Prairie

A wild prairie contains over 230 species of plant.
The biomass it creates far exceeds any agricultural monoculture.
It is resilient to pests, to drought, to floods.

However, if you want to make a prairie from scratch,
you can plant all the right species, care for them, water them,
but the prairie will not take.

It will only ever be an approximation of a prairie.

A real prairie needs one last ingredient: fire.

When you burn a prairie, from the outside
it looks like total devestation.

But inside, a transformation is happening.

Fire activated seeds are enabled.
Unwanted plants are removed from the ecosystem,
and out of this dry charred landscape, a real prairie will form.

Resilient, flowering, beautiful,
with every species in dynamic equilibrium.

When I wake up in the morning,
I have a few moments of respite before the pain sets in
and then I remember
how I burned everything we had to the ground

I forget why