(Bur Oak Book) John Pearson, Linda Scarth, Robert Scarth-Deep Nature_ Photographs Up by Abed

8/13/2019 (Bur Oak Book) John Pearson, Linda Scarth, Robert Scarth-Deep Nature_ Photographs Up by Abed

1/119


2/119


3/119

ii

There are at least

terrestrial snail

species in Iowa.


4/119

Deep NaturePhotographs by Linda Scarth and Robert Scarth

Essay by John Pearson

,


5/119

A Bur Oak Book

University of Iowa Press, Iowa City

Copyright by the University of Iowa Press

www.uiowapress.org

Printed inChina

Design by Kristina Kachele Design, llc

No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means without

permission in writing from the publisher. All reasonable steps have been taken to contact

copyright holders of material used in this book. Te publisher would be pleased to

make suitable arrangements with any whom it has not been possible to reach.

Te University of Iowa Press is a member of Green Press Initiative

and is committed to preserving natural resources.

Printed on acid-free paper

Photographs on pages viii, x, , , and show dewdrop refraction with coneflowers,

rain on maple leaf, lichen on Sioux quartzite, rattlesnake master, and sweet flag.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Scarth, Linda,

Deep nature: photographs from Iowa / photographs by

Linda Scarth and Robert Scarth; essay by John Pearson.

p. cm.(A bur oak book)

-: ---- (cloth)

-: --- (cloth)

. Nature photographyIowa. . Natural historyIowa.

I. Scarth, Robert, . II. Pearson, John (John A.). III. itle.

. '.dc


6/119


7/119

Treefrogs can change colors depending on their surroundings.


8/119

Every leaf is a miracle.


9/119


10/119

Small Places, Unbounded Spaces by John Pearson

The Photographs

Find, Celebrate, and Share by Linda Scarth and Robert Scarth

Photographers Note

Contents


11/119


12/119


13/119

Cotton-grass, which is not a grass but a sedge, lives in a few

fens in Iowa.


14/119

Sheeder Prairie Prequel

Numb with a day of dull driving on Interstate , I fumble with the Iowa road map. A

graduate student at Southern Illinois University, I left Carbondale this morningMay

, and have driven through a seemingly endless succession of cropfields in

Illinois and Iowa, with the discouraging breadth of Nebraska yet to come. I am on my

way to Wyoming for a summer job as a backcountry ranger in the Absaroka Wilderness

bordering Yellowstone Park. Now I am somewhere west of Des Moines and need to find

a place to camp, hopefully not far from the highway. I would especially like to find a park

with some natural habitat to explore before dark, but jaded from the lack of naturalplaces in this relentlessly agricultural landscape, I have begun to doubt that I will find

one. Glancing at the road map one last time during a moment stolen from the bug-

specked windshield, my eyes are suddenly arrested by a blue dot hovering in white space

only an inch from the thick green line of the interstate. Its pastel label quietly displays a

promising name: Sheeder Prairie.

Prairie!I know prairie, but only recently. Growing up in the Midwest, my exposure to

natural areas has been almost entirely of forest, because it is the only natural vegetation

of significant extent left after more than a century of farming and urbanization. In

my home state of Michigan, on the outskirts of Detroit, my childhood adventures

centered on a patch of woods bordered by suburban backyards and the county landfill

(a mysteriously treeless place). rees filled the pictures I took of natural places that

caught my fancy for a -H photography project. Becoming a naturalist at a local nature

Small Places, Unbounded Spaces


15/119

center, I learned the names of trees and forest wildflowers: oaks, maples, Solomons-seal,

sweet William. Now in college, I study forest ecology in the hills of southern Illinois,

measuring forests with diameter tapes wrapped around the trunks of trees.Ten I discovered prairie. Not in midwestern remnants missed by plows and cows

in cemeteries, railroad rights-of-way, and tiny postage-stamp preserves, not even in

the lectures of my biology professors as they described the demise of prairie under

the utilitarian press of agriculture, first by pioneer homesteaders and later by modern

industrial farms. My prairie awakening came thousands of miles from home, on the far

side of the Great Plains, where I had gone searching for western forest. As a student in

a Montana field ecology class last year, I sampled my way through a glorious gradient

of desert grasslands, foothill prairies, conifer forests, and alpine meadows. Early in

that sequence, prairie arrested my attention: so colorful, diverse, and wonderfully

big. Its wild aspect was an intoxicating contrast to the tame suburban habitats of my

midwestern homeland. Prairie at last appeared in my increasingly conscious quest for

wild and natural places.

So now I am in western Iowa, hunting for Exit . Finding it, I follow a zigzagging

route of rural roads through sparsely populated farmland to Sheeder Prairie State

Preserve. In the final mile of my approach, the day-long whine of smooth pavement

under my tires is replaced by the clatter of gravel on an unpaved road rising to a hilltop.

Te sun is low in the sky when I finally climb stiffly out of the car and step through

a gate into the prairie. It has been recently burned: short, green grass studded with

colorful, blooming forbs abounds where fire passed a month ago, while tall brownclumps of big bluestem and Indiangrass stand somberly in an unburned patch beyond.

In the fading light, I find porcupine grass, prairie phlox, and white sagewort . . . plus

many more I do not recognize from my experience in the Rocky Mountains. It takes

only five minutes to cross the tiny remnant and encounter the fence separating it from

freshly tilled cropland. I end my short hike on a quiet hilltop and watch evening slip

into night. Te sun is setting, the moon is rising; redwings are coming in, fireflies are


16/119

,

coming out. Lightning flashes silently from a distant thunderhead, illuminating a trio of

deer standing like ghosts against the black soil of the neighboring field, watching me. A

breeze brushes the dark landscape. Gazing at the quiet scene, I churn with ambivalencefor this prairie: love of its ambiance mixed with sadness for its loss.

o be prairie, really good prairie, it must embrace the horizons, John Madson wrote

in Te Running Country, one of many essays expressing his love for the prairie world.

As a postage-stamp preserve of only twenty-five acres, Sheeder Prairie cannot measure

up to that horizon-sweeping standard, but not saving it because it is too small to be

good prairie seems all wrong, too. Despite its tiny size, I sense traces of its original

diversity and wildness, a mystique that transcends size. Tats the contradiction Ive

been mulling: this prairie is small, but it still has magic. I know Madson would agree.

As I drift back to the gate, I recall someone telling me that Iowa employed an

ecologist whose job it was to look after prairie remnants and the other bits of

natural land that remained in this highly altered state, like trying to save the

world afterit was destroyed, he had lamented. Habitat loss and fragmentation

ecological culprits plaguing natural areas throughout the countryhave been

especially rampant in Iowa, whose abundance of gentle, fertile soil has facilitated

widespread conversion of natural land to agriculture. Sounds like an impossible task,

I murmur as I start my car and resume driving to Wyoming, I cant imagine who would

be up to it.

FenAs we drive over the last hill, it comes into view. Tere it is!A bright green mound of

vegetation gleams softly amid the black soil of the cropfield like an emerald dropped in

the dirt. Our excitement spikes even though we have learned to check our expectations,

the result of many disappointments with previous visits to seemingly promising places.

ime and again, we have visited sites whose dark, irregularly shaped images on aerial

photographs normally filled with the rectangular white blanks of cultivated land had

The fireweeds

flowers open first

at the bottom of

the spike; seedpods

form as the blossoms

open progressively

toward the top.


17/119

tantalizingly indicated that something was still there. . . only to find degraded patches

overrun with common weeds: ragweed, nettles, parsnip, foxtail. We are hunting for

something more significant: ladys slippers, gentians, cotton-grass, sage willow, grass ofParnassus, and other denizens of the boggy, peaty wetlands known as fens.

Quickly gathering our notebooks, maps, soil probe, and pH meter, we prepare to

hike away from the car toward what we hope will be a high-quality fen. On this August

morning in , botanist Mark Leoschke and I are in the first day of our fen foray

into Fayette County, one of several counties included in our third year of a statewide

inventory of fen wetlands in Iowa. Our inventory is driven by a desire to protect these

special wetlands and is facilitated by county soil maps depicting the locations of Palms

muck, an organic soil of highly decomposed peat and a reliable predictor of fens. Several

winters ago, we painstakingly scanned county soil maps, recording over a thousand

locations of this indicative soil series. Over seven hundred of them were eliminated from

further investigation when our inspection of aerial photographs revealed that they had

been drained and plowed. We are now in the process of checking the remaining three

hundred sites with field visits. As we draw closer to this one, we discern sedges and

cattails filling a gentle slope, harbingers of a hanging boga fen perched on a hillside.

Our pace quickens.

Entering the wetland, we experience the oddity of stepping uponto a suddenly wet,

soft, sloping surface. We find ourselves in a landscape of knee-high tussock sedges and

head-high cattails, but it is the lesser vegetation that immediately attracts our attention.

A galaxy of grass of Parnassus flowers seems to float above the ground, which nowquakes and shudders beneath our feet as we walk, star-struck at the cast of plant species

we are encountering. In all directions, there are tall green spikes of valerian, yellow

arches of Riddells goldenrod, and hoary splays of sage willow. At the far end of the site,

near a spring, Mark finds cotton-grass, its fluffy springtime fruits now reduced to wispy

tatters. Collectively, these water-loving, calcium-loving, organic soilloving species

fairly shout FEN! A quick probe of the soil confirms its saturated, organic nature, and


18/119

,

the pH meters reading of . verifies its nutrient-rich status. We have found a fen, a very

good one.

While Mark carefully collects voucher specimens of the rarest plant species, Iwander through the fen to compile a more comprehensive list, coming up with a

total of seventy-five species today. (Additions from future inventories by other

botanists will eventually double this figure.) During the survey, I enjoy a diversity

of architecture: the coarse, arching fronds of sensitive fern and the finely

dissected, erect ones of marsh fern; the tall, narrow, vertical leaves of blue-flag iris and

the short, rotund, horizontal ones of marsh marigold; the open, frilled flowers of fringed

gentian, open to all species of flies and bees, and the closed, unfringed ones of bottle

gentian, its tightly pinched opening passable only by powerful bumblebees. Even as I

examine a bottle gentian flower, it begins to wobble as if possessed, its walls deforming

and rebounding as an unseen bumblebee, sated with nectar, struggles to turn its bulky

body around inside the narrow throat, a hymenopteran bull in a stamen-studded pollen

shop. A moment later, the overlapping tips of the flower rotate apart as the bumblebee

pushes through the aperture and flies away, its hairy legs flecked with gentian pollen.

Meandering up the gentle slope of the fen, I reach a subtle crest. Looking back to

where Mark still crouches, I see I am on the highest point of the fen, the summit of a

mound of wet, quaking peat about ten acres in size. Casting my view in all directions, I

perceive that the fen is the highest point in nearly the entire landscape; only a subtle rise

to the south, in a neighboring cornfield, appears to be slightly higher. Unlike normal

wetlandspotholes, sloughs, swamps, and streamsthat occupy the lowest parts ofthe landscape where runoff flows, fens arise from groundwater seepage high on the

lay of the land. I know this intellectually, but the sight still seems surreal. In addition

to being marvelous, my view is also troubling: except for a sliver of untilled ground in

a nearby drainageway, the fen is everywhere bordered with cropland and far isolated

from the next nearest fen . . . an ark of nature awash and alone in a flood of rowcrop

agriculture. Recognizing that its surroundings will never again be unending prairie,

Bumblebees push

their way between

pale gentian petals to

harvest the pollen.


19/119

buffering this small, special place with benign land use, and someday reconnecting it

to other remnants are our best hopes for ensuring its survival in this hard-working

landscape.Finishing our surveys, Mark and I excitedly exchange accounts of our discoveries. It

is obviously one of the best fens we have encountered during our inventory. Like the

vast majority of the fens we have found, its fate rests in the decisions of the farmer

who manages this private land. We want to alert him to the ecological significance of

the fen and the importance of saving it, so we decide to drive to the nearby farmstead

and meet with him. Whats his name again? Mark asks as we climb into the car. We

make a practice of contacting all landowners to secure advance permission for our

visits, so I page through our notes to find the answer: Kauten . . . Bill Kauten. He

mentioned having a young daughter who might be interested in this sort of thing. I

think he said her name was Becky. Driving away from the field, I catch one last glimpse

of the fen before it disappears behind a wall of tall green corn. As we pull into the

driveway, it dawns on me that our short trip from the fen to the farmstead symbolizes

the long-term progression of our efforts from finding fens to protecting them. Teir

conservation future will not be assured until we recruit the willing support of farmers

and landowners. Where willingness exists, our job will be easy, but where willingness

is lacking, our charge will be to educate, convince, and respectfully persuade . . . to

cultivate willingness. We have worked hard to find the fens, but our biggest mission of

all has just begun.

Prairie

Emerging from bur oak woods, I step into yet another prairie opening, the biggest one

so far. Big bluestem, Indiangrass, little bluestem, lead plant, and wild rose gently brush

my legs as I amble toward a high point where I will try to get my bearings. Walking

through a bewildering mosaic of oak forest and tallgrass prairie spread across a dissected

landscape of steep hillsides and steeper ravines, distracted by head-high compass plants


20/119

,

and interrupted by cedar trees that compel me to duck and weave, I have lost track of

how many openings I have traversed since I started hiking this morning. Keeping one

eye on my pathway, I continue jotting colorful plant names into my notebook as I walk:

purple prairie-clover, redroot, blue-eyed grass, green-flowered milkweed. Tis is my

twenty-fifth prairie list since starting the Waterman Creek Prairie Inventory three days

ago and the last one needed to complete my sweep of the valley. I have found so many

prairie remnants in this complex of rugged glacial valleys along the Little Sioux River

in OBrien County that my note taking has progressed from a dutiful compilation of

species to a roll call of familiar friends. Arriving at the high point, I cap the page-filling

list with a brief description of the habitat: a series of small cedar savannas with a large

prairie at its south end. I squeeze the generalization into the narrow line between the

species list and todays date: June , .

Resuming my inventory, I move slowly across the big prairie opening toward another

wooded ravine. But instead of passing through a thickening band of prairie-killing

cedars like those rimming the previous openings, I find myself walking through a

scattering of stunted bur oaks, their lightly shaded bases lapped with prairie vegetation.

As I begin to close my notebook and stow my pen to prepare for another tree-grabbing

descent into the upcoming ravine, a small gleam of white in my peripheral vision

causes me to freeze. Pricked by a distant memory, my mind has already flashed an

image of what I think I saw, but I reject the thought. No, that cant be, it doesnt grow

here. But when I turn my head and focus on the plant, it contradicts me. Small white

ladys slipper! I stare in amazement at the orchid, half-expecting it to resolve intosomething more ordinary. When it remains unchanged, I kneel for a closer look, lightly

lifting its shining white flower with my forefinger. Its thumb-size slipper, suspended

gondola-like by an arching stem over a bouquet of pleated leaves, is undeniably that of

Cypripedium candidum. Memorized from frequent readings, the conservation profile for

the ladys slipper plays spontaneously in my mind: originally occurring in all ninety-nine

counties of Iowa, recently confirmed in only fourteen, now confined to tiny, isolated


21/119

remnants of wet prairie. A fresh swirl of contradictions furrows my brow: OBrien

County is not one of the fourteen and this Waterman Creek prairie is not tiny, isolated,

or wet.

I notice that the flower in my grasp is not alone. Another white moccasin dangles from

a neighboring stem in the same leafy clump. Looking up, I spot another clump, and

another, and another. Standing up to scan more broadly, I see nearly a dozen clumps,

all bursting with flowers, on the hillside below me. I count the number of stems and

flowers, finding an especially prolific clump containing stems and flowers. When

I tally the whole population of clumps, there are stems supporting a total of

flowers. wo-thirds of the flowers are still fresh, but the others have begun to

wither. Had I arrived a week earlier, I might well have seen fresh flowers on all

stems.

As I count, I also note the plant species associated with the orchids. One

tree: bur oak. Tree shrubs: lead plant, wild rose, and hazelnut. Four grasses:

big bluestem, Indiangrass, little bluestem, and Canada bluegrass. Eight forbs:

groundplum, stiff goldenrod, prairie coreopsis, purple prairie-clover, smooth aster,

strawberry, rattlesnake-root, and bastard toadflax. Te abundance of forbs reminds me

of one more element of the orchids habitat profile: a diversity of nectar sources. Tis

is a critical feature because the ladys slipper itself produces no nectar to attract insect

pollinators. Instead, relying on the presence of nectar-producing neighbors to draw

insects into the neighborhood, it tricks its pollinatorssmall sweat bees and miner

beesinto entering the pouch of its attractive slipper with empty promises of a nectarreward. Once inside the pouch, the gullible bee follows colored lines that normally lead

to nectaries, but after squeezing through a one-way gauntlet of stigmas and anthers

in the ladys slipper, it encounters nothing but an exit hole in the heel. Te bee has no

choice but simply to fly away, charged with a fresh coating of pollen.

Finishing my observations, I climb to the crest of the hill to begin my hike back to

the car. raversing the edge of a high, level uplandan easy route compared to my

Small white ladys

slippers, rarer thanyellow ones, are also

called whippoorwill

shoes.


22/119

,

incoming trek across ravine-studded slopesI reach an overlook with a commanding

view of the land I have spent four days surveying. Tis mornings inventory slips like

the last piece of a jigsaw puzzle into my comprehension of the scene. Far to the south,

I see the long, high ridge of prairie over the Little Sioux River where prairie bush clover

grows. My eye follows a tributary northwestward to Dog Creek Park, where prairie

moonwort thrives. In the middle ground, a curving, flat-topped hill juts like a scimitar

into the Waterman Creek valley, its sandy summit home to needle-and-thread, a Great

Plains grass reaching its easternmost outpost. Closer at hand, I recognize the jumble of

treeless hills in the McCormack Wildlife Area where shortgrass prairie resides on a high

ridge, its community of ankle-high grassesJunegrass, satingrass, hairy grama, and

blue gramainterspersed with equally short pasqueflowers and gayfeathers. Peering

to the north, I discern the grazed, rolling hills above Wittrock State Preserve; although

dominated by bluegrass and dotted with musk thistle, they are still rich with prairie

forbs. Awed by the vista, I linger on the point, idly stroking the leaves of silky aster

between my fingers as I gaze at a precious Iowa landscape.

Rousing from my reverie, I recall a favorite passage from On the Loose, a rhapsodictribute to rambling in wild places by erry and Renny Russell: One of the best-paying

professions is getting ahold of pieces of country in your mind, learning their smell and

their moods, sorting out the pieces of a view, [finding] what grows there and there and

why, how many steps that hill will take, where this creek winds, and where it meets the

other one below. . . . Tis is the best kind of ownership, and the most permanent.

As I descend the hill toward my parked car, I realize that my professional experience

prompts me to take one exception to this long-held personal perspective. Intimately

knowing wild places is unquestionably rewarding, but it is not permanent ownership.

rue permanence of the wild places we cherish requires active stewardship to ensure

their persistence. Prairies, in particular, need to be more than merely known, owned,

or even loved to prevent cedar trees from invading, leafy spurge from spreading, or

cattle from overgrazing. Prairies need ownership of their stewardship by knowledgeable


23/119

and loving managers. In my days here at Waterman Creek, I have come to knowand

ownits prairies well. I wonder if we can assure their stewardship?

Forest, Glade, and Cliff

Catching the current, my kayak glides away from a pool of quiet water boxed by high

concrete walls into the big-sky environment of the Mississippi River. Glancing back as I

drift downstream, I glimpse my car parked at the top of the boat ramp next to Lock and

Dam . Te big locks are empty at the moment, so I neednt worry about barges right

now. Te Guttenberg riverfront scrolls past my right shoulder, its neatly manicured

lawnsfreshly mown for the Memorial Day weekendcontrasting sharply with

the scruffy wooded shoreline I see coming up beyond the city limits. Arriving at the far

edge of town, I feel a flutter of excitement in committing to my afternoon adventure: a

round-trip excursion via paddling and hiking to urkey River Mounds State Preserve,

a spectacular knife-edge ridge at the confluence of the urkey and Mississippi rivers.

Containing a complex of thousand-year-old Indian mounds and a diversity of forest,

glade, and cliff communities, it is one of the few state preserves that I have yet tothoroughly explore after twenty years of work with the Iowa Department of Natural

Resources.

My plan is to paddle five miles downstream to a backwater slough that brushes the big

bluff in the preserve; from there, I intend to hike along the edge of the floodplain to a

steep slope that is the only climbable break in the mile-long rampart of dolomite cliffs.

Gaining access to the narrow, rocky ridge at a low saddle, I hope to find a way to the peak

of a prominent pinnacle. If I reach that, I will have traversed a complete gradient of wet

to dry habitats and surveyed their natural communities. Whether or not I reach the top,

I will need to descend, return to my kayak, and paddle back upstream to Guttenberg.

Tere is a far easier way to reach the preserve and see its rugged upland foresta

Grade-B road leads nearly to the foot of the break in the bluff I will climbbut I want to

see the bottomland forest as well.


24/119

,

Rounding the first bend, I am struck by how quickly the Mississippi sheds any

outward signs of civilization. Te river valley here is two miles wide, bracketed by high

wooded bluffs and filled with a watery mosaic of islands and sloughs sliced by the

deepwater course of the main channel. Guttenberg vanishes behind a thick green veil of

bottomland forest. I become a speck in the panorama of river, bottomland forest, and

cirrus-streaked blue sky. I know this is partly an illusion: highways and railroads hide

just beyond the edge of the floodplain, wing dams lurk just below the waterline,

and lines of buoys blaze a dredged navigation channel. But even a veneer of

wildness in a state enthralled with tameness brings nature close at hand . . . and

this is no mere veneer. I bypass the narrow entrance to the slough bordering

Goetz Island to stay on the swifter main channel for my downstream journey; I

will choose its quiet backwater route when I paddle back upstream this evening.

Sweeping into a second bend, I spot the lower end of the slough debouching into the

river and memorize the pose of a cottonwood snag marking its mouth. Te river now

swings close to the bluffline leading into the preserve; I follow its steep shoreline when

the channel splits around another island and enter a narrow, tree-lined slough. Withoutthe tug of the main river current, my kayak slows to a paddle-pushed pace.

Silver maples fill the floodplain forest to my left. Amid a throng of young trees,

massive trunks of old-growth individuals rise into the canopy, their upswept branches

forming ideal nesting sites for red-shouldered hawks. Hungering for unobstructed

sunlight, many trees lean out over the slough for a better view of the sky. Becoming

overextended, several have toppled into the water, their formerly sky-questing boles

now serving as basking logs for turtles that lunge from warm perches at my approach.

o my right, a steep, forested bluffthe urkey River Mounds ridge that I intend to

surmountlooms over the floodplain and blots out the western sky. In , emerging

onto the Mississippi in a canoe, explorer Jacques Marquette exultantly called the

high, rugged bluffs flanking the river in Iowa and Wisconsin the mountains of the

Mississippi. Tat lyrical description seems less of an exaggeration to me now that I see

The eastern wood-pewee

arrives in late spring to

nest in woodlands.


25/119

them as he did: towering over a small, paddled boat in a wild, natural place. Reaching the

end of the slough at a low, marshy shore, I climb out of the cockpit, step onto a sedge-

draped mudflat, and drag the kayak onto a slightly elevated bank. Sitting on its deck to

exchange water shoes for hiking boots, I recognize the pale, pointed leaves of cardinal

flowers all around me; although not yet blooming, their startlingly red flowers will grace

the slough later this summer.

I scramble up a brushy slope onto the upland at the base of the long ridge, emerging

onto the coarse ballast of a railroad. Te gleaming tracks are eerily empty now, but this is

a heavily used line, so I must stay alert for the huge shipping trains that hurtle through

here. I quickly cross over the tracks onto the public land beneath the bluff and

hike south toward the gap in the ridge. Spotting the low saddle, I sidestep up a

hill that steepens as I climb, clutching tree trunks and roots to pull myself along.

I labor upward beneath the interlocking crowns of big sugar maples, basswoods,

and red oaks, stepping over beds of bluebells and wild ginger, brushing through

patches of maidenhair fern, and clambering over rock outcrops and talus

festooned with walking fern and yellow jewelweed. Pausing to catch my breath as I nearthe crest, I recline in the lap of a big red oak, its massive trunk adorned with grainy,

green crusts of dust lichen and surrounded by a riot of spring wildflowers: bloodroot,

hepatica, May apple, nodding trillium, sweet William, and squirrel corn. Lifting my

leaden feet, I stagger up the final yards onto the saddle of the ridge. I disregard my

hard-gained summit as I lean forward and plant my hands on my knees, momentarily

exhausted.

Awareness of my new surroundings builds slowly as my body recovers from fatigue.

Facing downward, my first view is of the forest floor, where something is different:

bedrock abounds, thinly covered with mats of eastern red cedar needles, lightly littered

with coarsely toothed leaves of chinquapin oak, and dotted with curly tufts of poverty

oatgrass. Looking up, I find myself on a narrow crest that falls steeply away before and

behind me while rising gently to my right and left. Tick, gnarled, stunted trunks of

The brilliant crimson

blooms of cardinal flower

can be seen in open

woodlands throughout

the state.


26/119

,

old-growth cedars grasp the rocky soil with coarse fingers of exposed, woody roots.

Tickets of cedar saplings, offspring from the old-growth trees, fill the narrow ridge with

a tangle of dark evergreen boughs. Alligator-barked chinquapin oaks protrude above the

cedar canopy to spread their foliage in full sunlight, while short wiry swards of ebony

sedge, tolerant of cedar-sapped dimness, glow greenly beneath. Peering outward from

the ridge, I sense that I am high on the landscape, but I catch only glimpses of faraway

hills and valleys through small shifting windows of windblown branches. Eager to reach

an open view, I strike north, intent on reaching the pinnacle that I know must be close.

I try pushing through the cedar thicket but quickly become entangled. Backing out, I

try again, this time carefully twisting and crawling through the maze of criss-crossed

branches, finally emerging into an open glade.

I am amazed at the spectacle of a long, narrow platform of bedrock filled with native

prairie bordered by stunted oaks and cedars. At the far end of the ridge, a high, rugged

mesa of dolomite rears abruptly above the rocky spinethe pinnacle. Stepping into

the glade, I walk slowly in wonder. What first appeared to be a predominance of prairie

resolves more closely into an irregular checkerboard of smaller communities sortedby subtle differences in soil depth: prairie on the deepest pockets, bizarre cryptobiotic

crusts (a tiny cornucopia of algae, cyanobacteria, and soil lichens) on the thinnest

veneers, sparse lichens and mosses on barren rock. Familiar grasses and forbs fill the

prairie patches: little bluestem and sideoats grama mixed with hoary puccoon, golden

alexanders, prairie phlox, and prairie blue-eyed grass. Teir tall, leafy forms are plainly

visible to my unaided eye, but the tiny denizens of the other communities require much

closer examination.

Crouching next to a dolomite ledge, I peer through my hand lens at minute life-forms

coloring the pitted rock surface: yellow-and-orange warts of sulfur firedot lichen, finely

chiseled crusts of brown cobblestone lichen, black-dotted flakes of gray leather lichen,

and coarse black clumps of Orthotrichummoss. rapped in a perpetually drought-

stricken habitat, this moss spends most of its time wrapped in bryological fetal position,


27/119

its dark-bottomed leaves pulled protectively together as it endures intense heat and

thirst. When wetted by passing rain, it explodes into photosynthetic action, instantly

unfolding its artichoked leaves to reveal their green solar panels. I cannot resist the

temptation: unscrewing the cap of my water bottle, I pour a dollop onto the clump.

Watched through my lens, it immediately swells and twists to life like an awakened

tarantula, quickly transforming from a dense black ball into a bright green bouquet of

glistening leaves. But soon disappointed with the brevity of my rain, it slowly recurls

and returns to dormant black limbo.

Resuming my hike, I come to the end of the ridge at the pinnacle like Dorothy ap-

proaching Oz. Appraising its austere face, I now blench at the challenge of climbing to its

summit. I am alone on this remote ridge, it is a long fall to the bottom of the bluff, just

one slip . . . I have nearly concluded to back away when I discover a series of ledges on the

lower half of the face; following their step-like course upward with my eye, I spot a set of

ladder-like fissures just below the lip of the pinnacle. I feel a pulse of optimism: that just

might work. I walk to the base of the ledges and step over the first riser. I study the line

once more and decide to proceed, but I impose a rule on myself: go only as far as you cansafely retreat. I step onto the next ledge, and the next, and the next. Reaching the upper

wall, I cautiously start to climb. Pausing to reassess after each pitch, I am satisfied that I

can still descend if necessary, so search for new footholds. Just a few more feet . . . With

a final push, I slither over the final lip and crawl giddily onto its flat summit.

Slowly standing up, I find myself at the center of a universe of sky, land, and

unbounded space. I look up into a giant blue dome of sky unobstructed by trees, bluffs,

or buildings. Below me, an enormous, multicolored tapestry of rivers, hills, forests,

prairies, cliffs, and glades sweeps to all horizons. Looking east, I see the wide blue ribbon

of the Mississippi curving beneath bluffland forests and hill prairies in Wisconsin.

Southward, the urkey River empties into the Mississippi in an extensive complex of

bottomland sloughs. Westward, broad alluvial bottoms in Iowa extend to the foot of

high wooded hills; the cropfields filling this valley are one of the few obvious signs of


28/119

,

civilization. Finally, to the north I see the widening extension of the ridge on which I

now stand rising gently to a distant upland; I know the Indian mounds are there, but

now I know why.

Soon enough I will descend the pinnacle, cross the glade, clamber through cedars,

descend the ridge, find my kayak, and paddle up sloughs and the big river back to town,

but for now I linger on the summit. I often hear it saidI once said it myselfthat

there are no natural landscapes left in Iowa. A poor view to hold, for two reasons. First,

it is wrong: the Mississippi vista before me belies the claim. (And there are others: the

prairie-studded hills of Waterman Creek Valley, the Little Sioux River corridor between

Cayler Prairie and Freda Haffner Kettlehole, and of course the Loess Hills.) Second, it is

sad: a tragically self-fulfilling statement in which Iowas remaining natural landscapes

slowly vanish under ongoing waves of development and encroachment because they lack

recognition of their very existence. Responding to his mistakenly published obituary,

Mark wain once famously declared, Te reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.

So it is, I hope, for Iowas natural landscapes.

Sheeder Prairie Sequel

I return to Sheeder Prairie on a freakishly sultry springtime day. Hot, steamy air

from the Gulf of Mexico lolls thickly across the landscape, atmospheric peanut butter

smeared by the dull knife of a southern warm front. White, wet haze floods the air,

drowning vistas with milky gauze, stifling the escape of perspiration from wretched

skin, smothering me like a hapless wrestler pinned under a hot, sweaty opponent.

ornado weather, needing only the touch of a cold front to ignite a thousand-mile arc

of midwestern storms, a front that is already moving my way. My weather radio has

been panic-stricken, wailing new warnings every few minutes since I turned it on upon

leaving the Whiterock Conservancy Bioblitz at noon. It calls out a sequence of county

names coming increasingly closer under storm alerts, like a row of giant dominoes

tumbling in my direction: Harrison, Shelby, Audubon, and now Guthrie . . . where


29/119

Sheeder Prairie is. Peering to the northwest, I cannot yet see the squall line, but I know I

must make this a short visit.

odayMay , marks thirty-one years, nearly to the day, since my first visit

here. Ten an out-of-state graduate student never expecting to see Sheeder Prairie

again, I had driven onward to Wyoming, where I ultimately earned a doctorate in

botany before starting my career as an ecologist in South Dakota. Moving to Iowa, I

joined the Iowa Department of Natural Resources in and have returned to Sheeder

Prairie many times for many purposes: prairie inventory, rare plant census, interpretive

field trips, prescribed burns, and prairie-rescue workdays. My purpose today is more

mundane: removing dilapidated stakes abandoned by a long-completed research project

that are now merely nuisances to managers. From the gate, I spot the hilltop where I

watched the approach of a more benign storm on that evening three decades ago. My

meandering search for the widely scattered stakes will take me near there.

I start down the hill and cross the first swale, passing blooming wood betony, wood

sorrel, hoary puccoon, and strawberry, hubs of bumblebee activity. Finding several

orphaned research stakes, I pull them from the ground. While I hunt for more stakes,I watch closely for subtle signs of our prairie management. I spot low stubs of shrubs

and trees, tucked among grasses and thatch, whose stems were painstakingly cut and

judiciously dabbed with sprout-suppressing herbicide to reclaim open prairie from

brush. I step across a burn boundary dividing the prairie into segments; burned in

rotation, there is always a patchwork of different-aged stands for insects and birds to

find their preferred habitat. Satisfyingly, I find no trace at all of the harvesting crew that

swept through here last fall, gathering ecotypically sound native seeds to propagate for

plantings in realistic prairie reconstructions.

Reaching the hilltop, I look out over the prairie, comparing the scene to the sketchy

notes I wrote thirty years ago. Species are easy. Red-winged blackbirdscheck. Porcu-

pine grass, prairie phlox, white sagewortcheck, check, check. Firefliestoo early in

the day, but probably check. Deernone in sight, but their general superabundance


30/119

,

earns a triple check. One more element gets an easy check: thunderstormnot yet here

but due to arrive soon. Ten the questions get harder: ambivalence, sadness, saving the

world. Setting aside ambivalence and sadness, I focus on saving the world. Te world is

a big place, with an overwhelming number of places that need to be saved, but at least

three I know well have been saved here in Iowa: Beckys Fen, the Waterman Creek prairie

complex, and urkey River Mounds.

In , when Mark and I drove to the Kauten farmstead in Fayette County to alert

the owner about the fen we had found, we learned that Mr. Kauten was intent on

converting it to cropland. He had tried mightily to drain it in the years preceding our

visit but to date had been foiled by the exceptionally deep peat, once miring two

tractors in its quaking muck. At great expense, he had installed a network of

drainage tiles, but the shifting peat disrupted them. Despite an application of

herbicide, the vegetation rebounded. By the time Mark and I contacted him, he

was contemplating using dynamite to blast holes for ponds. Although initially

unenthusiastic about relinquishing his long-held goal of someday farming

the site, Bill was eventually persuaded by his daughter Rebeccathen in middleschoolto adopt the fen as a family wildflower sanctuary, ultimately protecting it with

a conservation easement in and naming it Beckys Fen. Cropland bordering the fen

has been retired to become a buffer, and an adjacent property containing part of the

fen has been preserved by neighbors as the Gray-Hart Memorial Preserve. Tis fen has

become iconic among naturalists throughout Iowa and the Midwest as an example of an

outstanding natural area saved through voluntary landowner action.

In , shortly after the Waterman Creek Prairie Inventory was completed, the

Resource Enhancement And Protection () Congress urged the Department of

Natural Resources to find and protect a large prairie area. After evaluating several

options, the Waterman Creek area was chosen for its abundance of high-quality prairie.

Te initiative became controversial when many farmers in the valley objected to

acquisition of large tracts of land. A creative solution combined a moderate amount

Long-distance migrants,

dickcissels arrive in

Iowa in early May and

immediately set up

territories.


31/119

of public acquisition with Landowner Incentive Program () funding for assistance

to landowners interested in managing their prairies with brush control, prescribed

burning, and conservation grazing. Te original controversy faded away, replaced with a

cooperative effort between landowners and biologists that has saved many prairie

tracts.

Supported by the State Preserves Advisory Board, botanist Bill Watson has worked in

recent years to inventory the flora of urkey River Mounds and to restore its hill prairies

by removing invading cedars and by conducting controlled burns with the assistance

of managers from Pikes Peak State Park. Tis marked the beginning of a shift by

the Preserves Board to support management activities in addition to its traditional

emphasis on descriptive studies. Initiatives to manage hill prairies have spread to several

other preserves as a result of this example. Te hill prairies are in better shape now than

they have been for many years.

And, of course, Sheeder Prairie. Tough more needs to be done, efforts by

biologists and volunteer citizens have reversed woody encroachment over much of the

prairie and provided an abundance of seeds for new Sheeder Prairies across central Iowa.I am satisfied with what I see. But what of ambivalence and sadness? No time for them,

I conclude as thunder finally rolls in the distance, I am too busy saving the only world I

know and love. Besides, theres a storm coming. I need to move on. Hiking back to the

gate, I start my car and drive deeper into Iowa.


32/119


33/119


34/119

Hoverfly on fringed gentian at Beckys Fen.


35/119

Land snail on autumn leaves.


36/119

Polyphemus moth wing.


37/119

Blue-flag iris petal unfurling.


38/119

Dew-covered blue-flag iris petal.


39/119

Red-breasted nuthatch.


40/119


41/119

Dwarf larkspur.


42/119

Virginia bluebells buds.


43/119

American bittersweet.


44/119

Northern flicker.


45/119

American copper chased by bee on prickly pear bloom.


46/119

Pasqueflowers.


47/119

Jack-o-lanterns.


48/119

Green metallic bee on butterfly milkweed.


49/119

Female red-winged blackbird.


50/119

Tree swallow.


51/119

Blue cohosh buds.


52/119

Prairie trillium.


53/119

Candy-striped leafhopper.


54/119

Big bluestem inflorescence.


55/119

Cotton-grass in fen.


56/119

Showy orchis.


57/119

Crab spider on purple coneflower bud.


58/119

Wild ginger.


59/119

Pale gentian. The darkness at the base of the right-hand bloom is a bee at work inside.


60/119

Green blow fly on coneflower bud.


61/119

Dickcissel.


62/119

Squirrel corn.


63/119

Fireweed.


64/119

May apple.


65/119

Great spangled fritillary on coneflower.


66/119

Hoverfly on marsh marigold.


67/119


68/119

American goldfinch, Iowas state bird.


69/119

Cardinal flower.


70/119

Zebra spider.


71/119

Fly agaric.


72/119

Green-flowered milkweed.


73/119

Northern monkshood with bumblebee.


74/119

Differential grasshopper.


75/119

Hepatica.


76/119

Eastern tailed-blue.


77/119

Bee on lead plant.


78/119

Yucca.


79/119


80/119


81/119

Lichen on locust branch.


82/119

White-throated sparrow.


83/119

Sugar maple leaf.


84/119

Buckeye on New England aster.


85/119

Tenpetal blazingstar.


86/119


87/119

Michigan lily.


88/119

Male ornate box turtle in sand prairie.


89/119

Eastern wood-pewee.


90/119

Monarch caterpillar, chrysalis, emerging adult, and adult.


91/119

Coral woodcrust.


92/119


93/119

Prairie smoke.


94/119

Purple prairie clover.


95/119

Twelve-spotted skimmer.


96/119

Red admiral on nodding plumeless thistle.


97/119


98/119


99/119

Northern pearly-eye.


100/119

Showy ladys slipper.


101/119

Skunk cabbage spathes surrounding the spadix.


102/119

Spotted lady beetles on dandelions.


103/119

False hellebore in southern Iowa.


104/119

Prairie blue-eyed grass, white form.


105/119

Gray treefrog on bluntleaf milkweed in sand prairie.


106/119

Yellow and small white ladys slippers.


107/119

Blazing star.


108/119


109/119

Find, Celebrate, and Share


110/119

If one really loves nature, one can find beauty everywhere. Years after Vincent van

Gogh said that, the father of Australian bushwalking, Paddy Pallin, said, Te best

place is here and the best time is now. With these two statements to guide our applied

imaginations, we photograph the beauty of the place where we now live: Iowa. Our

mission is to produce works with grace and emotional resonance. Pleasure for the

viewer, as well as for ourselves, is paramount.

We believe that photographs of natural subjects, especially the smaller ones, can be

both abstract and representational. We work to present and represent nature in several

ways. Te shapes, colors, and details of each subject are in themselves beautiful. Each

photograph displays some special characteristic, often abstracted to focus attention on

particular patterns, spaces, and colors. Encapsulating the essence of each is what we

strive for. We hope that this essence inspires concern for protecting the habitats where

we captured these images.

Iowa is the subject of this collection as much as are the small creatures and native

plants themselves. Iowa. Te word engenders thoughts of rolling fields of corn and

beans overlain with the now largely imagined expanse of tallgrass prairie of almost

two hundred years ago. Tis prairie was incised with wooded river valleys, painted withwetlands dating from the ice age, and embroidered with savannahsoak openings that

filled the niche between prairie and woodland. Although only fragments remain of the

vast complex of native grasses, wildflowers, trees, fungi, lichens, and soils fanned by

wind and tempered by heat and cold, one can still find surviving gems of nature. It is in


111/119

created this book. Not only is every leaf a miracleof nature, so is each feather, insect,

dewdrop, flower, lichen, and intricate organism that makes up the evolving web of life.

We offer this tiny sampling of some of our states smaller creatures and plants

to entice viewers to look more closely at Iowa and its treasures. Many of these are

necessary for a healthy environment for us as well as for them. Nature speaks in many

languages and is understood in many ways. Te way we work to understand and express

is that of beauty We hope that our art enchants rather than shocks enlightens rather


112/119

, ,

is that of beauty. We hope that our art enchants rather than shocks, enlightens rather

than confounds, and provides a positive emotional response to the beauty of Iowa.


113/119

Photographers Note


114/119

Our heartfelt thanks to all who made us welcome in Iowa, allowed us to

visit the special places that shelter many of our subjects, and believed

we had a story to tell in the images contained here. A special thank-you

to John Pearson for his essay on the Iowa landscapes that speak to him.

And to Holly Carver, who saw our work and said, We will have to talk

sometime. Several months later she called, and we began the conversation

that became this book.

While painters are rarely asked what brushes they use or sculptors which

chisels, photographers are often asked about their tools. Most of these

images were digital captures with macro lenses on DSLR cameras, although

some are scans of mm slides. Te birds were taken with long telephoto

lenses. We either created or selected images that would adapt themselves

to the square format of this book. Our digital captures are in RAW format,

and we developed the images in our digital darkroom.

o learn more about the images in this book, visit our website at www

.scarthphoto.com. Tumbnails of photographs and information about the

species are available on the link for this book.


115/119

T B tt fli f I

Other Bur Oak Books of Interest


116/119

Te Butterflies of Iowa

By Dennis W. Schlicht, John C. Downey, and Jeffrey Nekola

A Country So Full of Game: Te Story of Wildlife in Iowa

By James J. Dinsmore

Te Elemental Prairie: Sixty allgrass Plants

By George Olson and John Madson

Te Emerald Horizon: Te History of Nature in Iowa

By Cornelia F. Mutel

Enchanted by Prairie

By Bill Witt and Osha Gray Davidson

Fifty Common Birds of the Upper Midwest

By Dana Gardner and Nancy Overcott

Fifty Uncommon Birds of the Upper Midwest

By Dana Gardner and Nancy Overcott

Fragile Giants: A Natural History of the Loess Hills

By Cornelia F. Mutel

An Illustrated Guide to Iowa Prairie Plants

By Paul Christiansen and Mark Mller

Iowa Birdlife


117/119

By Gladys Black

Te Iowa Breeding Bird Atlas

By Laura Spess Jackson, Carol A. Tompson, and James J. Dinsmore

Te Iowa Nature Calendar

By Jean C. Prior and James Sandrock

Landforms of Iowa

By Jean C. Prior

Orchids in Your Pocket: A Guide to the Native Orchids of Iowa

By Bill Witt

A Practical Guide to Prairie Reconstruction

By Carl Kurtz

Prairie: A North American Guide

By Suzanne Winckler

Prairie in Your Pocket: A Guide to Plants of the allgrass Prairie

By Mark Mller

Restoring the allgrass Prairie: An Illustrated Manual for Iowa and the Upper Midwest

By Shirley Shirley

A allgrass Prairie Alphabet


118/119

By Claudia McGehee

Te Vascular Plants of Iowa: An Annotated Checklist and Natural History

By Lawrence J. Eilers and Dean M. Roosa

Where the Sky Began: Land of the allgrass Prairie

By John Madson

Wildflowers and Other Plants of Iowa Wetlands

By Sylvan . Runkel and Dean M. Roosa

Wildflowers of the allgrass Prairie: Te Upper Midwest, Second Edition

By Sylvan . Runkel and Dean M. Roosa

A Woodland Counting Book

By Claudia McGehee


119/119

Documents

(Bur Oak Book) John Pearson, Linda Scarth, Robert Scarth-Deep Nature_ Photographs Up by Abed