The Prairie at Prairie Park in June

The other evening, I realized I had never looked at prairie over time the way I have the Kaw River or even Downtown Lawrence, for example. As the old established prairie at Prairie Park revealed, the impression that a well-balanced prairie is a grassy place clearly has a lot to do with 'when' you look as well as 'where.' On the other hand, I had never seen such a profusion of wild flowers as I did on the last Tuesday in June of this year.

I shouldn't be surprised that seeing and understanding any particular thing takes time and attention. Or that I am inclined to forget that basic truth in various instances. My regular walks have been invaluable in sharpening my awareness. But my ignorance about prairie systems remains. I do know a few things, but my primary advantage over people who routinely fail to notice almost everything is that when I saw that bit of prairie with my mindset, I was at least able to recognize my ignorance. Time and attention in this area would still be required to change my level of understanding of prairies.

I hope to make it to Prairie Park more often, but I like my current routine. Everyone chooses their own places that matter to them. Many people don't realize that the primary place they have chosen is in front of a screen (he said, as he typed those words). But I meant 'screen' as their primary window on the world. Second choice is their car window.

I see this as a serious underlying problem in modern culture. It's not just that people have a fundamental lack of awareness of nature, most barely understand the human-made environment around them - the ecology of infrastructure, for example.

I won't do more than state my hypothesis, but perhaps this lack of primary empirical perception in so many people is at the root of our culture's ready gullibility in political/social matters.

All that from less than an hour of walking through prairie.