When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
The Peace of Wild Things, Wendell Berry
Where do you go when the world becomes too much? What sanctuary, what safe haven beckons? Where a wood drake and heron reliably may be found to provide comfort. Perspective. Hope.
For me, that place is Midewin. Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie. The name Midewin derives from Potawatomie Healing Society and perfectly captures the fundamental essence of the place — a prairie land dug up for farmland, transformed into the world’s largest military arsenal, now returning back to prairie.
Soon after Midewin’s establishment in 1996, I showed up for the very first volunteer workday — to establish the first native seed beds. Since then I’ve been involved in various ways, experiencing first hand the healing of this land.
In return, the land heals me. Provides comfort. Perspective. Hope. I know where I am likely to find the wood drake. And the heron. The sandhill cranes, the bison and the Virginia bluebells. The loggerhead shrikes, the spring ephemerals and the autumn asters.
I know exactly where to find the Witness Tree. The towering bur oak that anchored an original boundary line and thereafter witnessed the transformation of the land over the course of 150 years. Over the past few years, this ancient oak was a great comfort to me. A touchstone. Even as it declined in health, which paralleled my father’s declining health. My father has died. So, too, the oak. This day, however, basking in the memory of my father under the bare-rib canopy of the oak, I am heartened to find several sapling oaks, fenced off from the girdling nibbles of various critters, promising the next generation of trees to witness the evolution of this land for the next century and a half.
This day, I seek the comfort of grassland birds. I return to Tract 114, where for years I monitored an abundance of bobolinks, dickcissels, Henslow’s grasshopper and savannah sparrows, and more. Most of the birds, I knew, would have departed for the season, though I might luck out and spy or hear some eastern meadowlarks. I was a shocked to find Tract 114 radically transformed — from cattle pasture to harvested soybean field. Shock quickly gave way to recognition and gratitude. Restoring 23,000 acres of land back to prairie doesn’t happen all at once. Mostly it happens parcel by parcel. For years, Tract 114 was maintained as cattle pasture, which not only provided a habitat favored by certain grassland birds, it generated a little income for the restoration effort. Transitioning pasture to soybeans is an important restoration step toward prairie. A year or two as a soybean field provides for a relatively clean, weed-free slate for reseeding the prairie. A harvested soybean field may appear shocking at first, but a glimpse of a northern harrier, flying low and slow over the shorn field presages the imminent return of the prairie plants and the grassland birds I love.
Following the recent election, I don’t sleep well. I wake too easily and often, filled with despair for the world — for what I love and value, for the future. I haven’t yet been able to process my thoughts and feelings. Invited recently to speak at an environment conference, I found myself emotionally raw, at a loss what to say to the hundreds of people gathered. I strove to convey some glimmer of hope in the intersection of nature and art, but I suspect my words rang hollow.
As Ecclesiastes reminds us, “For everything there is a season…a time to keep silence, and a time to speak.” To keep silence comes first. To find one’s voice again by coming into the the peace of wild things.
And so I come to Midewin. And so I walk, many miles through its past, its present and its future. I know where to look and I do indeed find the wood drake, its colors resplendent amid the prairie’s tawny tones. I find the great blue heron and marvel, as I always do, at the unbroken stillness of bird and water.
I visit the ancient oak. I count 21 species of birds. I capture the silhouettes of prairie plants against the uncertain sky. For a moment, I am free.
