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| Tallgrass national Praire Preserve |
And yet, Canada continues to wreak her revenge.
Approximately 75,000 years thence, the Laurentide ice sheet
formed in Canada during a time of global cooling and spread over the Great
Lakes and New England. Eventually, about 18,000 years ago, the global climate
warmed once again (sans SUVs), and the glaciers retreated.
While we gained such treasures as Cape Cod and the Islands,
we also harvested a bumper crop of glacial rocks. Thank you, Canada.
As anyone from around here knows, when trying to dig a hole
for a fence post or to plant a shrub, there is invariably a basketball-sized
boulder just a few inches beneath the surface. Imagine that multiplied a
thousand-fold, as an early New England farmer tried to plow his fields with his
team of oxen. He would be constantly turning up rocks, many of which required
the efforts of a long pry bar to fully dislodge them.
Then, the odd, early harvest. A team of oxen or draft horses
pulls a heavy sledge back and forth throughout the fields as a gang of
youngsters and older teens were matched to the rocks they could handle, piling
on and dragging them to the edge of the field. It is only natural that this
became the raw material for New England’s beautiful stone walls.
And every spring, the frost heaved up another fresh crop of
glacial rocks. And does so to this day. It is not a winning battle.
But New England farmers adapted and persevered. According to
Michael Bell, writing for the American Geographical Society in 1989, “In the late nineteenth
century, only 33 percent of New England farmland was classified as tilled or
tillable by the agricultural census. The rest was equally divided between
pasture and woodland.” So the resourceful Yankees determined that untilled land
was more cost effective, and used it as pastureland or woodlots.
While these decisions were utilitarian, they gave us the
lovely New England scenery of winding roads, rock walls, pastures, and forests
that we see today.
Meanwhile, 1,500 miles to the west, a similar conundrum was
faced by early settlers of eastern Kansas.
Much of Kansas was broad and flat, with deep rich soil and
free of subterranean rock, making it an ideal granary. Wheat and corn and
sorghum were grown by the ton. But in one area, a long rectangle extending south from
Topeka into northern Oklahoma, another bumper crop of rocks was found. But for
a totally different reason.
The Flint Hills, nearly 10,000 square miles, were formed
when the shallow Western Interior Sea covered the Midwest from the Gulf of
Mexico to the Arctic Circle over 80 million years ago. Over many millions of
years, layers of sedimentary limestone and chert (flint) were laid down. Eventually,
mountain building in the continent caused the sea to subside and, as it flowed
south, limestone was worn away more than flint, leaving the Flint Hills.
When the settlers first tried farming in the Flint Hills,
they found that they could only do so in relatively few creek and river
bottoms. Whenever they tried to expand their farms into nearby hills, they
found thin, clay soil littered with hard, sharp shards of flint. They quickly
decided that ranching was a far better use of the land. Cattle found a
favorable home here, and thrived.
The Flint Hills is also home to the tallgrass prairie and reconstituted
herds of bison. Because of the thick growth of bluestem grass and nearly annual
prairie fires, trees are only found in the creek bottoms. Gentle, rounded hills
are covered in dense, tall grass as far as the eye can see. The only sound is
the rushing wind, rippling patterns and rustling waves in the grass. No cars. No trains or planes.
The buffalo dot a distant hillside, contentedly grazing. It is an intense
solitude that heals one’s soul.
Two different geographies, two different geologies. But
human ingenuity made the best of both. As we do in all places and climes, and
certainly, one day, on alien planets. That is the greatest human trick – to adapt.
There is no fear for our future. We will surely adapt again and again.
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