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  • An Alphabet of Here:A Wisconsin Prairie Sampler
  • Alison Townsend (bio)

A is for New England Aster

Purple stars fallen to earth, they bloom around the autumn equinox, shining out from the faded gold of prairie grasses. Delicate-looking, but hardy, their rayed petals surround goldfinch-yellow hearts that glow like small lanterns. They comfort me as I walk up the dirt drive at dusk. Native Americans called them "the flower that brings frost," as if they were floral shamans, ushering in the dark season. They provide nectar for migrating monarchs that I have seen balanced upon the blooms like chips of stained glass fallen from heaven. The prairie is hushed and still as butterflies sip sweetness, the stars for which asters are named coming out overhead.

B is for Big Bluestem

Quintessential plant of the tall-grass prairie, it is what pioneers saw and thought resembled waves, the famous "sea of grass." It grows eight feet tall, with roots up to twelve feet deep, and has reddish-brown seed heads that look like gilded turkey feet. I have read that it once grew so thickly it hid herds of bison or cattle. When I lie down in its rough, straw-scented gold, I feel as if I could vanish into something else entirely — ceremonial time rolling through me like a deep, green ocean.

C is for Canada Geese

At dusk, they drift in across the fields in great fleets, flying to the waters of Island Lake for the night. Their sleek, black heads and necks are accented by a smart, white chin strap; they look dressed for a formal party. But their honk is the sound of pure wildness. I've watched [End Page 54] geese my whole life. Their V-shape has been etched into the strata of my psyche from the time I first lifted my eyes to their trailing black ribbons, stunned by the beauty of great migrations — how they make us stop for a moment, temporal, the skein of our own lives fluttering there in the sky. At night, with one male standing sentinel, the geese murmur like pilgrims down on the lake, their voices an undercurrent in my dreams.

D is for Drumlin

The word means "littlest ridge," and it is what we live on top of, our house settled into its northern end. Composed of debris from other places, left behind like geologic midden heaps when the glacier stopped just south of here, then retreated, drumlins are typically tear-shaped. I read recently that they usually occur in groups called "swarms," though ours is solitary, which makes me wonder if it's really a drumlin. They are the perfect land-form for someone, for me, who has lived too many places and feels forever displaced, perpetually homesick. When I press myself into the ground here, it whispers a story of uprootedness, memory, sadness, home.

E is for Glacial Erratic

On the crest of our back hill lies a boulder picked up somewhere far away by the glacier and left behind as it melted, the lobe of ice that covered this area like a great white thumb slowly disappearing. The glacial erratic is a stranger here, like me. Bands of quartz ripple through the darker granite, like waves in the shallow sea that once covered Wisconsin. Does the rock remember the taste of salt, or being heaved up and left behind by the glacier? On more than one occasion, sitting on the boulder after running, a mysterious force pulsed through me, one that left my spine tingling, as if a silver line of energy had run through my body toward the stone. Both thrilling and unnerving, it told me, in no uncertain terms, that the boulder is holy.

F is for Fireflies

Like tiny lamps held by fairies, their luciferin glow dips and bobs over the prairie on July evenings, many more of them here than above fields planted with Roundup Ready corn. Males in the air, females on the ground, they blink on and off in a code it seems I can almost understand, having studied it since I was child, watching them flicker inside a Mason jar with holes punched in the...

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