In search of ‘goats’ along Mississippi

Meghan texted back, “Watch out for bears!”

I smirked.

I had just made a presentation in Lansing about black bears in Iowa. I had first texted her that I was stopping on the way home for a trail run at Pikes Peak State Park. She was joking on a kernel of truth about the bears.

I was well into my effort when I got her message. To keep up the jest I picked up four hickory nuts and let her know I was well armed with two missiles in each hand.

You can drive to the top of Pikes Peak, whether Colorado or Iowa. It’s a convenient way to bag the summit of 14,115 feet or 500 plus feet above the river valley. Colorado’s granite prominence is much higher, but Iowa’s bluffs are older.

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I wasn’t here to bag Pikes Peak, rather to see the “goat.” With all the Olympics coverage, “the G.O.A.T.” were words stuck in my mind. But rather than seek the Greatest Of All Time athlete, I was seeking another “Goat,” the “Goat Prairies” among the bluffs of the Upper Mississippi Wildlife Refuge.

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Goat prairies are those special, near vertical openings in bluffland, mostly southerly facing. Their extreme slope and exposure causes them to be dry micro environments in the otherwise wet Midwest. Conducive to fire and hostile to trees, they grow special plants like cactus and prairie smoke flowers. Co-evolved with the plants are unique animals like the otteo skipper butterfly and six-lined racerunner lizard.

I didn’t expect to see any of the small wildlife but would take pleasure in knowing they might be there.

For a trail run searching for the exposed goat prairies, my effort was mostly under the canopy of middle-aged trees that shifted from stands of oak and hickory to groves of shade tolerant species like maple and ironwood.

The serpentine trail took me northerly from the Homestead parking area. My first chance for a big open view was an outlook with a bench. The east-facing bench was occupied by two women reading. I trotted past behind them as quietly as possible so as not to distribute their idyll.

Zebulon Pike commanded an army expedition to the upper Mississippi. He was an explorer on par with Lewis & Clark. In the autumn of 1805, Pike summited the high bluff plateau that would bear his name.

I took the trail north to “Point Ann,” a vista of sublime beauty. Maybe I shared the viewshed with Pike but we saw sharply different things. I saw a full Mississippi River and distant bluffs covered in trees. Pike would have seen a relative trickle of the Mississippi because before the lock-and-dams were built in the 1930s, the autumn river regularly fell so low one could walk across most of it. Pike also saw far fewer trees.

The goat prairie is in peril. Many state, federal and local groups have documented their diminishment due to tree encroachment. The regular fires that paradoxically brought renewal and vigor to the goat prairies were successfully snuffed out by well-meaning western settlement and civilization.

The goats that remain are few and shells of their former glory. At Point Ann the bluff was so steep I couldn’t see down. Instead the goats I did see were miles away and across the river.

From Point Ann to the Homestead lot the trail had far more open stretches. Ripe blackberry vines reached into the trail making for the tastiest aid stations a runner could ask for. I still was running with the nuts; there’s probably a metaphor there for my general mental condition. Drenched in sweat, but invigorated nevertheless, I reached my car after about an hour afoot.

Zebulon never summited his namesake mountain in Colorado, deep snow forced back his party in late 1806. I never did see a goat prairie up close. Pike never made it back to the Rocky Mountains. He died in action at the Battle of York in 1813. I supposed he appreciated the high summit from afar, like we have to appreciate our goat prairies. Of prairies, they are the Greatest Of All Time.

Looking up, looking ahead, and keeping my pencil sharp.

John Lawrence Hanson, Ed.D., of Marion, teaches Social Studies with an emphasis on environmental issues at Linn-Mar High School. He sits on the Marion Tree Board.