- Special Edition - A Thanksgiving Prayer for Tandy Hills Natural Area

Prairie Notes are monthly photo/journal observations from Tandy Hills Natural Area by Founder/Director, Don Young. They include field reports, flora and fauna sightings, and more, mixed with a scoop of dry humor and a bit of philosophy. They are available free to all who get on the FOTHNA email list.

A Thanksgiving Prayer for Tandy Hills Natural Area

Prairie Notes - Special Edition

November 25, 2010

Thanksgiving Day:

Thanks for the Trout Lilies whose hopeful blooms remind that spring will indeed come again for them and for us

thanks for the Wild Turkeys that appear on Spring mornings to forage on seeds and insects by day and roost in the trees by night -

thanks for the people who actually walk the prairie hills and even more for those who never go but love them just for existing -

thanks for the Hawks that remind me to look up and for sharpening my senses and those of the White-wing Dove and Cotton-tail rabbit –

thanks for the Owls, the Raccoons the Rat snakes the Bats and the Opossums in their nocturnal survival struggle -

thanks for the Purple Coneflower and American Basketflower for waving the patriotic flags of nature mystics –

thanks for prairie perfume of late summer, that mix of damp limestone, Sage, Sumac, Pennyroyal and Juniper that Chanel will never capture –

thanks for the Barnett Shale that reminds me to protect our prairie treasure from those who see only that which they can take to the bank -

thanks for the millions of Tiger Swallowtail eggs that remind me to look deeper with my eye and my heart -

thanks for the Milkweed seed-pods that burst with flying seeds so efficiently, so reliably and so symbiotically with the Monarch Butterfly –

thanks for that single, solitary Purple Paintbrush that bloomed unexpectedly on November 7, 2010, just when I needed it -

thanks for the Indian Grass, Turkey-foot, Little Bluestem and Sky-drop Aster for their amber autumn waves and purple prairie majesty -

thanks for the prairie hills themselves, the ever-threatened hills, that keep pulling me back to their nurturing wheel of life.

~ Don Young, 2010

Inspired by, Thanksgiving Prayer, by William S. Burroughs, November 28, 1986. http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/modlang/carasi/thanksgivingprayer.htm