Lessons from the Prairie

"The disappearance of a major natural unit of vegetation from the face of the earth is an event worthy of causing pause and consideration by any nation. Yet so gradually has the prairie been conquered by the breaking plow, the tractor, and the overcrowded herds of man…that scant attention has been given to the significance of this endless grassland or the course of its destruction. Civilized man is destroying a masterpiece of nature without recording for posterity that which he has destroyed." - John Ernest Weaver, North American Prairie


Lessons from the Prairie
encaustic mixed media
12x12 inches

The severity of weather patterns across the nation and across the globe has got all of us asking ourselves, what is going on? Possibly, yes, it is partly a natural part of climate change that just happens on its own. But to me, it only makes sense that how we treat and abuse the Earth can only have a profound effect on the winds, the rains, the droughts, and the storms.

After witnessing the severe flooding that happened in the neighborhood we were living in last year, I couldn't help but wonder how this could happen. My neighbor and I would discuss the possibilities while we tried to wrap our heads around the destruction that had just occurred and we kept returning to the fact that the area had changed quite drastically in the last 10 years. There had been a huge tract of land, over 1,000 acres, not too far away that had been undeveloped land. Well, it belonged to the Navy, and had miles of airstrips from what I understand. Then it was sold to developers the area turned into a shopping center surrounded by neighborhoods of huge houses. I am not against development, but it seems to me that such a huge change in the landscape has got to have an effect on the land's ability to take care of itself.

In the immediate area of where we were living, one could actually see changes that had also been occurring there as well. It had been a wooded neighborhood of modest ranch homes. But in the past 10 years of so, many of those homes had been bought and then made bigger because bigger is better in this day and age in the United States. Regrading of lots also occurred with the building up of larger homes. I remember when the water was coming down, how you could see the water running down to our lot and the immediate neighbors. Anyone who has been in Chicago and north suburbs will find this incredible because there are no hills. Like, none. No inclines of any kind that one would notice with the naked eye. But apparently we were at the bottom of an incline! I believe it was due from all the regrading.

I realize, I am rambling. Part of me thinks I should just post the painting and delete all this writing. I am not a scientist, climatologist, ecologist, or any other -ist. I am not qualified to speak to why the flooding occurred. But I witnessed this, experienced it and I can't help but have these questions follow me. These are the issues I was thinking about as I painted this particular painting. We need to be aware of the landscape around us and we cannot ignore these issues any longer. Prairies and open land have a huge natural storage capacity for rain water and snow melt. Now that the prairies are gone and the land has been developed into mega shopping centers and mega homes, where is the water supposed to go when there are these major storms hitting the area?

The dark image in the painting is a transfer from a photo of prairie grass that I took at a prairie preservation up in Lake Forest, IL. We need to heed the lessons we learn from the prairie.

"Without a complex knowledge of one’s place, and without the faithfulness to one’s place on which such knowledge depends, it is inevitable that the place will be used carelessly and eventually destroyed. - Wendell Berry