Hold It or Drain It

The Upper Basin Chronicles

Chapter 3

Hold It or Drain It

Beneath a prairie rise three-quarters of a mile southeast of the Murphy farmstead, a northern harrier hunted low over big bluestem and indian grass stalks, hovering against a wind slackened by the hill. The blue-grey male floated on the upwind tack, then cut and dipped from side to side, moving forward on a line, seeking a mouse or vole.

Moisture first spared this little triangle of wet mesic prairie (and for awhile, the small pothole below it) from shiny plow steel. Later, the quarter corner fence preserved just a native acre and a half. Host to a nearly unknowable number of fauna, mostly small and hidden, many now dormant in the still frozen understory, and many more in the soil itself, it also bore an abundance of native forbs and grasses. Seamus Murphy, and his sons and grandsons, hunted ducks and geese here in wet years for a long time. The hunting got poor, though, after the days of Earl Butz in the early 1970s when fencerow-to-fencerow farming, erosion, and tiling dried out the pothole, and the row crops closed in on what was left.

Yet, Teresa Murphy, great-grandmother of Rose Murphy, saved the prairie corner from its most significant threat. Her husband, David, told Alexander's father, Owen, early one fine spring morning in 1976, to plow it up for planting. Alexander still remembers her response, hot cast iron skillet in hand, ruffled apron over her flowered house dress. "David Murphy, if you send that boy to plowing that corner today or any day ever, you'll be cooking your own breakfast until you die, and I mean it! God made that little marsh meadow one of my favorite places on this green earth, and I will not have you destroy it for 60 more bushels of corn, and that if you're lucky."

The farmhouse kitchen grew very quiet, with just the WOI market report a-singsong in the background. David Murphy chewed his bite of bacon, egg, and toast, then ducked his head toward another sip of hot coffee. (He took a moment or two to recall a day some 40 years before, when he and Teresa sat at the edge of the little prairie with midmorning lunch. A meadowlark yodeled on a warm breeze; the marsh marigolds turned their white faces toward them. A look from Teresa, and her hand on his arm told David not to rush back to work, not just then.) "Well, Owen," he said presently, "I ain't much of a cook, and you owe more than you know to that ground, so we better listen to your ma on this one, I reckon."

The harrier seemed to bundle itself in midbeat, and plunged into the remaining snow amid heavy clumps of tall grasses. Skeletal stems of compass plant, coneflower, and golden alexanders vibrated all around. A pair of faint pickup door clunks sounded in the wind. A small figure in a bright stocking cap approached stealthily in a slow running crouch, arms low to the dry grass waterway.

Laura and Alexander followed, walking side by side on the edge of the waterway and on the near frozen first furrow of corn. As the harrier exploded straight upward with mouse in talon, Rose's arms shot up with her trademark yell. The bird rolled its white underside upward and away from the interruption. It blazed downwind in powerful blue-gray wingbeats. The two walkers missed a stride on the rough ground and lurched against each other. "Oh! A beauty!" shouted Rose. "I should say so, a hunter," agreed Laura. Alexander said nothing at first, surprised that he felt suddenly so good.

"I love this place," he remarked when the harrier had vanished. "Do you see where we cut in the new dam last year to hold the water?" he asked. "The soil and water district supported us on the project, paid half in continuous CRP funds. You can see the remnant up in the corner, just an acre and a half, but when the new sedges take down in here and we get some moisture, this will look like a real prairie pothole again, over three acres."

"Nice work, Mr. Murphy," Laura offered. "When the frogs start singing and the blackbirds come in a couple of weeks you'll have quite a chorus. This is even better than I thought it would be. The kids will learn what's old and what's new, and can begin to understand how important little places like this really are in Iowa. Rare, too."

"It's funny, all those years we wanted to get the water off this land as fast as we could, and now some folks are beginning to think about holding it back. Some others still want to drain whatever they can even yet. Hold it or drain it, you should hear the talk," Murphy said.

"Hey, pumpkin! What you got over there?" Alexander called to his daughter, now among the heavier cover where the harrier sprang up.

"Oooh, it's really cold, Dad, that water's really cold! I need some waders, I think!" A squishy-booted eight year-old clumped in their direction. "Time for hot chocolate, Dad? I can make it!"

"Ok, kiddo, let's see if Grandma Teresa's got some cookies, too."

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Next week... "The Lord's Bounty" Chapter 4

The Upper Basin Chronicles, Chapter 3 was written and edited by John P. Gabbert

Comments? Email feedback to The Upper Basin Chronicles, Chapter 3

The characters presented here are purely fictional, and neither bear resemblance to persons living or dead, nor represent the views or opinions of Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota.