A wedding toast to deep roots, hot fires, and hungry bison

Poster credit: Iowa DOT

It’s Saturday evening. I’m at my best friend’s wedding reception. The seat of honor right next to him. The best man. A big responsibility. The bride’s sister is concluding her teary remarks. This’ll be hard to follow. 

I have nothing written down. Just a vague idea of a concept I’d been mulling for most of the day. I rise, take the microphone. It’s go time…

Both the bride and groom are conservationists, like me. That should be no surprise to anyone. 

I wanted to say something fitting to their chosen profession. Something like, “may your love blossom like the compass plant growing tall in the prairie.” Or maybe, “may you both stand strong for each other like the oaks you work hard to conserve.” 

But that’s not how life works, is it? As much as I wanted to wish them perpetual sunshine, fluffy clouds, and rainbows for all their days, I know that’s not possible. And so did they. 

We prairie ecologists know that there is no restoration without disturbance. Healthy prairies are only made that way because of the fires that burn across them. Prairie-grown burr oaks only stand strong because of the fire scars they bare on their trunks. 

And as for being that compass plant standing tall and bright in the prairie sun? Well sometimes a bison comes along and bites off your head, stomps you down, and buries you under a pile of dung as it walks away without a second thought. 

That’s more like how life really is, isn’t it? And that’s how it should be. That’s the natural way of things and the older I get, the more I take comfort in that knowledge. 

Like the prairies and oaks, we all have to endure our share of fires in life. But that’s what makes us strong. Scar tissue is hard and there’s no growth without some pain. 

Without disturbance such as fire, even thriving prairies stagnate. They become burdened with the duff and detritus from previous years’ plant matter. An ever-thickening thatch layer forms at the soil surface, blocking out the sun and suppressing the growth of new plants. Habitat quality declines, plant diversity suffers, and the ecosystem weakens. 

There are all sorts of analogies I could make here. How the baggage from our past can suppress our growth and vigor. How a lack of diversity reduces resilience. How resistance to change or the maintaining of the status quo is often a recipe for stagnation, or worse. 

Until people like my friends come along and set that prairie on fire, bringing back a natural force to which the prairies are adapted. A force with which the prairies and oaks evolved here in our part of the world. A force that sends that old growth, that baggage from years past, up in smoke. A force that turns stagnation into ash that nourishes the soil for new growth, vigor, diversity, and life. So much life. 

On the surface, this looks like destruction. But we prairie managers know that what’s below the surface is as important, if not more so, than what you can see. 

So many good analogies here, aren’t there? 

You see, the roots of prairie plants often go as deep into the soil as the plant itself is tall. We’re talking six feet or more into the earth. With a foundation like that, disturbance like fire becomes something the prairie welcomes. 

In these columns, I often talk about my roots here in this community. My friends. My family. My colleagues and the organizations and special places that make this community what it is. 

Home.

What about those head biting, dung-leaving bison? Well, they certainly have had an ecological role in the development of the prairie over the centuries. All that grazing and trampling by those big herds was more disturbance. Breaking the soil surface, crunching up and smashing into the ground the thatch layer giving the soil microbes and fungi access to the dead plant material to do what they do best: turn biomass into soil. And that dung, well that’s just nutrients for new growth. 

These are the processes that, over the eons, created some of the richest soils on the planet. Soils we now use to feed and fuel the world. 

So as much as I wanted to wish my friends endless sunshine, I couldn’t. Instead, I raised my glass and said may their prairie fires burn hot, their bison be hungry, and their scars make them stronger. And through it all, may they always fall back on their roots which run deep – their friends, their family, their community, their shared love of the natural world. And may their love for each other grow as deep as the roots of the compass plant and as strong as the fire-hardened oak tree. 

Cheers!

This piece is from my regular newspaper column that runs monthly in three local papers.