Our planning and packing for our annual jaunt from Listening Stones Farm to our cabin near Ely is gearing up. Pork ribs are smoked, and we’re thinking of dinners to share, of our favorite fishing spots, of which books to pack, and perhaps even wondering what new memories we’ll be bringing home with us.

Some 28 years ago our first trip was made to Kawishiwi Lodge & Outfitters, a rustic collection of cabins located on a National Forest cove near the entry point of Lake One in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. Our first trip down that long, single-lane gravel road was certainly adventurous as we kept a lookout for the buildings pictured in an obscure brochure we had picked up at an outdoors sports show months earlier.

Following a duck in the morning haze.

Further up the drive, past what was then a fresh clear cutting of timber that in years since has regrown, was a sawmill. “You sure this is the place?” asked my wife, Sharon. We chose this as a compromise between a quest for a wilderness experience and convenience due to our oldest son, Jacob, because of his physical and mental disabilities. He was then eight years old, and his brother, Aaron, was three. To prepare for the trip we had listened to a wilderness tape featuring loon calls, which Aaron had somehow voice perfected. We brought along a babysitter who would watch the boys on the few nights Sharon and I would take off into the wilderness with a camping permit.

While unpacking our gear from the car into the cabin that first afternoon, I stopped for a few moments on the weathered, wooden dock to cast a fly on the fiberglass fly rod I had bought as a teenager some 20 years earlier. As I retrieved the fly, a denizen of the deep, a northern pike with a head the size of a mature alligator, suddenly eased in behind the fly. In my panic, and subsequent casting, my old rod snapped just above the handle. Such was our introduction to Lake One, Kawishiwi Lodge & Outfitters, and the BWCA!

Sunrise on a quiet morning.

Over those years we stayed in four or five of the cabins around the lake. In time we would settle into Cabin One … and we renew it every year. As transplanted Minnesotans this has become our “lake cabin” complete with an old, native lumber dock on a channel that meanders through the granite outcrops between Lake One and shallow bays toward the entry point. It was off this dock that we spread Sharon’s ashes after her unexpected and untimely death a few years ago, making this more than just a summer lake cabin.

Rebecca and I were only a few weeks into our relationship when she joined us for the first trip up after Sharon’s death. We’ll again be joined by my cousins, Mick and Nancy Burke. Two of their three children have come up over the years, as have many of our exchange students. Luise Hille, of Germany, has been here for two different weeks over the years, and when her parents were last in the States, their whole family came for a stay across the lake in one of the newer cabins. I was able to join them for a few days of their stay, which meant I was able to stay and fish twice within two months that year. Life doesn’t get much better than that!

When not in the kayak or canoe, we spend time on the airy porch reading and visiting.

Oh, the memories. Two years running a group of pickers rented a row of three of the cabins. Each evening they gathered around a fire pit and played well into the darkness. One year the woman scientist who broke the Alar pesticide study on Washington apples stayed with her husband and boys in the adjoining cabin. Aaron and her boys played in the outcrops behind the cabins all week long. We even met a former high school classmate of my brother from back in Missouri. There was the summer when Sharon came shortly after her knee operation and couldn’t canoe, so the manager and his brother … Mike and Jim … took us to a motor lake so she could go fishing. We caught enough for a shore lunch. A few nights later the boys came knocking. “We’re taking John and going fishing,” said Mike. They placed me in the “king’s seat” and paddled out into the lake, where as we were jigging for walleyes and sipping “illegal” beer a sudden and incredible display of Northern Lights began dancing in the sky. Mike and Jim, and their “shady” helper, Diamond, are long gone, and the son of the dentist who owned the place, Frank Udovich, and his wife, Nicole, took over and have made some subtle yet remarkable improvements on all of the cabins, and they have significantly increased the outfitting side of the business.

A Pagammi Creek bluegill.

Here was where Mick caught his first smallie, a mighty three pounder. Ah, those moments fishing are always fine. One dusky evening we were paddling back to the cabin when a huge beaver swam beneath the canoe, keeping pace with us. At the other end of the lake, Pagammi Creek has provided us with many bigger-than-a-whole-hand bluegill and some scrumptious shore lunches on a nearby rocky island that served as escapes for Aaron when a canoe became too confining. Pagammi was where a fire started on the Saturday we were packing out two summers ago, a fire apparently started by lightning that burned thousands of acres and put a scare into the Ely community before finally being controlled. Last year a natural succession had already greened the hillsides, and the bluegill hungrily grabbed a Gill Buster tipped with a leech as my kayak was put adrift by the constant wind.

We’ve shared dinners and campfires along with many nights around the big table as son Jake rolls the dice for another game of Zilch. Since the remodeling, the breezy porch, now with floor to ceiling screens to abate the mosquitoes, welcomes all of us readers, and in the heat of the day, the dock and lake beckons us as swimmers. In all directions the wilderness beckons, and the canoes, kayaks and fishing rods are always steps away.

Sunsets are wonderful here, too.

Nowadays, after all these years, I’ll sometimes simply slip out before breakfast … even before the sun rises … in a kayak with my fly-rod and camera, paddling around the shallow bays casting for smallmouth and bluegill. Sometimes I actually go for the fishing. Other times it is simply for reflection and reminiscence. Remembering family and friends we have shared time with here over the years, those good years with Sharon before her depression became so overwhelming, and since her death, the times with Rebecca and our cousins, the Burkes. Once again I can hear Kawishiwi calling. Our trips have become like those penciled height markings on a door jam; each darkened line marking memories of my mature years.

A yearling White Tail walks through our dominate yellow prairie.

With a nice little breeze tickling our prairie the other evening, I smothered myself in DEET and took my camera into the our fledgling wild and native grasses and forbs. Once inside the grassy “jungle” a realization hit rather quickly (besides the mosquitoes that were seemingly unimpressed by the supposed deterrent): We are immersed in a sea of yellow! Yellow Cone Flowers. Yellow Wild Sunflowers. yellow this and yellow that. Every direction, all 360 degrees of them, are beaming with yellow.

Browsing through my recent archives of images from our eight acres of prairie starting from about a month ago, yellow has been a dominate theme. Not just with the flowers, either, for Rebecca’s garden was flush with yellow warblers for awhile and the gold finches, which are really more yellow than gold, are constant visitors to the feeders and tree branches around our solarium. Out in the prairie, almost every blooming forb to date is some form of yellow. Impressively, the yellow comes at you from all angles, shapes, sizes and hue. Corporate Kodak would be impressed!

Yellow, yellow .. everywhere is yellow!

As much as yellow is welcomed, we are quite pleased when we see a few native Purple Prairie Clover heads sticking up here and there, which have added some charm and variety. We are in desperate search for other differing colors. Rebecca found a couple of lavenderlish Bee Balms blooming, and in a corner by her garden, her Cardinal Plant is showing off some vividly red blossoms. Otherwise, it’s all yellow … with the exception of the green, warm season native prairie grasses.

The following morning Rebecca suggested we go on yet another hike through the prairie. We make a trek almost daily. This time it was upstairs first for a long sleeved white tee-shirt and long pants … anything to keep the mosquitoes at bay. With the sordid heat and a naked sun pounding down on us, we were fortunate that the pesky pests were snuggled in tightly to the bases of the plants. We started at the garden and made a big wide looping circle around the house and grove before coming back in through the road ditch to the driveway. In that “awkward” portion of the grove we also checked on three of our elm tree plantings and found they are doing quite well. I’ve not looked them since many of the bushes and trees in that area, including two other elms, were destroyed by a skunk or coon digging in after the smelly fish-based fertilizer we used. The animal was quite efficient in digging out and laying the bare root plantings at the edges of the holes as it went clear to the base in search of a dead fish.

Side Oat Grama is emerging, and is seen here with a couple of Native Purple Clover.

If given a report card on our tree and shrub plantings we would come out looking quite well. Besides those few we lost to the smelly fertilizer, our only other losses included the four grape vines and one of the plum trees in the orchard. All to standing water after the days upon days of rain. All the other trees and shrubs seem to be doing well thanks to those same rains where we had better drainage. Rebecca’s garden and the other shrubs and trees we planted last year are doing well … with exception of the one apple tree in the yard that our resident white-tailed buck debarked scratching velvet from his stately rack last fall.

Then there is our prairie, all eight acres of it, all awash in bright yellows amidst the stark greens of the native prairie grasses. My goal on our walk on this morning was simple: to find anything out there to photograph beyond yellow.

We were very hopeful of finding more that the two or three Bee Balm plants, and yes, we found many clumps of the Purple Prairie Clover and a few of the white variety. Both were far from being considered dominant.

Some of the earlier forbs have begun to wither and head into dormancy as new successions come forth in this constant march of summer. Since this is our first real summer when the prairie looks like, well, a prairie, it will mature and change with time and climate conditions. Although we have been  dropping new sneaked wild forb seeds here and there, and even wedging in a few of our favorite forbs such as the Cardinal Plant and a flat of Prairie Smoke, we may be a year or two away from seeing any results.

Almost coral-like, this purplish plant going into dormancy stood out simply because of the color.

Years ago our dear friend and prairie maven, Kylene Olson, executive director of the Chippewa River Watershed Project, told me to never assume that a prairie will look the same two years in a row. With that in mind, perhaps we should simply enjoy our bright sea of prairie yellows without complaint, for rarely is a color so warming to the soul. How can one maintain even a hint of madness with such gay day brighteners all around?

An overview of the prairie shows patches of grass and forbs. It certainly is far from being a mature prairie.

Beau Peterson, from the NRCS, was out Monday morning for a walk over our prairie, then asked if he could use our land as an example to show others who might be inspired to go native or who are considering converting commodity land into CRP. We were equally humbled, honored and pleased.

This is my second prairie planting, although the first might be excused since it was only a small, backyard native garden. This one covers eight acres of good farming ground with what Rebecca calls “good seed stock” for when nature eventually reclaims the prairie.

We have some patches of willowy foxtail, of which we have differing opinions.

We put a call into Beau because neither of us could find one of the prime grasses in our mix, Side-Oats Grama, along with other native plants we were expecting. About two steps into the prairie Beau stopped and pointed to a sliver-thin stem of hiding Side-Oats and explained that it was one of the later grasses to emerge. He thought the prairie was coming along quite nicely.

He should have been here a year ago when pigweed and lambsquarter dominated our eight acres. We took our Cub Cadet to the prairie twice, and Beau’s predecessor brought in a prairie-friendly farmer with a brush hog to top off the pigweed as it was coming into the seed stage. After this cutting some patches of grass were emerging in places, and much to our surprise, we were told that the prairie was coming along nicely. Apparently it takes some practice to read a prairie.

Purple wild clover peaks up here and there for a beautiful contrast.

Our experience here hasn’t been radically different than it was in my backyard planting. Late that fall years ago we received plugs of grasses and forbs and frantically went to work planting what we could. We were told that establishing grasses first was key in providing a base or foundation, so those plugs went in first. Starting early one morning I worked diligently to dig them in before a forecasted blizzard was expected. By mid afternoon I was scraping away snow to dig in the last plugs of Bluestem, Indian Grass and Side-Oats Grama … and none of the forbs were even touched. Fortunately Sally Finzel, of Morning Sky Greenery, said she would overwinter the plugs if I brought them back to Morris.

The following spring weeds completely overwhelmed the garden, which was thoroughly discouraging. Toward the middle of June she called and asked if I was ever going to come for my seedlings. “Why? The garden is shot. Pigweed has taken it over.” Sally encouraged me to come for them regardless, finally using a very sound economic argument: “It’s your money.”

We love these “little dancers.”

After returning with the forbs, I took a deep breath and took a hand spade to the weeds and discovered something rather interesting — beneath that pigweed canopy was a very healthy stand of prairie grasses — not unlike what we have experienced here. Two very long, hot and humid days later, the wilting weeds were piled to the side and all the forbs were planted save for five wild onion plugs. They would go in later since they continued to grow and eventually bloomed right in the seed tray.

This beauty dominated the prairie in the early succession.

That little garden also offered some interesting obervations about prairies: Never expect the same look two years in a row, since different conditions may favor different plants, and that prairies mature differently; burning a prairie will encourage a bountiful flush especially in the first year; and, that native prairies offer very interesting moments in their cycles of life, presenting an ever-changing profile through the seasons, so keeping a camera handy is paramount.

“Mexican hats” or yellow coneflowers are rampant.

Our larger prairie has followed form from my backyard experience, and we are both having such fun discovering what the prairie offers from day to day. Right now the prairie is awash in yellow blossoms. Golden Alexanders have given way to Blanket Flowers, Common Ox-eye and Yellow Coneflowers or “Mexican Hats,” to name a few. More and more flowers will be blooming as we move through the green season, and our grasses are maturing nicely, too. Interesting, as well, is that what we see growing seems different than our prescribed seeding plan, and some of what appears on the seeding plan has not yet appeared in the prairie. And, the reason we called Beau. Ah, but what a fascinating mystery!

We find ourselves walking through the prairie almost daily looking at both fading and new wonders. You might find me laying in the prairie with my camera seeking new and hopefully interesting images. Among our plantings were a few cottonwoods and burr oaks, which were planted in two different areas to simulate an oak savanna. On one of our walks we spooked a fawn. As it bounded through the belly-high growth it was hard to say which of us was most surprised. We have heard pheasants “barking” out there, too, which is a bonus … although neither of us are hunters. We have yet to attract meadowlarks or bob-o-links, although both species nest in the nearby Clinton Prairie.

We are quite pleased that our little prairie at Listening Stones Farm can be counted among the beautiful native prairie features of Big Stone County. Besides the National Wildlife Refuge, two diverse areas of Big Stone State Park, the Clinton Prairie along with a number of federally protected wildlife and waterfowl management areas, several farmers have left their original wetlands undrained. Thankfully they take great care and add time to their hectic farming schedules to protect them.

Yellow dominates the prairie right now.

Indeed, we sometimes find ourselves in debate on whether Big Stone, Lac qui Parle or Yellow Medicine Counties have the most devoted prairie acres, and to be honest, one of the selling points for us when we bought our Listening Stones Farm 18 months ago was the close proximity of two active wetlands, our large and overgrown grove, plus the eight plus acres of tillable we now enjoy as prairie, thanks to the help of Pheasants Forever and the local NRCS. Our prairie adventures are really just beginning.

Recent rains have given us a rare opportunity to revisit the long-gone prairie potholes that were part of the original, post-glacial landscape.

Recently a friend who happens to be a farmer asked, “When did you become so anti-farmer?”

After my initial surprise and denial, and later, after subsequently rolling through the countryside, I began to realize how my comments and rants could be taken in that manner. My growing up as a child and teenager was in a different era, when having a thick thatch of grass growing where water could create rills of erosion in a field was not only expected, but common. Also common was leaving a swath of anchoring vegetation along riverine embankments. I can also remember my father’s concern when Earl Butz, as Secretary of Agriculture, began preaching his “fence row to fence row” philosophy.

“That will ruin farming,” my father said. He meant the land, although it has also altered farming into a Catch 22 cash chase.

A recently “refurbishes” grassland where the rocks were removed and the trees cut and piled.

Realize, please, that my father and I had many rifts and disagreements, politically and otherwise. Despite that, I grew to firmly respect his attention to real conservation farming practices as well as his trepidation on the Butz preamble.

My father lived long enough to watch as neighboring farms grew quite large over the hills of northeast Missouri where grass and grazing was a better ecological fit. He watched as abandoned farmsteads were leveled, burned and the ashes buried, and he watched as hedge rows were dozed along with tree lines and windbreaks. Fences were pulled, wires rolled, and posts, mainly hedge, burned. Forty acre fields became 80’s, and 80’s 160’s, causing him to sadly shake his head. Folks back in my home country now call this “Minnesota farming.”

Where’s the grass? Tons of soils have washed off fields where rills and gullies were created by heavy rains and moisture.

Yes, this is precisely the treatment of the land we see all around us. Industrial road grading equipment is used to extract glacial rocks from fields (which are then stored for sale in faraway cities to landscapers), and groves and farmsteads dozed and burned. Sod and prairie grasses, CRP land … all being plowed. Painstaking efforts are made with a blade to cut just enough of a two-foot deep furrow through fields to aid in the rapid flush of water. In many cases these furrows are too shallow to qualify as a legal ditch, meaning a mandate for buffer strips, and once cut, are carefully skirted by tillage equipment and planters. Cattails are allowed to grow … until hit by contact killing Roundup.

In fields already tiled, new and more efficient patterned tile systems are being installed. Although the technology is readily available that would allow farmers better water table management, the devices have been a tough sell despite years of positive presentations at many winter meetings. At least one watershed project had staffers basically begging farmers and landowners for a single demonstration installation … to no avail. Flush is seemingly the norm for managing water tables, not the holding back or storage of melt nor rain.

Shallow water “escape routes” are cut in fields that won’t technically qualify as a drainage ditch, therefore not mandated for buffer strips.

Hilly lands that should never have been tilled stretch for miles with no regard for erosion. In wet springs and early summers, like we’re having again this year, runoff water carries tons upon tons of soil off the higher land. We passed a field with corn nearly two feet tall in the valleys with spindly, four-to-six inch stalks poking up on the rest of the acres. “That’s where all the good soil has washed off to,” said Rebecca. Typically, 20 percent of a field has the healthy stalks. The rest? Will it qualify for USDA emergency subsidies?

Indeed, an observer can easily see the change in soil color and tilth … light tans compared to a rich darkness … in field after field, mile after mile. A keen observer can also tell that many are ignoring either the advice or statutes that call for grassed buffer strips along artificial drainage ditches, and any thought of a grass “waterway” would be considered absurd! Most of us know by now that 99 percent of the wetlands are drained, with a like percentage of native prairie tilled. Where is the rage you see with the distant Brazilian rain forest?

The banks have held and the buffer strips on either side have kept both the field and the drainage ditch in good condition.

Driving through the rural byways in the winter months can just be sickening with mile upon mile of “snirt” — that dirty combination of snow and dirt. Overwinter cover crops are rarely planted, and any thought of leaving stalks to hold soils in place is basically unheard of. Our food supply is threatened in that one day fields will be barren of healthy prairie dirt. Realtor’s will be challenged to barker farms with no soil left to sell.

One wonders where the crops will be grown, of how subsequent landowners and farmers will continue to “feed the world.” Have we become so selfish as farmers that we can only think of today, of mining the soil for the most cash possible with crops with little direct food value and staunch government policy support? If we’re blaming policy for the woes and goals of the tractor jockeys, then perhaps some teeth should be placed into the policy smile … a net zero erosion factor as a qualification for any USDA commodity benefits ­— mandated buffer strips on all riparian waters, including drainage ditches; grassed waterways; winter cover crops, especially following soybeans and sugar beets; an actual crop rotation that includes nitrogen fixing legumes; banning practices that threaten pollinators; and so forth.

Common to many ares around the prairie are “ghosts” of the old prairie potholes — wetlands — that perhaps should not have been drained.

Am I anti-farming? Or, am I simply someone concerned about a future that appears ever more ominous for a climate challenged earth that will be incredibly feeble environmentally for our children and grandchildren — indeed, for all future generations.

Am I anti-farming, or am I someone who simply wishes for the bygone ethics of conservation farming practices that promotes soil health and keep earth’s dirt in place?

Am I anti-farming, or someone who wishes to keep our people, our land and our rivers healthy, and in place for future generations. Surely this answers your question.

A beautiful buffer found in Chippewa County.

We were to flip a coin. Heads we drive around the lake to a favored restaurant on the South Dakota side, or tails for the Italian place in Morris? When the quarter landed in my palm, I hid it from Rebecca.

“So, when it was in the air, how did you want it to land?”

She smiled. “Bello Cucina.”

As we piled into the car after changing clothes, I considered running back for my camera. Nope, we were just going for dinner and would likely be home before the good light descends on the countryside. Take a deep breath and leave with thoughts of “no regrets.”

A doe in dewy grass.

After a great dinner of some excellent pasta dishes — mine a wild mushroom and shrimp affair — we took a stroll around the block before starting home. A stop was also made to fill the tank. All of which pushed us into several miles of squinting into the lowering sun. What a relief it was when we turned south toward the “Clinton Road” just before reaching Chokio. When we turned back toward the west, an intense and colorful light graced the prairie. This is a favored beautiful and interesting stretch of highway hosting several restored patches of prairie, WMAs, a two-section wide federal waterfowl management area, and perhaps even some remnants of native prairie. When we passed a grassy wetland with a perfectly calm, mirror-like surface, my groan was audible. “Wow!” came the grouse. “That would have made a great picture.”

“Cell phone?”

“It fell under the seat and I can’t reach it.”

Just a few more miles further down the highway it happened again. There in a “ghost of prairie” wetland in a flooded corn field, a doe and her fawn waded in knee deep water lit by a perfectly intense glow of soft reddish purple light. Not a single ripple disturbed the surface as the doe nuzzled her fawn, and my moan was no doubt sickening.

“Hey,” Rebecca said, instantly recognizing my angst and trying to soothe my obvious disappointment, “we got to see it. It was a beautiful moment  and we got to see it with our own eyes. We and no one else.”

A startled doe, and a twin fawn I hadn’t seen.

Yes, but as a photographer, and especially as a recent nature photographing junkie, it was a missed image that will haunt me for several months if not years. Photographers who have missed such moments can identify with Hall of Fame pitchers like Bert Blyleven and the late Warren Spahn, the latter who told me (minus his frequent f-bombs) during an after-game interview when he was managing a Triple A team in the 1970s, “You remember the losses. The homers the jerks hit off you. Straight curves. That’s what you remember.” Blyleven has admitted as much during broadcasts of Minnesota Twins’ baseball games.

I’m pleased with my image of two deer at dusk, although this isn’t the picture in the wetland I missed.

Ah, the losses … those missed opportunities. Wild turkey toms facing off right after dawn just down the road. The trio of white-tails who were in ballet-like sync rounding the edge of a hill in the late afternoon light … also just down the road. And, now, the doe and fawn. All while “driving naked.” Each time my camera was back at the house. In fact, I still remember cresting a hill somewhere northwest of Dubuque in 1968 just as a farmer driving his tractor was silhouetted in a huge, bright red “sun ball” that was perfect for a 300 mm lens. I was speeding to a grass fire and didn’t stop. The next day I told my managing editor, Jim Galedis, about the near miss. “And you didn’t stop? Always shoot the picture. Always. Fires either get better or they’re nothing but ash. Always shoot the picture.”

Key to his advice, of course, is to never leave home without your camera.

After all these years I should know better.

And, there is this: A photographer never forgets, nor is there self forgiveness. You live, and will most likely die, remembering the misses, all of those “perfect” latent images.

Martin seemed to enjoy his boat ride up the Minnesota River.

After an evening of interesting hill hugging lightning to the west of Glacial Lakes State Park, and a downpour that broke while in the depths of sleep, we were packing out a day earlier than we expected. More rain was forecast, and all of our gear was soaked after leaving open the largest “window” of the tent for some cross ventilation. So, yes, we can sleep through a storm in the grand outdoors.

Across the site Wes Konzin talked in a low murmur to his grandkids as another downpour drenched the campsite, meaning our breakfast would wait a little longer. It was my turn to cook breakfast, a treat of thick pepper bacon from Pastures of Plenty and a dozen eggs from our Listening Stones Farm that I would break into the peppery bacon grease.

Once breakfast was served and the soaked gear packed, stepson Martin and I left for home. As we weaved our way through the curvy road of the state park, he looked up and smiled. “I had fun, but I think when I look back on it I’ll have had more fun than I actually had.”

Martin is an indoorsy boy, so our camping out was definitely outside of his comfort zone. His “zone” would be challenged again a few days later when another river rat, Willie Rosin, boated us upriver from Waterman’s on a catfishing outing. What’s a boy to do when he has a stepfather river rat who viewed being indoors at Martin’s ripe young age of 11 as comparable to being stranded in a prison cell? I disliked inside as much as Martin does the outdoors.

The late afternoon sun kisses the grasses of an oak savanna … the only sun we saw on the camping trip.

To his credit, Martin is adjusting — although he was rather quick and vocal when asked if he would like to join me on another fishing trip this past weekend. Martin reminds me of a cousin on my father’s side back when I was growing up who preferred reading to anything outside … until the day he somehow discovered fly fishing. Joe’s mother, perhaps my mother’s best friend, knew of how I had become completely immersed in the sport at about Martin’s age, and asked if I would help him get started. By then I was of driving age, so heading to farm ponds all around the area with my cousin was welcomed.

Since I was self-taught through the pages of Outdoor Life, Field & Stream, Sports Afield along with the iconic Herter’s, Inc., catalogs, Joe didn’t exactly have legendary fly caster Joan Wulff as his tutor. Those lessons went fine until an errant, wind influenced fly, snagged my poor cousin in the ear. Fortunately that didn’t deter his passion, for as an adult he became a hydrologic engineer with the Corps of Engineers when he wasn’t casting the long rod.

Fly fishing has a way of attracting the intelligent kids like the Joe’s and Martin’s of the world for it’s cerebral nature. Interestingly, people will ask about “fly fishing lessons” with an eye toward the casting rather than the line control and various retrieves necessary for successful fishing. This isn’t unlike learning the mechanical features of a camera and thinking this alone will make you a good photographer. Both the casting and the mechanical camera lessons are essential for reaching positive end results, though neither will be mistaken for the art of either.

Martin’s few weeks with us have been an adventure. He has really tried, and for that he deserves credit. He was mystified when his mother eagerly agreed to come on a one hour, one way jaunt to a swampy woodland savanna to see white prairie lady slippers. “All this way just for wild flowers?” He had balked, though gave in, to going on a few earlier trips to the nearby Clinton Prairie as I took pictures of prairie smoke.

One of the Prairie White Lady Slippers we found on our foray.

Yet, when I’m looking at my results at my computer after an outing Martin will often look over my shoulder to offer comments and compliments on the images. Yes, he had a good time on our camping trip and willingly took his seat along with Wes’ grandkids on their story telling stump. On one of our photography forays he asked if he could use my camera to make a picture. And, after the trip with Willie, Martin asked for a fillet knife to help clean the catfish we had caught. I hesitate to mention how proud he was for catching more fish than his stepfather.

His becoming a passionate outdoorsman may be way too much to expect, although we have taken a few baby steps into that odd universe we call a “comfort zone.” Like Kermit the Frog said, “It isn’t easy being green.” Martin was also right in his comment: “I had fun, but I think when I look back on it I’ll have had more fun than I actually had.”

What outdoorsman hasn’t said that at least a dozen times? Yes, the journey has begun.

A wetland, as we were leaving.

Have you ever had one of those Euwell Gibbons’ moments? Moments where you find yourself searching roadside ditches for wild asparagus or turning cattail “hotdogs” into a pancake mix, or even collecting and cooking dandelions?

Our bountiful field of yellow!

Earlier this week a friend of ours, Joelie Hicks, posted a recipe for dandelion cookies. Hmmmm?

Back in my Dubuque days with the exciting daily Telegraph-Herald, I wrote a story on a junk yard guy in his 70s who was married and, according to all involved, fathered a child with his 29-year-old wife. There was little doubt of her deep feelings for the old codger, for you could see love in her eyes as she talked of how he respected and treated her as a person. He was one of those tough exterior guys with a soft heart who acted and worked like a man half his age. After recording the interview and doing the pictures, he asked, “Say, Boy, how about I pour you a little glass of my homemade dandy-line wine?”

Those yellow petals are intense with color.

At that age I was far from being one to turn down an offered drink, so he pushed a paint-chipped chair past the prone German Shepard in his little office and reached for a label-free wine bottle, pulled the cork and filled my glass about a third full. Before jumping to conclusions, this was a little fruit juice glass. “Pour you any more, Boy, and you ain’t drivin’ back to no Dubuque.”

The old man was honest as a summer day is long, for I was challenged to make the drive even with what he poured.

Fortunately I have once again settled down with a dear woman who holds dandelions close to her heart. Actually, I find it a bit disheartening that couples aren’t asked in premarital counseling, “Which is more important to you, John and Rebecca, a field of golden dandelion goodness or to have a dandelion-clean and perfectly green lawn?”

Years ago when my brother, Mark, lived in Omaha, his next door neighbor woman became rather riled over his suspected failure to spray his backyard of the pretty yellow spring flowers. “Mam,” I said, aiming for a spot somewhere on the soft side of her heart, “have you ever heard of this new lawn technique they’re calling ‘naturalizing?’”

This was just enough to stop her rant for a precious moment.

“That’s where you plant native flowers so they will bloom to add interesting color and beauty to an otherwise boring green lawn. That was my dear brother’s intent here with his lawn. Look. You can’t call this a boring lawn.”

She stared at me for a good 45 seconds in what could be generously described as a rage of silence before turning on her heels and stomping off to her house.

Back in the present, a few days ago Rebecca asked, “Have you seen the incredible yellow in the goat pen? The bees are just loving those dandelions.” We have a rich carpet of them.

Between the two of us I’m sure we attended at least three or four meetings this past winter over the crisis facing bees and other pollinators, so we see dandelions as a bridge to our recently planted clover and hopefully the prairie flowers sure to rise in our tillable acres. And, of course, our garden. We hope to have enough blossoms around our little island of pollinator friendliness to withstand the expected GMO corn and soybeans that reportedly carry genes that are causing bee colonies to collapse. In the spirit of marital cohesiveness, I asked her permission before I took my half-cup measuring tin outside to fulfill Joelie’s recipe requirement.

Just a half cup is all you need … without the green “crowns.”

As the cookies were baking Rebecca came inside to say it was hard to see where I’d even picked the blossoms. Our son, Martin, who is here for the month, also came inside to say, “John, I don’t think you even made a dent in the dandelions out there.” Hey, I’m good!

For those just dying for the recipe, here it is: Blend together 1/2 c. butter, 1/2 c. honey, 2 eggs and 1 teaspoon of vanilla, then stir in 1 c. flour, 1 c. dry oatmeal, 1/2 c. dandelion florets pulled or cut from the base of the flower.

Just before adding the flour and oatmeal.

All ready to drop on the pizza stone!

Bake at 375 on a lightly oiled cookie sheet or pizza stone for 10-15 minutes. I added a cup of chocolate chips just because I could, so I suppose that should read as “optional.”

All baked and ready to eat … and they were a big hit, even to Martin!

Yes, they’re rather delicious, though they don’t seem to have the same kick as the old junk dealer’s dandy-line wine. In fact, I think I could eat the whole batch and still drive all the way to Dubuque.

Not long after pausing to capture a few images of a Bald Eagle perched in a tree along the shore of Lake Minnewaska, then the painstaking process of following a farmer with a grain drill who insisted on driving down the middle of Highway 28 going through North Morris and forcing oncomers to take the shoulder and the followers to bide time, it was back on the open road once again. Back in the country on the backstretch home, and off to the west, a plume of smoke rose from the prairie.

The Bald Eagle takes off.

Fire in the prairie this time of year is considered a good thing, a time of renewal. By burning off the thick duff left behind by several seasons of prairie grass thatch, a prairie fire brings potential death to invasive shrubs and trees as well as a lush new birth to the deep rooted native forbs and grasses. A prairie, say many, is forest turned upside down. The vast vegetative portion of the plants are all underground, anchoring ever deeper into the soil profile. The smoke plume reaching into the distant sky brought a smile.

After a weekend conference of Minnesota Master Naturalists at Camp Friendship just outside of Annandale, my thoughts were generally positive from meeting with like-minded, environmentally-friendly peers. This was a nice reprieve from new reports of global warming incidents around the globe. Landslides and flooding in the Balkans. Reports and charts portraying perhaps the warmest December on record worldwide. Wildfires once again ravishing the U.S.’s Southwest, which involved a cousin who was forced to evacuate her home going into the weekend.

To the west, the plume was getting ever closer and was exhibiting that familiar profile of width. Immediately I had hopes of capturing the crew working a prairie fire photographically.

On a long drive home, the mind wanders … and mine was. Wondering about my cousin and the fate of her home; of a fire of destruction as well as one of renewal. Then other thoughts drifted in … of how our own sons will fare in an ever changing and warming world.

Will the Black Burnerian Warbler still find a home with the change in the biome species?

Global warming has been a nearly constant conference and meeting agenda item this winter. Seminars and conferences have included the threatened bees and pollinators, and we attended two different presentations by icecap explorer Will Steger. At both he showed the incredible footage from the documentary, “Chasing Ice,” showing a massive ice field suddenly and unexpectedly collapsing that was captured on film by a crew. Indeed, while wildfires threatened my cousin’s California home, news broke that a collapse of massive portions of the Antarctic ice sheet now appears inevitable and could trigger a far higher sea-level rise than once projected — up to 12 feet, or four meters — according to major new studies by University of Washington and NASA researchers.

Those who have read Jon Bowermaster and Steger’s page-turner, “Crossing Antarctica,” will realize that more than half of the book and the issues his team faced on the trip were on the West Antarctic ice sheet — which is about the size of New Mexico and Arizona combined. This won’t happen in my lifetime, since it is estimated to occur over 200 years …  a time span that, interestingly, sparked more thought from the weekend conference, again concerning global climate change.

It was during a keynote address by Dr. Lee Frelich, research associate and director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Forest Ecology, that he described the expected changes in the boreal forest biome in Northern Minnesota. At one point he agreed that, yes, the boreal had migrated over time as far south as Tennessee and as deep as the northern wilds of upper Ontario. “Those changes, though,” he explained, “occurred over thousands of years, which geologically are snapshots in time. What we’re seeing now, within a century or two, has not happened so fast in the history of earth.”

Core samples taken from a Siberian lake that offer a portrait of earth over nearly three million years gave proof, he said. Frelich added the forest profile around the Boundary Waters will take on significant change over the next 30 to 50 years and maybe even sooner. “If you want a preview of what the Boundary Waters will look like by 2050, go to Granite Falls along the Minnesota River in the Western Prairie. All along the river you have the same rock formations as you find in the BWCA, and you’ll see a plant profile there now that is very similar to what we’ll see there. Scrub cedar. Burr oak. A dominance of the maple species. Prickly pear in the rock formations.” You could sense an audible murmur as that reality settled around the room.

As I turned south onto a county blacktop off Highway 28, the remembrance of the murmur was lost as the plume of smoke grew ever closer.

“For a scientist,” I remembered him saying, “these are exciting times, for we’re seeing events in our lifetimes that have historically taken thousands if not millions of years to happen. Another drought. Increased instances and severities of windstorms, and the resulting fires will complete the transition. Already the understories of the new forests have taken hold. Drought, wind and fire will bring this succession to life in our lifetimes.” In some areas of Minnesota and Ontario, he predicted, the succession might be only a summer or two in the making … depending on those three climate-driven conditions.

Outcrops and species profile of the Minnesota River valley might be the future BWCA area species profile.

Finally, on the Clinton road, as I drew mental images of Lake One with a Minnesota River plant profile, the prairie fire grew closer and closer, and finally the field appeared. There, south of the highway, a farmer was burning off the last of a wide CRP buffer strip, and was following behind the fire with a huge tiller pulled by a tracked behemoth tractor, turning the newly blackened prairie sod upside down to plant his next crop right to the lip of the drainage ditch.

As the professor said, “In our lifetimes …”

Over the past few hours we have frantically put ourselves on the front lines in the battle against a red alert freeze warning. Our main concern is the new batch of broilers we just had moved outside into the goat barn. Only a week old, the 51 chicks had already become crowded in the horse trough we use as a brooder.

Using old sleeping bags, we covered as much of the 6 ft. by 8 ft. dog kennel as possible. As we moved plants inside we discussed our efforts with hopes that the covering along with the lights will be sufficient for the chicks to survive. In all, a snow fence was affixed to the dog kennel, and then she attached galvanized roofing panels to the outside of that, and then the blankets and sleeping bags were draped over the whole thing to try to keep them warmth through the night.

Despite the concern and worry, Rebecca came back to the house from her garden in complete ecstasy. Once again her little jewels, tiny yellow warblers, were there to keep her company. The warblers, with their intense hyper activity, rarely stay put for long, and she said her efforts to capture images of the little birds with her phone were nearly impossible.

Since I am still smarting from not having my camera on the listening bench in the pathway through the grove a couple of weeks ago, I eagerly volunteered to bring my camera to the garden to see if I would have any luck. She was right. The warblers dart here and there, one second on the frame of a raised bed, the next on a cattle panel, then off to the edge of the prairie. We counted three. Perhaps there were more. Their name tags, if they wore them, were much too small to read!

For a half hour we sat in the lowering sun to watch as they flew in and away. Rebecca was nearly mesmerized. As much as I love our life on the farm, my love pales in comparison to hers. Warbler sightings and accompaniment are part of that love she has for the farm. I captured a nice picture of her as she sat watching the warblers.

Rebecca watches the warblers at the foot of her garden.

For me, it was almost as comical as if I were doing a Whack-A-Mole. “Oh, there’s one!” she’d say. “Oops.”

Living jewels are indeed fleeting.

“Oh, look! By the bale!” Bingo.

By the bale.

Fortunately the warbler bounced from in front of the bale to the lower frame of a raised bed, then skirted that more deftly than an acrobat can balance on a thin train rail. It skittered along to hop onto some of her cattle fencing. Another warbler swept in, and a third … which took a perch on the erected fence panel itself — gave us a fine show. Her garden jewels were shining all over the place.

Like all good shows, this one had to come to an end. We headed back to the house excited about our short adventure, although about halfway there thoughts of the impending freeze warning emerged.

Despite the dire possibilities, I had to smile. Are we becoming farmers? People who cannot have a conversation without worry creeping in? Years ago I did a story on a woman farmer near Gluek for the sole purpose of portraying a happy farmer. I hadn’t known her for very long, yet her conversations were constantly filled with wonder, fine accomplishments of simple tasks, descriptions of her growing crops, and usually concluding with a report of riding around her farm on her horse as a sunset approached. Every conversation was somehow positive.

And here we are on our own farm facing a freeze warning. When we go to bed tonight I’m sure we’ll both think of the chicks spending their first night in the “wilds” of the goat barn, huddled beneath lamps inside a large dog kennel covered with old sleeping bags to hopefully retain the heat. Yes, there is that. I’m also guessing we’ll both have smiles, too, as we recapture those precious moments in the garden with Rebecca’s jewels … those beautiful little yellow warblers!