We had a beautiful, restorative fire on the Bena Prairie Friday. It started, like many fires, with a simple strike of a match. To start a prairie fire, I like to make a small ball of dry material, similar to a mouse nest, and place it at the base of standing prairie grasses, such as big bluestem.

From the match strike, the grasses of the tallgrass prairie, the topography of the land, and the wind should combine to create a prairie fire. We coax it along with our rakes and suppress it with our water tanks, but the fire itself is a living force on the land, bringing dynamic change. In the long term, it will be a positive change on the landscape. Locally, it will look stark until spring. When spring comes, the burned areas will green up sooner than unburned areas. There will be more flowers, and the vegetation will be taller than in areas that didn’t burn. Many of the young seedling trees trying to become established will die in the fire, enabling the prairie to remain a prairie for years to come.