Was it me that startled the deer? I had stopped on the crest of the hill that was no doubt formed over time as perhaps an island eddy of the Glacial River Warren. Over the years I’ve stopped here numerous times to take in the long view of the mile or so long ravine. That is how it is known around here. The Ravine.

Ravines are huge features of the Minnesota River Valley, which was created by the long ago glacial river. Streams from gurgling trickles to actual rivers have cut through the depths of the prairie all along the river, from the headwaters to the confluence with the Mississippi. We have many right here in the headwaters and it seems they all have a unique characteristics about them. Like this one with the startled deer.

At the foot of the ravine is a huge wetland, held steady by a man-made, rock-filled earthen dam. This is where I saw the deer. As I crested the road at the top of the hill for a view I’ve loved since moving just up the road, I watched as the deer bounded toward what had been a sheet of ice throughout the winter. A stilled grayish surface still looked like ice then in early April, and the frightened deer quickly sank from view through the grayed slush. Only momentarily, for an instant later it’s head broke through the surface. 

Perhaps the saving grace was the hollowed body hair that provided buoyancy as the deer kicked itself forward in swimming gestures. I made several shots as it struggled toward the distant bank, eventually gaining traction as it reached an underwater foothold to push itself forward to eventually pull itself from the icy waters to the shore. Once afoot it bounded up the steep slope of the ravine and away from its perceived danger. An early morning drama so totally unexpected.

While this ravine is closest to Listening Stones Farm, being about two miles due south, it is also one of the longer ones in this area. On it’s southern bank are at least two small oak savannas, subjects of dozens of images. It stretches through the prairie for more than a mile further east, where another gravel road was bermed across its depths. 

Due west about five miles from my land is another favorite ravine, though more densely covered with trees. It’s a prime jewel of beauty come autumn as the deciduous trees explode with colors of the season. At the bottom is an abandoned farm site, for the remnant house and outbuildings are collapsed and weathered. From various positions above the ravine I’ve made some nice images through the years across the seasons. 

One Sunday afternoon a friend whose eyes gleam at the sight of a minimum maintenance road drove me and our dogs into the depth of this ravine where besides the remains of the long abandoned farm site is a meandering stream flowing from springs and runoff from an enclosed and perhaps self-contained watershed. An absentee landowner comes up for the deer season to camp and hunt, but otherwise the old farm site is like the buildings. Abandoned. 

Up the “river road” a few miles is the Bonanza Education Center, the northern “half” of Big Stone Lake State Park. Among the beautiful features are at least two trails, although there is an interconnecting path between the two. The northern trail meanders down a steep hillside into a beautiful wooded ravine with once again, a rivulet of a stream fed by spring waters. I often come here to sit on a boardwalk bridge to do some forest bathing, a meditative exercise that is enhanced by the sounds of water bubbling over and through the rocks and stones. One can easily become mentally “lost” in a matter of moments.

The other major trail is alongside Big Stone Lake, and by my count offers several deep, wooded ravines, few of which trickles through thanks to springs higher up the slope. Bonanza offers two differing ecosystems … a hillside prairie that covers the long ago left behind bank of the Glacial River Warren which hosts more than a dozen ravines of varying depths, each cutting through the steep bank and each sporting small oak savannas in the shaded areas. These drain across the divisionary gravel road into the lakeside wooded savanna, a dense woodland that stretches along the lake for miles beyond the park boundaries in either direction. 

Further downriver, once you’ve passed the “chain of lakes” of the Minnesota River below the Churchill Dam at the foot of Lac qui Parle Lake, the wooded banks of the glacial and current rivers contain countless ravines. Some cut by small creeks along with others formed by actual tributaries of the Minnesota. One of my favorite and most picturesque was created by Hawk Creek once it passes through the densely farmed, three-county prairie land where it’s an official “government ditch” and remains “wild” just before US 212. After the bridge, though, it becomes a deep and lonesome canyon of a ravine stretching for miles and features a rock strewn river than meanders through a deep, enclosed ravine down to the confluence of the Minnesota River. 

What a beautiful paddling river, with nearly continuous paddable rapids with either steep earthen walls or deep woods on either side for the full ride. It reminds one of a box canyon, and years ago there was an political effort to place a dam near the foot of Hawk Creek that would have created a long and deep lake. Fortunately those efforts died after awhile. With the long history of ignoring soil-saving farming practices, such a lake would be shallowed by now thanks to erosive siltation which has already affected and altered the flow of the Minnesota River just past the confluence … siltation that has already blocked some of the more minor streams coming off the highland prairie. 

Indeed, this erosive action over the years have created all of the ravines, action that began with the melting of the glacier and continues now some 10,000 or so years later. 

I sort of look at natural history development here in the prairie much as I do the incredible formations in the Utah Canyonlands, for example, and wonder what is going on now in our world (besides our planet’s own death due to wanton global warming issues) that will show up a millennia or two from now. Those minute increments of change happening a millimeter or less per year, accumulatively year after year.

In this short passage of time I have on earth I’ll likely be stopping on the hill near The Ravine in the dawnish mornings, or take a hike or forest bath in the ravines over in Bonanza, fulfilling my quest for beauty be it in God’s great colorful skies or with internal meditation. I find myself addicted to both. Easing back with my eyes closed in the depth of that far north ravine, listening to the water trickle through the rocks and stones, I sometimes think of Keats, who may have said it best: “ … the moving waters at their priestlike task … “

Ravines. What is there not to like?