(Luise Hille and I pose with my River Truck after kayaking on the Minnesota River. 

I can’t remember the color of my “original” River Truck. It still had some miles left in it when the heater died in the dead of winter. A repair of the heater edged the beater into what insurance adjusters call “totaled.” So I drove onto a used car lot just to see what was around.

You’ll occasionally see a car slowly meandering through a dealership as the driver rubber necks at those rows of discarded dreams. One of those was me. Nothing stood out, yet I parked and ventured inside to talk with the saleslady. This is a huge undertaking since I’ve long suffered a sense of trepidation after a car salesman at a St. Paul nightspot laughed and said people like him love it when people like me walk through the doors.

“We can spot guys like you a mile away,” he laughed, tipping his long-neck bottle against mine in a friendly gesture. “You’re easy. Guys like you we call ‘marks.’”

Unlike at the city lots, my saleslady friend has treated me with respect and fairness.

“You really, really loved that old Explorer, didn’t you?” she said, with honest concern.

Indeed. That kayak/canoe rack on the top looked and fit just right, and it was easy to lower half of the backseat down to lay out a pad and sleeping bag. A portable ice fishing shack fit easily in the back, too. Bluegill flies that drifted from the boxes weren’t blown away in that 60 mph draft. Gosh, I could go on and on about the pluses.

“Did you see that blue one out there?” she asked.

Somehow I’d passed it by.

“Just got it in. Owned by a woman banker down by Sacred Heart. She drove it to work on the bad snow days. Not a lot of miles on it. Want to take a look?”

“Does the heater work?” I asked.

It was only a year younger and had just under 50,000 on the odometer. I hadn’t realized we’d had that much snow. Mine was tickling 200,000. I’d driven all over western Minnesota, and made several trips down to the farm in Missouri. There were all those jaunts to the BWCA, too. She shot me a price. Fortunately what I’d already had transferred from savings for a decent down payment on a newer car or truck more than covered the price. For the first time ever I drove off the lot with a loan-free vehicle. Not just a vehicle, but a new River Truck! All the gauges and dashboard gizmo’s were exactly alike, and I now had a CD player. Plus, one of the mechanics had helped transfer the kayak racks and ice fishing gear.

That was a decade and some 100,000 miles ago. I still carry the kayaks up on the rack and my seasonal gear fits easily in the back. Missing is the radio antenna. The fellow at the car wash I ran it through at least annually showed me how to remove it with a crescent wrench so it wouldn’t catch in flappers, a trick that came in handy one day at an entry point near Ely. I took it off so it wouldn’t break taking the shotgun side kayak off the top, then laid it on the back bumper after it had rolled off the hood onto the ground. Must have happened a second time. That was about four years ago.

The cab doors used to be tighter, and the hatch door on the back won’t shut completely. By now I’ve replaced the shocks, tires and ball joints. The heater still works, and you can even take a snow drift at 50 without it breaking all apart like my delicate new little foreign car.

That’s the car I bought a couple years ago for better fuel economy. The fill ups actually arrive at about the same places. The kicker is that the River Truck holds just over 23 gallons of gas bone dry compared to not quite 11 for the little car. Same difference, but twice the cost for a fill up.

I was relying more and more on my little car until I tried plowing through a snow drift near the farm late last winter and tore off part of the plastic undercarriage near the bumper. My River Truck sputtered, as it does even in the heat of summer, but eventually started, and the little car was parked until the thaw.

This winter I’ve relied more heavily on my River Truck. I should have used it the other evening when I went to shoot pictures of the full moon rising over the prairie. The little car was warm and handy, plus I was just driving a mile or so down the road to an oak savanna. Unfortunately the trees were nowhere near the rising moon, so I quickly sped off down a lesser used road toward a nearby WMA. I saw the drift coming up, and frankly, it didn’t look all that solid. Darkness does that to a fellow, I guess. There wasn’t a whole lot of give to that icy, glazed-over drift. There was, however, a horrible crunching sound when I landed about 30 feet further down the gravel road. My seat belt no doubt saved a concussion. I’ll call the body shop after the melt.

After surveying the damage I realized the truth once again. Like I told Rebecca: “Should have taken the River Truck.”

Utility and a working heater help define a good River Truck. So does having dependable landing gear.

What though the radiance
which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendor in the grass …

My windshield and passenger windows often offer dreamy drive-time visualizations of what a sea grass of prairie might have looked like. They say the big bluestem grew so high and thick that it wore through the toes of a horseman’s boots in a season of riding. Such landscapes, those vast seas of grasses, are no more.

Nor can you photographically capture a horizon of a wide prairie sky with a native prairie stretching toward focal infinity. More common is a foreground of 20 to 40 acre remnant with a mix of Indian grass, side oat gamma, big bluestem and seasonal forbs with a field of row-cropped acres draped across the horizon.

A friend dismisses the entirety by saying, “It is what it is.” Crops and cropland are necessary, yet so is a balance that is missing in this altered ecology that is slowly being eroded away.

I’m new at this prairie watching. Yes, it is big sky and horizon. Most days you can see the very top of a grain elevator in some rural railroad town a dozen miles in the distance. Maybe even a water tower at half that distance. A prairie also offers views that are close and personal. Yet it is a prairie without prairie, a land mass naked of its namesake.

When photographer Brian Peterson was working on his book, “Voices for the Land,” he admitted struggling to find a way to photographically define this vastness. One day he felt he had captured a sense of it not through an image of big sky and horizon, but rather in a photo of a small ant climbing the stalk of a cone flower. Yes, there is sky, along with four other cone flowers in the photograph, yet he focused on a small, intimate detail to define an undefinable landscape. Some claim it is practically impossible to accurately portray the vastness of the prairie, to portray that vastness in contrast to individual insignificance. Perhaps they’re right.

So we look at parts of the whole, at ants on cone flowers, or other symbols.

A prairie is not just defined by the grasses, but also the winds that ruffle and bend them. Ah, the wind. Curators of the area county museums can usually put their fingers on letters from the wives of sod busters describing how the wind became so unbearable, of how someone, perhaps the letter writers themselves, “had lost their mind” from the constant wail of the wind when there was so little to stop it. Especially in the dead of winter, a mind lost while huddled for warmth in sod huts and remote farm houses.

Yes, there is that rumble and roar of blizzards, but there is also a hush when grasses rise through the snow as in defiance of that rumble and roar. My wish has been to get a feel for the prairie when winter it isn’t quiet, when raging winds whip grasses with a vengeance. Then again, to return to portray the hush.

Although we have lived on this dispatched ecosystem for 22 years, this is my first to really concentrate on the prairie in winter. Twice I’ve driven off the farm yard during wind-whipped white outs to two different restored prairie remnants, including a Wildlife Management Area (WMA), to take pictures. In the scheme of seasons, winter is supposedly a quiet time, a rest perhaps, for the prairie. In winter, green isn’t evolving through dead and dormant grasses, nor is there a punctuation of color from blooming forbs in a blanket of green, nor are the acres of golden grasses painted by the fall sun being whipped and bent by autumn winds. So in that sense, winter is the season of rest despite the turmoil of arctic winds.

On one of those forays, with the sun muted by driven snow, the grasses of the Clinton prairie yielded to the winds, yet captured enough snow to create sea-like drifts. Enough snow was being captured that you could see a depth of perhaps a hundred yards … which was impossible on adjacent tilled fields. It was a wild moment in the “rest” — a wail that could cause one to lose their mind with a long exposure, for this blow continued for two to three continuous days. Cold and continuous.

A week or so later, on a late afternoon, the hush of both the prairie and wind had returned. There on a clear and windless day, in the captured depths of snow, in both stem and shadow, were wind poems that spoke of silent secrets.

Perhaps if we listen closely these poems may speak an endless and epic story, one our cultures of settlers, sod busters and industrial farmers have failed to silence. If you look close enough to find wind poems, and take time to listen close enough to hear those silent secrets. Take a moment, however long, and be quiet, however silent, and  simply listen.

“Ah, the Mayflower!” sighed dear friend Kylene Olson, who probably is as close to a native prairie flower expert as you can find. “This flower has been ingrained in my memory and in my family traditions since I was two years old.”

This was a new term for me, yet it made sense. She was looking at a photograph made a few years ago on a Sunburg prairie of a pasque flower. There is a hidden story here, however, and a good lesson.

It has to do with a recent conversation with a prairie photographer artist friend who admitted she sometimes lacked motivation, especially after nearly two decades of portraying elements within the few remnants of remaining native prairie. “How many images do I really need of big bluestem?” she asked rhetorically, smiling, while also noting that her children are now taking precedent as they reach junior high age.

Indeed. My children are reared and into lives of their own, and my life has changed significantly in the meantime. Yet, after all these years motivation is not yet an issue. I’m easy. About all it takes for inspiration is for someone to smile and tell me they have enjoyed one of my images, like Kylene has. I’ll admit, though, there are still times when I weaken and wonder, “How many images do I really need of a big bluestem?” Or, of pasque flowers, for that matter.

Last year was my first at skipping over the blooming season of this stout little harbinger of spring. I neither found, nor sought, the opportunity. Photographers and others involved in different medium of the arts often struggle to find the motivation to capture new images of an old subject.

Our work is defined by how we “capture light” in terms of subject matter and composition. We may work for weeks to pull those three adverse criteria — light, subject matter and composition — together to create a perceived image. Sometimes we’re simply lucky. In photojournalism this is called “having an eye.” Composition becomes, in Hemingway’s words, “a movable feast.” You train yourself to see and capture an image on the run. Two ends of a photographer’s spectrum, perhaps, that may sometimes work in concert.

An example: Back in June when the delicate prairie rose was in bloom I scanned the late afternoon skies searching for just the right hue for an idea that is much easier to visualize than to actually describe. On a scouting trip with Rebecca, we spied what we thought were some fine specimens in a Wildlife Management Area about ten miles southeast of our farm. Finally one evening a rich, cranberry hue seemed promised by the evolving sunset and I promptly set off with my camera, barreling down country roads toward the site. Light conditions change rapidly late in the afternoon, and especially as sunset nears, so there was an urgency.

When I rolled up and rushed toward the flowers to work with the light I realized this was an entirely different plant with blue flowers. Scouting at 50 mph is highly overrated, especially around dusk when we made the original discovery. On the trip home on this perfectly calm night, as that crimson-y hue became even more vibrant across the sky, I passed a lone white pelican fishing solo on a mirror-like wetland. My trip was not made in vane. I returned home with a very pleasing yet unexpected image — the movable feast.

As for the prairie rose, the idea still simmers on the proverbial back burner.

When I first discovered the plight of our vanished prairie years ago I felt an urgency for capturing such “icons” as the pasque flower, prairie smoke, lady slippers and cone flowers, among others. I’d also found my way into taking a Minnesota Master Naturalist course that included a field trip to one of the most compelling stretches of native prairie in Western Minnesota. Steve Harms, who claims title to this hilly moraine of prairie near Sunburg with his wife, Robin Freese, told us that the pasque flowers were in full bloom and had virtually laid claim to the hillsides. “This is the best we seen for many years,” he said.

At the time my focus was still more in details than horizons, and I captured an image I liked well enough to put into my next calendar. When I shared my pasque flower image this past week with Kylene, she quickly created an entirely new wave of inspiration and motivation with her response.

She said, “This flower (Anemone patens, or Pulsatilla patens or Pulsatilla nuttalliana, appears to have three Latin titles) is my earliest memory of a prairie flower. My friend Laurie Denbrook recently asked, ‘Remember picking bags full of Mayflowers?’ Her sister was my best childhood girlfriend. We would pick paper bags full (before the dreaded plastic grocery bags) and walk around Watson, knock on doors (mostly the older women in town) and sell them a large handful for a nickel, every spring. We picked them ‘on the hill,’ which at the time was our horse pasture before becoming the infamous Champion Hill, noted in the not too distant past as the ‘sledding hill’ in Watson! Even after all my older sisters and I grew up and moved away and came home for Easter, it was a tradition to go to Champion Hill and search for Mayflowers. We were rarely disappointed. It seemed that no matter how early or late spring came, or how early or late Easter, Mayflowers were always blooming that weekend — amazing. Each spring my older sisters still ask if I had checked for Mayflowers.”

Added another friend, Lynn Lokken, “I grew up picking them as well. Great memories of my grandma teaching me about them. They bloom, we get snow, and they survive! In fact, we’ve done prairie burns and they pop up through that, too.”

I have no such childhood memories of pasque flowers, yet it is pleasing when an image brings pleasure and memories for others. Good fuel for motivation, I’d say.

“Conservation is getting nowhere because it is incompatible with our Abrahamic concept of land. We abuse the land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect. There is no other way for land to survive the impact of mechanized man.” Aldo Leopold

Although our recent drive to the ROC at the University of Minnesota-Morris for a pollinator presentation was artistic in a way, this wouldn’t be a good day for America’s “Original Conservationists.” This is a self-chosen term our farm brethren speak with pride when speaking at environmental proceedings and politicians like to use at farm shows. You have to wonder if these self proclaimed “Original Conservationists” or “True Environmentalists” — as some of billboards broadcast — see the effect prairie winds have on their prized investment. Those winds have created sastrugi-like snow waves, or perhaps you would prefer calling them snow dunes, along the roadways and almost all of them were highlighted with swirls and patches of fine particles of dirt.

As we drove we continued to gaze at the miles upon miles of snow ridges and waves accented by prairie dirt along the fall-plowed fields, interrupted here and there by a few farmsites, patches of restored prairie, or in the rare fields where corn stalk residue was still standing. Only on those few select areas were drifts the color of snow. There was a sad but unique beauty where the dune edges carried outlines of soil-paint blackness as if applied by a makeup artist.

Soils are taking a beating throughout the broad Mississippi River Basin it seems. On a drive home from a recent visit to Missouri most of the fields from northeast Missouri through Iowa and into Minnesota had telltale evidence of snirt (“sn” from snow, and the “irt” from dirt). Tons of topsoil. A field near Raymond, Minnesota, had lost so much wind-blown soil that only the tracks of the Burlingon-Santa Fe Railroad provided border between the shoulder of Highway 23 and the actual field. Land Grant Universities and other sources, from Kansas to Canada, and from Indiana to Montana and the Dakotas, are publishing emergency actions for farmers that include mulching with straw and manure, or by some form of mid-winter tillage. It’s much too late for sensible cover crop options, or in leaving crop residue in place.

Those “conservationists” typically will blame a lack of snow cover for the wind blown erosion rather than take personal responsibility for making sensible preventive measures.

One of those soil specialists, Dave Franzen, of North Dakota State University said in an article published in Farm Progress Magazine, “I am astonished how many growers think that most of the (soil lost from) wind erosion ends up in their ditch, and all they need to do is scrape it out and put it back onto the field. The ditch silt is only a small fraction of the soil lost. Most of the soil lost to wind travels for hundreds and thousands of miles. Ocean researchers track the buildup of sediment on the ocean floor over time. Wonder where the sediment comes from? Your fields.”

Franzen expressed dismay that farmers were taking out field wind breaks, especially if they don’t plan to leave a lot of residue on the surface of their fields in the future. Such is the case in the Minnesota prairie where miles of piles of former field windbreaks and groves await burning. While more land is laid open for more corn to be planted, little is left to prevent wind erosion.

Between the snirt and the demise of bees and other pollinators because of a changing plant profile due to commodity mono-cropping and the use of Bt-flavored GMO crops with built-in systemic insecticides, our “original conservationists” would take a major beating on this cold, windblown day. Conservation-minded people would care more for their topsoil and for the bees and other pollinators absolutely necessary for growing their crops. Yet we saw no cover crops and very little crop residue left from the fall harvest. Winds were rumbling across the prairie in gusts to 40 mph, lifting particles of exposed topsoil in their wake. When this settles, the snirt we saw will be covered by more snow and topsoil.

With land being sold for more than $8,000 an acre you would think our Original Conservationists and True Environmentalists would care more for their investments. You would think they would also care about leaving precious topsoil for a future generation … like the next one, if not for those who come after.

As for the bees and other pollinators, this is a topic for another discussion.

“The nation that destroys its soil destroys itself.” Franklin D. Roosevelt

     When I re-entered the gym full of crafters back in December, my neighbor to my right with the scroll saw art was hovered over my table of framed prairie prints and calendars.
    “I’m so sorry,” he said as I walked up. “I just brushed against this and it fell from the table and your frame broke.”
    He was frantically working to re-glue one of the four framed images on which I had not had time to install the corner stabilizers. Fortunately the glass hadn’t shattered. When I turned it over to see which of my images would obviously have to be pulled from the show, there was barely any surprise. My Penstemon grandiflorus, or giant beardstongue.
    This plant and I have an odd history of sorts, one that began a few years ago in my attempt at bringing to life a native prairie garden in back of my home in Clara City. My garden was like a very special Christmas; gifts that were startling visual, were “presented” for almost daily unwrapping, and were usually quite interesting.
    These gifts usually came near dawn as I habitually took my first cup of morning tea by making a slow walk around this garden I’d planted in the disturbed spoils of soil resulting from the installation of a geothermal heating system. My previously beautiful “glacial till” was now mixed with subterranean gravel, probably not perfect for a prairie and less so for many other offerings this side of Phoenix. Yet, my little prairie was setting root in many interesting and surprising ways.
    When Sally Finzel of Morning Sky Greenery provided a list of native prairie plugs of grasses and forbs for the garden it was like looking at a list of words from a foreign language–Latin, to be exact. Over the years I had grown fond of wind-swept prairie grasses, especially Indian grass, and like many I adored coneflowers. All those other plugs we pried into the rocky mixture of clay and till were what offered all those many Christmas-y-like surprises — changing from day to day, and as I would learn later, year to year, as prairies do.
    One sleepy early morning in late May as I slowly made my way around the rock perimeter of the little prairie garden I came to a sudden stop to stare in disbelief of what appeared to be a scene straight from a sci-fi movie. There, between cupped sturdy leaf shelves, were four to five regally crowned stalks, each looking as if they had magically and perfectly captured giant green teardrops from a tall prairie goddess, each trailing a curly tail reaching toward the heavens. These “platforms” of magical teardrops stair-stepped their way up the smooth, green stalks.

    With what had become an almost daily occurrence, down went the teacup as I fetched my camera. My focus was on this unworldly beauty, of these magical characteristics of this unknown plant. This image has intrigued me ever since. My intention was to place the image in my next prairie calendar. My only trepidation was in not actually knowing what plant offered this visual magic.
    Later in June of the same summer I photographed bumble bees bullying their way deep into lavender  blossoms that were at least in inch or two in length, much like a child does while crawling into a parent’s sleeping bag. The burly bees would simply disappear inside the blossoms for long moments before budging back out to fly away.
    Images of the bees and the unworldly sci-fi plant were among the possible calendar images I was showing my artist cousin and my wife last August when we noticed that the waxy, egg-shaped leaves in both images were identical. Another friend with immense knowledge of prairie plants immediately identified the plant. “Oh, that’s giant beardstongue,” she said.

    A moment of research indicates that the plant is rather common to native prairies, though it is seemingly more common to the High Plains than the warm grass prairies. It is found in the more rocky areas of Minnesota where the glacial moraine apparently stopped,  and along the Minnesota River valley. As the beardstongue was telling me, I was beginning to discover there was a whole lot about the prairies of the past I either didn’t know, hadn’t realized or even noticed despite so much time spent afield.
    My intentions were seemingly always trumped by more colorful or timely images, so when the possibility came for putting together an exhibition at Java River in Montevideo of my photographic series of Ghosts of the Prairie, the magical beardstongue image was among one of the first I sought to print. The time had arrived to move this image from bridesmaid to bride.
    Less than a month before the show this was among the framed prints I took to the show in Maynard, and it was hardly surprising to find this image as the one to have been nudged from the table. My crafter friend was quite apologetic and was intently using what he called his magical glue to put the frame back together.
    “I’ve tried that glue before,” I told him, “and it just won’t hold. So, really, don’t worry about it.”
    Before the doors opened for the little craft show, I took the broken frame and the photograph of those magical green teardrops of the mysterious prairie goddess back to the car.
    Her time would come. That is how it is with magic.   

She wasn’t real fond of “Kale Yes Acres.” Nor did “Pleasant Pheasant Farm” get the nod.

What’s a man to do?

Frankly, I hadn’t given much thought to the naming of our farm. Didn’t see much need. Yet, my dear Belle of Vermont believed we needed a name for the farm. “What about this?” she would say. Perhaps it was the form of my smile.

My suggestions contained more Teflon than Velcro it seemed.

“Maybe we should just have a naming dinner party,” she suggested as we sipped wine one night, which sent us into an impromptu brainstorming moment on who of our many friends might be of the best help. While we couldn’t agree on a farm name, nor the best gathering of brainstormers, we did agree on who we would want as a facilitator.

This went on for weeks. Often in the kitchen after one of my walks, or when she came in from her work in the garden … after quiet muse time.

The Belle had a farm with a name down in Vermilion, SD. Flying Tomato Farm. She had no desire to move the name north. She held forth that naming our farm was important, and that cute, pun-like names, which happens to be my forte, just wouldn’t work. Naming a farm provides an image, perhaps even a brand. “Farms need names,” she insisted.

Back home in the 1950s my father went through some trepidation himself before settling on Meadowview Farm as its name. Our family farm was split almost equally between crop and grazing land, although the plan was seemingly to have just enough corn to sustain his cattle through the winter months, with the other crops grown for rotational purposes. His love was beef cattle, and his relaxation was saddling up on summer evenings to ride alone through the hilly back country to check on the herd. So the name was equally poetic and appropriate.

We have no hills here on our 14 acre spread. Of those, only eight acres are considered tillable. We made an easy and early decision between us to place those acres into native prairie with help from the local Pheasants Forever chapter and the SWCD. My guess is that about another acre will be devoted to the Belle’s vegetable farming after the spring thaw. Our eye is on a permaculture-like existence, with perhaps a farm stay or artist’s retreat with our out buildings — which might even include a yurt.

We have many dreams for such a small spot of earth. We find it exciting to see what shakes out. So naming our farm does carry a significance. One recent afternoon the Belle strode into our office with a purpose, grabbed a marker and wrote a name onto her faithful flip chart. “Listening Stones Farm,” it read.

Hmmmm.

There is a history here on the farm. When our friend, Kurt Arner, came to clear our grove of buckthorn and a half century of deadwood, he suggested a trail be cut through the upper half. Since we had discussed doing this beforehand, it was an easy decision. His  traversing trail concluded with a wooded loop at the far end.

I asked if he could cut one of those trees into a bench. He did, and we called it our “listening bench” in honor of Sigurd Olson’s “Listening Point.” Not just a title for a book, but Listening Point was an actual point on 26 acres on the shores of Burnside Lake near Ely. Here “he could look out over the wide-open spaces of the lake, listen to the birds, watch the sunset, and regain some balance in a life that had become more and more hectic at a time when most people begin to think about retirement,” reads a dedicated website.

Our bench is comprised of two portions of a log Kurt V-ed before centering a portion of the same weathered trunk into the grooves. He then sliced off the top third to create the bench, which abutted another fallen tree for a natural staunch backing. No wide open spaces, nor a view of a lake, yet it is a fine place to escape what life can throw at you at times, surrounded on all sides by trees and a protective canopy.

Also on our farm were two outbuildings long past saving. We found an excavator who brought in a large machine to dig a hole where he could deposit the spoils of the two buildings for burning. Embedded in the foundation beneath the century-old granary — yes, we found hand scrawled messages on the painted red barn wood that read, “Changed oil July 1911” — were several boulder-sized glacial stones he set to the side beneath the canopy of a tree we had saved from the saw.

These stones were, I believe, her inspiration, and a fine inspiration at that. Our farmland lies on the cusp of the moraine of the last glacier, and the rocks likely came from this land. Several similar sized boulders were unearthed in the cleared grove. Rocks, or stones, form the name of this county, and are a prominent physical feature of the river valley.

“Stones are what brought us together,” said the Belle. “People talk about Big Stone Lake, and of the soil. Stones just don’t get a fair shake.”

So, what’s in a name? For us, the eons of heritage of our small, appropriately named farm.