke, aka, Old Man’s Whiskers (Geum triflorum). The plants were beautiful and their trios of buds were fully formed, but only the earliest, overachievers had opened and begun to wave their irresistible, pink, feathery seed heads in the gusting, prairie winds.

I can no more be the reliably helpful thing that will calm or inspire, or give hope to someone else on any given day than a canyon wren can choose to sing one of his spiraling, echoey, desert canyon songs just for me.

He cannot even imagine me, let alone divine what I might be needing just now. My needs never enter into his singing …unless my near proximity convinces him not to sing at all.

Standing height offered a more expansive point of view, but it seemed too removed, too impersonal to really get a feel for the plant’s personality and its relationship with the unending sky, above.

So the secret to telling a good story grows out of love…

…love for the story. And love for oneself as its teller.

Late afternoon temperatures were warm enough to get by comfortably with a light jacket but the wind was relentless. Constant movement in big, sudden bursts. So rather than resent the wind for what it would not allow me to capture, I tried instead to dance with it, slowing down my shutter as far as I dared so that my pictures might record its tango with the land, that fluid movement and the ruddy blur of color and light within a field of green. The results feel true to me and offer a better sense of this prairie on that afternoon than any perfectly frozen moment ever could. “Gotta dance with the one what brung ya…’”

And any good that proceeds from the act itself, from all those thoughts and decisions about commas and nuanced word choices, about image exposure and composition, they feed the story and that feeds the story’s teller.

That readers, listeners, viewers are able to tap into the results, that they—that we—can feel it so intensely, swell with pride or be cut by its sadness is tribute to the teller’s loyalty to the story, not their loyalty to us. Our wonder, if we have any toward it, is our own dance with life. We must prepare our own hearts to be torn by their sadness, healed by their wonder. We must whisper our ‘yes’, then make our choice. It is we who set aside time. We who read. Who listen. Who gaze.

We who daydream.

It will likely take a minute to notice the Prairie Smoke near the bottom, center of this picture, but it’s there. Actually, it’s present, somewhere in each picture I’ve included here. That’s such an essential part of this story. But here, too much else is just begging to be taken in and considered to notice it right off. This is the view after hiking the Canyon Vista Trail. You are looking down into the junction of the Trail Creek and Imnaha River drainages.

I went ‘walkabout’ recently, journeying to places, some familiar and some new in search of things loved and fascinating, and in most cases, bloody gorgeous.

I always intended to share what I encountered and had a hunch that some of them…and some of you would meet, perhaps for the first time and feel a kinship, maybe even fall in love in bits and pieces.

Lady’s Slippers and landscapes. Birdsongs and Prairie Smoke. Canyons and curvaceous two-lanes. In this post we’re only mostly considering those middle two. And even then Substack tells me it’s too much to fit in an email, maybe too much for one visual meal.

I trust you to peel away when you’ve had your fill.

ubiquitous, adjective US/juːˈbɪk.wə.t̬əs/ : seeming to be everywhere. Geum triflorum, aka ‘Prairie Smoke.’ It was absolutely everywhere I looked, and that was a very, very good thing. Pictured here, a look back toward the wider prairie from somewhere near the crest of the Canyon Vista Trail.

Despite the volume and sometimes near repetition of images, I’ve kept some with subtle differences, inviting you to ponder the ‘why,’ of that, knowing that I am usually pretty careful to select the strongest of the lot to stand for all of them. Conclusions are different critters than the unfolding process of discovery and exploration, and in this case that unfolding seemed a part of the story that needed telling too, how a person shows up in a new place and begins to make sense of it, begins trying to take it all in.

You may or may not get that. I’m ok with it, either way.

We had between four and five hours, from arrival to sunset. It’s a big place and there is much to see. No way to take it all in in that short amount of time. So I asked myself, what is essential and what, impossible to ignore? What must be included to give an essential glimpse, a palpable sense of this prairie wonderland on this one, early June day? There was that unending sky, there was the wind, there was the play of light upon the undulating landscape …and there was more Prairie Smoke than I had ever seen in one place, ever. So those few essentials became my focus…

There is a quietness to some places that needs time and several looks, and long, uninterrupted listens to begin to fathom. This was one of those places. I’m still thinking about it. Still a little lost. Its power still washes over me in waves.

…as the sun begins to set and the temperatures begin to drop, the wind remains.

A wider view looking northwest, across the prairie just before sunset.

And when the sun began to make its ever-so-elegant exit, I swear the place grew.

Looking to the north, letting the vastness and serenity bathe my eyes, sink into my bones as shadows overtake the land. The meadowlarks are still singing.

Imagine it. Powerful enough to drop you to your knees in late afternoon sun, all those fluffy, racing clouds, those swaying grasses and nodding flower buds… But bigger yet as the shadows slowly bled into one another and the palette shifted toward cool, for now there was space between the spaces, somehow.

Was that me? Or was this …physics?

Looking to the south. Remnants of the storm front remain on every vista.

…or was it something more akin to magic, when the universe spins round and shows a different face? Sometimes if you squint just right you may glimpse another world between the slats. It felt like that, but without any need to squint. Eyes wide open, pupils dilating to accommodate the deepening gloam, and yet, a perceptible weight,

…lifting as well.

Looking east, toward Hell’s Canyon and the Seven Devils mountains from a wildflower’s point of view, trying to take in this timeless conversation between land and sky.

Pull back just a bit and raise the camera a bit higher above the grasses. Now you can see the remnants of the storm stacked up along the eastern horizon, catching the sun’s last rays, trying to match the impossibly beautiful color of all those rhizomatous, Prairie Smoke creatures dotting this landscape, waving their three-flowered arms above them like exultant hippy girls at a Lilith Fair concert in the chill, swirling breezes.

…if I were able to see this land, be a part of this conversation in the way that a meadowlark does, winging and tilting just above the grasses, buffeted by staccato breezes, looking for one last grasshopper before hunkering down for the night within a clump of fescue, or a patch of Old Man’s Whiskers.

And so night begins to settle in on this vast, quiet, enchanted place where I have never once trod, or crawled on hands and knees, or listened, or whispered ever before, save in my dreams…

where, like some of you, 

                                             I also can…   

                                                                   f l y. . .

                Prairie Smoke.  Old Man’s Whiskers.  Purple Avens. Geum triflorum.
                                                All that and a wide open prairie.