Hi everyone. Today’s post was written by Claire Morrical, one of our two 2024 Hubbard Fellows. Claire hails from Peoria, Illinois,and has been out here in the Great Plains since her Fellowship started in early February this year. She’s full of energy, questions, and ideas, and – as you’ll see in her post – is always trying to engage with and learn from the people around her. I hope you enjoy her writing. – Chris

Why you should talk to strangers, specifically about prairies.

By Claire Morrical, 2024 Hubbard Fellow

One Sunday, a few weeks ago, I found myself at Perkins Restaurant and Bakery at 10:00 PM with a plate of blueberry pancakes and my laptop in front of me. Our internet had been out for a couple days, the cafes were closed, and I was hoping to get some work done. As it turns out, Perkins is surprisingly inhabited at 10:00 PM and an ability to focus in busy spaces which had impressed my middle-school janitor was absent that night. As I was packing up to leave, having thrown in the towel, a woman in the booth behind me asked what kind of laptop I had. It looked lightweight and she was thinking about getting one. An hour later, I was still at Perkins, twisted around in the booth, chatting.

Among other topics, we talked about our jobs. She had worked in air traffic control for 25 years, having taken the opportunity on a whim before discovering that she was really good at it and really enjoyed it. I know very little about air traffic control, but she was clearly passionate about her career.

We’ll get to prairies soon, I promise.

But first – air traffic control is an unsurprisingly complex system, but one that varies from airport to airport, from much simpler setups at small airports, to a highly complex system with dedicated runways and landing strips at large airports like Chicago’s O’Hare. The job of air traffic control is to separate and direct planes as they move through the airspace and approach airports. In more complex airports, they’re passed from controller to controller who guides them as they get closer to or further from the airport. I learned that at large airports like O’Hare, pilots don’t even have time to repeat directions back to the controller because instructions come in so fast and so many planes are being directed through the airspace.

I would not have considered myself particularly interested in aviation or airspace control, but it was fascinating to learn about it from someone so happy to talk about her work.

In return, I gushed about our Platte River Prairies, explaining why disturbances like fire and grazing were so important to grassland health and biodiversity and explaining grazing practices like patch-burn and open-gate grazing.

She told me she would never drive by a prairie and look at it the same way again.

We parted ways, both apologizing for our rambling and holding each other hostage at the Perkins, but both clearly pleased with the interaction.

A week later, I was sitting in Daily Dose, a local coffee shop, again with my laptop (but fortunately no internet outage at home), when my table neighbor and I struck up a conversation over Nicholas Cage-themed Christmas gifts. Soon I was sharing about an oral history project I was working on to document restoration work and lessons learned by past TNC employees. Shortly after, they listened attentively as I explained the basics of how a prescribed fire works, accompanied with a hand drawn diagram. Again, we parted ways, happy to have learned something new and with a slightly different perspective on things.

This is all to say that it never ceases to delight me how eager we as people are to learn from others who speak lovingly and sincerely about the things they care about. Isn’t that why we’re reading this blog? And it’s a good reminder of how much power I have even in my personal life to make a little bit of change and get people to care a little bit more about prairies and conservation by speaking lovingly and sincerely.

So, the next time you strike up conversation with a stranger in a Perkins at 10:00 PM, take a few minutes to tell them about prairies! Chances are, you’ll both part ways a little wiser, with a slightly different perspective, and caring a little more about something you never thought to care about.

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Here are a few more photos Claire has taken since coming to Nebraska.