24. A peek into the magic of American native prairies -- with Matt White

Matt White is the author of Prairie Time: A Blackland Portrait,
an intriguing book where he describes connections with native
prairies through stories of discovery and inspiration as he
searches for their dwindling parcels. Matt White made prairies
come alive for us during this conversation! We’ve never met
someone so passionate about native prairies and the important
role they play; we tend to get inspired by oceans, mountains, and
forests, but people don’t place the spotlight on prairies often
enough!


Matt talks about how his passion for prairies started with a
school project and progressed to him deciding to go out and hunt
for prairies on his own to then being inspired to write a book
about them. We talk about why we should care about prairies; Matt
gives a very unique answer to that and ties it to our nation’s
history in such a thought provoking way. He teaches us that
several hundred years ago, prairies were actually sprinkled among
forests and mountains. Matt also talks about how America has a
different idea of what a frontier is: for Americans, frontier is
an “empty” space that we migrate to, and the prairies have been
considered empty space in our history and they still are. It’s
both a prairie lesson and a history lesson all in one!


- Native Prairie Association of Texas:
https://texasprairie.org/ 


- More Prairie Time blog:
https://moreprairietime.wordpress.com/ 





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