Revisits: "We shall not cease from exploration"

Last week we travelled to St. Louis: a revisit to a favorite city. And the trip included meeting my friend who introduced me to St. Louis when we were in college. She mentioned that each semester she still teaches The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. I studied that poem by St. Louis-born T. S. Eliot while in college, and so now needed to go back and revisit the poem.

Evening, Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, New Mexico

Let us go then, you and I,

When the evening is spread out against the sky

Like a patient etherised upon a table:

T. S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Profrock 1917

That’s how this weird, wonderful poem begins. My anthology perfectly describes that opening:

“With the third line of ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,’ the romantic mood set by the opening couplet collapses, and modern poetry begins.” The Oxford Book of American Poetry.

Snow Geese, Bosque del Apache

Do I dare

Disturb the universe?

In a minute there is time

For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

T. S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Profrock 1917

The images are from a favorite place I revisited last November: Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge in southwest New Mexico. Thousands of Sandhill Cranes and Snow Geese revisit and gather there along the Rio Grande for much of the winter.

Sandhill Crane sunset, Bosque del Apache

Eliot wrote Prufrock during World War I. He moved to England and wrote Little Gidding in 1942 during the terror and uncertainty of the next World War.

What we call the beginning is often the end

And to make an end is to make a beginning.

The end is where we start from.

Bald Eagle, Bosque del Apache, New Mexico

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

Through the unknown, remembered gate

When the last of earth left to discover

Is that which was the beginning;

T. S. Eliot, Little Gidding 1942

Sandhill Crane family, Bosque del Apache sunrise

Friends along the way

On our trip to the Southwest, many souls greeted us along the way. As I plotted the trip, I noticed a national wildlife refuge near the route in Kansas, so it became a sunrise stop.

President Theodore Roosevelt established the first national wildlife refuge at Pelican Island in Florida in 1903. Today, over 150 million acres are designated as NWRs, and it is one of the best funded agencies, in part because contributions by duck hunters and other sportspeople. It was a bit surprising to see lots of birds I was familiar with from the Florida coast enjoying the wetlands of central Kansas.

Lesser Yellowlegs and Blue-winged Teal

Wetlands were a surprisingly large component of the Great Plains until agriculture interests sought to tame and reduce them. Some farmers are reversing the trend, but protected public lands still are the major sources of wetlands.

Least Sandpiper, Quivira National Wildlife Refuge, Kansas

The day before we stopped at another fragment of what had once been the dominant feature of North America. Prairie once covered 170 million acres of what is now the U.S.. Within a generation, most was gone. Less than 4% remains.

Bison, Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve, Kansas

In 1996, the National Tallgrass Prairie Preserve was created to help protect nearly 11,000 acres. While the National Park Service manages the land, nearly all is privately owned, most by the Nature Conservancy. Pets are restricted to certain areas—in part to stay away from bison—so we were surprised when these fellows were on the trail. Chance wanted to herd them, but he stayed on the leash and we gave them a wide margin. We saw several Northern Harriers hunting across the hills.

Northern Harrier, Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve

Bent’s Old Fort National Historic Park preserves the 1840s trading post that was on the Santa Fe Trail. The fort is exceptionally dog friendly, and it seemed every ranger working there owned a dog, and Chance had to meet every one of them. Not quite wildlife, but both Chance and I jumped when we turned a corner and this fellow yelled at both of us.

Bent’s Old Fort National Historic Site, Colorado

Plenty of bird songs accompanied us on the trails at Bears Ears National Monument. Most were down in the washes where trees, reeds, and other vegetation provided cover, but many perched in the nearby scrub.

White-crowned sparrow, Bears Ears National Monument, Utah

Black-Throated and Brewer’s sparrows, Bears Ears NM

Chance’s favorites on the trails, however, were the lizards who darted between rocks and under roots.

Collared Lizard, Bears Ears National Monument

As with Kansas, I was surprised by the beautiful areas in Oklahoma. Black Kettle National Grasslands surrounds Washita Battlefield National Historic Site. Chief Black Kettle was present at the Sand Creek Massacre in Colorado in 1864 where 150 to 200 Cheyanne were slaughtered. He rescued his wife who was shot nine times. Both of them would be killed by George Armstrong’s troops at Washita creek in 1868. The bird songs are a haunting chorus through the battlefield site.

Dickcissel, Washita Battlefield National Historic Site, Oklahoma