Dedication of Vincent Bluff State Preserve

As a citizen of Council Bluffs, where my wife and
I are raising our two young sons (with one more
on the way), and as a life-long Iowan, and as
someone who loves the prairie, it is an honor to
have been invited to share a few words in honor
of Vincent Bluff becoming an Iowa State Preserve.
While growing up on farms in Wisconsin and Iowa
during the late 19th Century, writer Hamlin
Garland witnessed and participated in the
transformation of the tallgrass prairies into
cropland.  “The prairies are gone,” he wrote
years later.  “The garden that had bloomed and
fruited for millions of years…lay torn and
ravaged.  The tender plants, the sweet flowers,
the fragrant fruits, the busy insects, all the
swarming lives which had been native here for
untold centuries were utterly destroyed.”  The
prairie, he claimed, “had vanished as if it had
all been dreamed.”  It was a loss that haunted
him the rest of his life, as he moved to Chicago,
Boston, and finally New York.  Even in the shadow
of that immense city he longed to return to the
prairies of his Iowa youth, hoping a portion of
them might still remain, the dream still within reach. 

He wrote:
We'll meet them yet, they are not lost forever;
They lie somewhere, those splendid prairie lands,
Far in the West, untouched of plough and harrow
Unmarked by man’s all desolating hands.
 
Today at Vincent Bluff, thanks to the hard work
of so many people, we stand witness to a portion
of that dream restored, proof positive that our
hands do not have to be, as Hamlin Garland once
claimed, “all desolating.”  For many years,
dedicated people have volunteered to work here at
Vincent Bluff, people from the city and from the
country, young and old, a spontaneous community
helping to preserve and recover a native
landscape many of us growing up in Iowa have
never truly seen or known.  These gatherings of
volunteers and visionaries have been defined by a
kind a faith, as important as any other; a faith
perhaps best described in the Book of Hebrews:
“the substance of things hoped for, the evidence
of things not seen.”  It is a faith made all the
more significant by taking place in a state where
so many communities have been and continue to be
torn apart by economic battles over the
land.  This state and region still face
significant challenges when it comes to
preserving our beautiful natural heritage, our
native birthright, and so much has been lost­ so
many prairies, so much potential good.  But this
prairie, growing here in the heart of Council
Bluffs, is perhaps evidence that as the land can heal so, too, can we.

The effort to save and restore Vincent Bluff is
about the past and the present of this place and
its people, but it is also about the
future.  There is so much yet to learn about
prairie ecologies in the Loess Hills, and in that
regard Vincent Bluff is an experiment in the
unknown, a mystery.  We, too, are part of that
mystery.  Look around at those gathered in faith
with you here today, and imagine all those to
come, especially the children.  Those children,
living here in Council Bluffs and elsewhere, will
be able to explore this magnificent place in the
heart of our city.  They and their friends and
families, will be able to enjoy the magnificent
views and wander among the tall grasses, perhaps
becoming lost in them a time or two.  They will
be able to help gather prairie seeds and plant
them, and will encounter all kind of amazing
creatures who, like them, consider this place
home.  They will learn, as well, to appreciate
the softer touch of fire on the land.  They will
witness, again and again, the gathering of Iowans
and others on this healing land to celebrate, at
last, its native beauty.  This prairie may also
come to inhabit their dreams, transforming their
identity, as it did Hamlin Garland’s.  If so, how
will it shape them?  What will it awaken inside
them?  It will, I hope, make them alert with joy
and wonder and freedom.  May it also teach them
humility, commitment, and a deep, unshakable love
for life outside themselves.

Perhaps we here today will have the
privilege of witnessing such transformations in
those future generations who come to love Vincent
Bluff.  Perhaps we will experience such a
transformation ourselves.  Whatever the case, I
hold to the naïve hope that some account of this
significant and beautiful day, this dedication,
will be available for those who come to enjoy the
many blessings of it.  Perhaps that account will
be in the form of words, of memories and stories
passed down.  As a writer, I’d like to hope that
will be the case, but compared to the prairie,
words are such fragile things.  So I hold to
another, more enduring hope:  That at Vincent
Bluff, in hillsides full of native flowers and
grasses, there will remain the evidence of how we
touched, briefly, the land here.  That the birds
and butterflies, the skinks and skippers, the
shrews and snakes­ the whole wild, beloved
community­ might be here as well, to awaken the
land in their own ways, to call us back, year
after year after year, to bloom again in the prairie sun.