In terms of history in America, there are 5 known time periods, beginning with the Clovis civilization. What makes the LLL a big deal is that it was inhabited by humans during all 5... the only known place in America who can use that little tidbit as their claim to fame. But, I guess what I find even more enjoyable about the place is its present day story--an irregular fairy-tale in the making.
You see, the LLL has fallen victim to all kinds of hate. It's been pumped, depleted, driven on, dog-walked, and pretty much anything else that's bad for nature business you can think of. Let's just say that the people who done it wrong, knew not what they were doing. Until preservation of the LLL began around 10 years ago, it was chock full of Mesquite* and Salt Cedar. Any and all water was sucked dry, and native plants were nowhere to be found. The LLL was a dry forest where prairie should've been.
The present is what makes up the fairy-tale part. Now that people have discovered that the LLL is kind of a big deal, funding has been pumping into the property little by little, and restoration has begun. The LLL crew practices prescriptive burning. Mesquites have been plucked out by the fire, native seeds underground have been germinating, water is returning, and the prairie is finding her way back home to the LLL slowly but surely. Switch grasses, western wheat grasses, Hackberries, and black willows are all finding a new breath of life with each non-native ash juniper, Siberian elm, kochia, Russian thistle or salt cedar that disappears through the restorative processes. It's not that she's completely unpacked her bags, but the prairie is indeed on the path towards happily ever after. Next week, our class is partaking in a service project to help the LLL crew help the prairie continue to find her happy ending.
prescribed burning at the LLL (photo taken by and borrowed with permission from Matthew McEwen)
One of my favorite parts about our university's honors program is that we sit outside to learn. Or, if our lesson is taught in a classroom, we later go out into the world to meet what we've learned in 3-dimensions. Or, we simply learn about the outdoors, outdoors. Having a classroom in the LLL encompasses all three into one. We walk around the LLL's paths while learning about prairie dog calls. We learn the importance of the prairie and its conservation/preservation in a LLL classroom, and then we're dismissed to walk out of the doors and meet our lesson for the day face-to-face. We learn about history, on a piece of history. In our courses, our education is not simply a fairy-tale we learn about in text-books -- we open the doors to the world, the fairy-tale becomes reality, and we get our feet dirty in it.
*Mesquite: native to the prairie, but forests of it are not.
