The thing about a blog is you write something and then afterward you think about what you wrote in a different way. Yesterday I wrote about burning prairies in the snow or cold. Why would anyone do that? They weren't good burns - patchy and slow burning. And today I realized they weren't my burns. They were burns where I was helping someone else who had to burn, even if the conditions were awful. Why? Because they had signed up for a government program and taken the money for seeding or clearing brush and now these back country Drs. Faustus had to pay the devil his due, or at least the appearance of his due, by burning when the agency said they must. I've never done that. I have burned when I wanted to or not. But I haven't taken the money. So I've never had help in seeding or clearing and maybe I haven't gotten as much done as I might have otherwise. Maybe there's prairie or savannah that I could have cleared and saved if I'd been willing to sign the paper. But that didn't seem like the prairie spirit to me, or maybe I'm just too much of a natural rebel to do it like someone else told me.
But I also realize that the prairie isn't really mine to save or lose. Walking in the dry, brown bluestem and gramma tonight and looking at the relentless assault of the honeysuckle and cherry, I realized that I'm part of a holding pattern, or maybe even just a pause in a long, slow retreat. The next person, if there is a next person, may take up where I've left off and the prairie will be the better for it. But if not, then at least I have had the pleasure of saving what I could in a way that I have enjoyed.
A prairie like life is a process, not a goal to be reached. There is no end state.
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