Visible and invisible forms of love
Photos by Chuck Hoffman + Peg Carlson-Hoffman © Genesis+Art
Bluestem Prairie Scientific and Natural Area
Glyndon, Minnesota
April is a wild weather month in Minnesota with temperatures swinging from the low 20’s to the 70’s, often in one day. It has snowed at least 9 of the last 24 days. There were flurries last night and they are predicted again next Tuesday. This accounts for the enormous range of outdoor coats and layers that hang on hooks by the front door of the lake house that we currently inhabit. Chuck and I visited the Bluestem Prairie for Earth Day. The sun was shining and the temperature was 60 degrees, but the blustery wind was out of the Northwest and it felt cold.
The wind in the western part of the state is relentless and it was so when we were in Moorhead Fargo getting my new windshield birthday present. (Apparently, two days after my birthday I am still ruminating on that.) We visited while we waited the 4 hours as my birthday windshield was being installed. The spring winds at Bluestem Prairie gusted and roared across the flatlands and shoreline ridges left by Glacial Lake Agassiz. Lake Agassiz was an enormous glacial lake in central North America. Fed by glacial melt water at the end of the last glacial period, its area was larger than all of the modern Great Lakes combined. I think we can thank those great inland glaciers for helping make Minnesota flatter than Kansas. These huge expanses of flat earth and sky are such a drastic change from our life in the Cascades and her dramatic vistas. Here, my friend Barb boasts, you can see the curve of the earth.
As of Earth Day, the wildflowers had yet to bloom on the Bluestem Prairie, but Chuck and I watched several hawks soaring in the wind over the grasses looking for their lunch, and saw a pheasant pop out of the grass and take to the air. This huge expanse of natural prairie supports an amazing ecosystem of over 400 species, many of them rare. The Nature Conservancy has maintained it since 1975.
Bluestem is one of the most significant northern tallgrass prairie sites in the nation. Like a set of nested cups, the 1,310-acre Scientific Natural Area lies within the 6,568+ acre Bluestem Preserve owned by The Nature Conservancy, itself within a 23,600+ acre critical core area identified in the state's Prairie Conservation Plan.
We were there 2 hours before we saw another human. Juneve McGivers, who is in her 80’s, stopped by and asked us if we came often. We told her it was our first visit and she told us how she and her husband, along with about 20 other couples and friends spent the nineteen seventies and eighties documenting species, removing invasives, and living on the land, helping to create the scientific natural area. They were all volunteers. Her husband died years ago and wanted his ashes scattered on the prairie. Juneve comes regularly to visit her wildflowers, birds and butterflies. I sense she also comes here to connect with her soul where her husband always awaits her return. In the mystery of Bluestem Prairie, Juneve has learned acquaintance with the visible and invisible forms of love.
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