Daughmer Revisited

In Ohio, we lost our prairies.  They once swept across the vast landscape, grasses bent to wind under the blue skies of summer.  99.9% gone.  What the plow did not claim, settlement did.

I long for the prairie as one misses a lost loved one. There is something incredibly peaceful and satisfying about standing in the midst of  this native landscape.

 A man barely registers beneath these Bur Oak trees. This prairie savanna is filled with giants, to put our meager existence in perspective.

Yet, the details are endless, down to the smallest Dogbane flower where a Banded Hairstreak butterfly finds sustenance.  The mind blowing scale of great and small play out against the haunting sense of  stopped time.

While it is not yet open to the public, Daughmer Prairie is the newest of Ohio State Nature Preserves.  It is the culmination of many years of effort to protect this last piece of land that reflects the Ohio as the true native Americans saw it- and the way they maintained it with fire.

There will be a dedication program later this year, and I hope to keep you posted on this blessed patch of land.