As extremely frigid temperatures finally slipped away yesterday, the two new Hubbard Fellows (stay tuned for introductions next week) and I spent some time exploring restored prairie and wetlands. Our Platte River Prairies land steward, Cody, joined us for a while too. We had a grand old time wandering and discussing prairie ecology and restoration. When we came across a wetland slough that looked particularly attractive, we switched topics, got cameras out, and started talking about photography.

I assume the the water in the slough was still mostly unfrozen because it was being actively fed by slowly flowing groundwater. Even so, after a week of temperatures hovering below zero, I was surprised to see patches of slush and open water.

As we neared the slough, we watched a pheasant sneak into a patch of cattails, hunched over and doing its best to avoid attention. For fun, I went over to see if I could flush it out, but the only result was that my feet got wet when I stomped into the cattails and punched right through the thin ice. Serves me right.

Over the next half hour or so, the Fellows acquainted themselves with the camera, lenses, and tripod each was assigned as part of their fellowship. Trying to remain accessible for questions but giving them some space to experiment on their own, I started exploring the edge of the wetland with my own camera. Soon, I was kneeling down to photograph frozen bubbles floating in small patches of open, adding wet knees as a complement to my already soggy feet. Frozen bubbles though!

I probably could have kept photographing frozen bubbles for another half hour or more, but we had more exploring to do. We did some winter plant identification, followed and tried to interpret tracks in the snow, discussed unexplained patterns of plant establishment across the site, and generally enjoyed tromping around in the deep snow. Goldenrod galls, leftover spirals of dodder flowers on sunflower stems, a cluster of deer bed sites, and tracks of sparrows around ragweed plants were just a few of our sightings. Toward the end of the hike, I got more of my body wet when I threw myself prone on the ground to photograph a cache of Canada wildrye seeds left by a foraging mouse of some kind. In other words, it was a great afternoon!

Thanks to everyone who has contributed stories this week about how they first encountered or fell in love with prairies. If you’d like to share, please add yours to the comment section of my previous post. Regardless of whether you include your own story, I’d encourage everyone to go back and what others wrote. I’ve enjoyed reading all of them. Thanks again.

Lastly, best wishes to all of you struggling with the cold this week. I hope your local temperatures are rising like ours are.

As I’ve been pondering various ways to draw the public into prairies and conservation, I’ve been thinking about various ways to first engage someone who has never thought or cared about prairies. What’s the magic word or experience that might inspire someone to see prairies as something other than flat, boring places full of grass?

Because everyone is at a different place in terms of how they currently think about nature, the answer will obviously vary for each person. Despite that, I wonder if there are some common themes. I’m hoping to use today’s blog post to get feedback from you on that topic.

What was it that first got you interested in prairies? Were you fortunate enough to grow up among prairie people? Or was there a particular event, or series of incidents, that brought prairies into your consciousness as places worth paying attention to? I’d like to see if there are some common themes that would be instructive. If you’re willing, please use the comments section below to share a (short) story about your first positive experience with prairies. What was it that drew you in?

I’ll tell you my own story to get the ball rollling. I spent much of my early childhood surrounded by the prairies of western Nebraska. Between kindergarten and fourth grade, I lived in the panhandle, where grasslands were/are a significant portion of the landscape. I saw prairies whenever we drove out of our small town on the way to someplace else and I camped and fished next to prairies when our family went to nearby lakes on weekend trips.

While grasslands formed the backdrop for that part of my life, I really didn’t think about them or actually spend much time exploring them. I loved the outdoors, but the nature I enjoyed were the lakes we fished in, the streams where I hunted for snails and crayfish, and the trees I camped beneath. Later, when our family moved to Lincoln, my outdoor interests were similar and prairies still didn’t really catch my attention, even though I was around them a lot.

The event that turned me into a prairie person happened in my sophomore year of college when my friend Stephen Winter came up to me after ecology class. He said, and I’m paraphrasing, “Hey, do you ever think about prairies?”

I said something like, “Uh, no, I guess not.”

“Yeah, neither do most people. Isn’t that a little weird? It’s the dominant ecosystem of Nebraska!”

He then told me that he was starting to explore prairies and learn about the plants and other species living in them. Would I want to come out sometime and poke around?

To be honest, what hooked me the most was the fact that prairies were an underdog. Like most kids that age, I was attracted to any opportunity to push back against the majority opinion. Prairies, huh? Ok, I’ll look into them.

That brief conversation led to me taking some great trips with Steve and other friends, but, more importantly, it flipped a switch in my brain that removed whatever metaphoric blinders had been keeping me from noticing the prairies all around me. And they were ALL AROUND ME. How had I not noticed before?

Over the next several years, Steve and I, along with a number of other like-minded friends (or people we recruited) took over the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Wildlife Club and forcibly turned it into a prairie advocacy and management organization. We were insatiable in our desire to learn about and help with anything related to prairies.

In particular, I became fixated on the obsession most Nebraskans seemed to have with trees and tree planting. Ignoring the uncomfortable truth that I’d personally overseen the planting of 500 trees as part of my Eagle Scout project just a few years earlier, I railed against trees, tree encroachment, and tree planting. I was pretty obnoxious.

All that passion, which has continued (and, fortunately, matured) to this day was sparked by one comment/invitation from a friend that simply opened my eyes to the fact that prairies existed and that few people seemed to care. Another major development came a year or two later when I got the first macro lens for my camera and started noticing the incredible diversity of insects and other tiny organisms in prairies. Within the world I’d learned to love, I discovered yet another world few people seemed to pay attention to.

About 30 years after Steve changed my world with a simple question, I’m known to many people as “The Prairie Ecologist” (a title I like except that it implies I’m the only one, which is happily far from true). I’d like to think I would have discovered prairies one way or the other, but who knows? Maybe if Steve hadn’t talked to me that day, I’d now be a fisheries scientist or (shudder) even a forester.

I’m totally kidding, of course. I’d never be a forester. (Again, I’m totally kidding. Foresters are terrific…as long as they’re not doing forestry in prairies.)

Where was I? Oh yeah. So that’s my story. What’s yours? How did you come to discover prairies or fall in love with them? What was your trigger? Share your story in the comments section and we can all enjoy reading each other’s tales of prairie love. More importantly, I really am fascinated to see if some common themes emerge that might help us think about how to bring others into the fold. Thanks for your help.

(Also, thank you Steve.)