The Land

    Today was a cozy, relaxing day in the car as we drove from De Smet South Dakota to Percival, Iowa.  I rested in my car seat, and for a change of scenery, went into my little pink dugout.  When I woke up I looked out at the blue, blue sky and the green, green fields.

My little pink dugout

Blue, blue sky

  

Green, green fields of soybeans

    As we drove today Tia Judy and Amanda thought about the transformation of the land over the last 150 years.  Little dogs like me understand soft damp grass to run and roll in, insects to chase and play with, and animal tracks to sniff and follow.
 

Running in the grass

 
    This is what Tia Judy and Amanda were thinking:
Miles and miles of beautiful prairies were settled over the years after The Homestead Act of 1862 gave land to people if they would develop it.  So the prairie grasses and flowers were cleared for farming.  Today we see corn, oat, wheat and soy bean fields, and cattle everywhere. The treeless prairie was transformed as saplings were planted to provide windbreaks. Little is left of the land that once was.  Native Americans live on Reservations, there are hardly any buffalo, and there is just a tiny portion of the prairie grasses left.
 

Corn fields

    When Laura wrote her books she described in words what life was like in a settler’s family.  When we go to visit the sites we see the living history - both actual and replicated sites where Laura lived.  We have seen dugouts, shanties, log cabins and houses.  We have seen clothes, toys, books, kitchen wares and tools that Laura and her family would have used.
 

Dug-out

 
    But it is hard to imagine the land as it was.  In Pepin, the little house is not in a big woods.  The trees were cut down for farming. In Walnut Grove and here in De Smet there are no prairies.  The grasses were cleared for farming, and trees were planted where there had been none.
    It is not enough to have books and houses and artifacts.  De Smet, the little town on the prairie where Laura lived, is reintroducing prairie grasses so that visitors can take long walks on the quiet trails with the gentle breezes, buzzing insects, soaring birds and prairie animals.  They have joined the US Prairie Pothole Joint Venture, a waterfowl management plan to protect and enhance over a million acres of marshes, lakes and prairies.

 

Prairie grasses, part of the Joint Venture

Natural sloughs amid farm land

    Amanda says that we cannot leave De Smet without mentioning one more sound – that of the whistle of the trains going through town.  It was the railroad that brought Pa to De Smet.  Without the railroad the land could not have been transformed.  Trains brought wood for houses, coal for fuel, meat and tools so the farmers could transform the land.  It also meant that Laura’s family was transformed from almost completely independent farmers to people who were interdependent. 

I still don’t think I understand, but I know I still love the big sky and the green grasses