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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