This is my prairie. It’s your prairie.
If you have been in GNV for any length of time – and my time here exceeds half a century – you brag about it to your friends, you drag your visiting relatives out to gawk at all the gators…sometimes you just go out there to sit quietly and watch the sun set.
This is our prairie GNV! And here are some of my favorite prairie images.
The prairie is about the best thing to see on US 441 from the Smokey mountains to the keys, though to tell why would be to digress badly. But everybody with any sense is crazy about the prairie.
Archie Carr: A Naturalist in Florida
From the moment you step through the portal that is the old railroad bridge underpass you know that a land of wonder awaits.
The extensive Alachua savanna is a level green above 15 miles over, 50 miles in circumfrence, and scarcely a tree or a bush to be seen upon it. It is encircled with high sloping hills covered with waving forests and orange groves, rising from an exuberantly fertile soil.
William Bartram, 1774
My life – as a journalist, a cyclist, a hiker, a sentient human being – is as immersed in the prairie mystique as are the unseen things that wriggle and swim beneath its quiet surfaces.
Dude! Alligators!
Ron Cunningham: FreeGNV
One step toward restoring the prairie’s early fauna came in 1975 with the release of 10 bison. These large grazers were residents of Florida for many thousands of years before humans arrived but never in huge herds like out west.
Lars Anderson: Paynes Prairie: The Great Savannah
As an editorial writer I once tried to convince the late state Sen. George Kirkpatrick to support a bottle deposit bill by pointing to all the bottles and cans that ended up in Paynes Prairie.
George still killed the bill. But in his next re-election campaign he filmed himself walking out into the prairie to demonstrate what a great environmentalist he was.
Plus, George never got over his mad that they wouldn’t let him shoot ducks on the prairie.
My involvement with the prairie dates back to the late 1970s, when the whole community became embroiled in a long and much-argued debate over when – or even if – we were going to build a rail-trail along its northern edges from GNV to Hawthorne.
It was a hell of a fight but we won!
She moved calmly over the pits of sand, palmettos biting at her calves, strange sudden seeps of marsh. Small things rustled away from her footsteps and she felt fondly toward them, for their smallness and their fear….she was only one living lost thing among so many others, not special for being human.
Lauren Groff: Florida
Speaking of the rail-trail, if you have ever ridden it and bypassed the turn off to Alachua Lake Overlook, you’ve missed the best prairie view of all.
Even if there was not enough time to stop the car and listen to the frogs singing in the tall grass or the clicking of cicadas in the trees, a short drive through the prairie was enough to recharge Carr’s soul and remind her what she was fighting for.
Peggy McDonald: Marjorie Harris Carr
Listen, I’m not saying Paynes Prairie is a rough neighborhood, but even the Gators travel in pairs.
Is there anything cooler than hearing the gators growl during mating season?
Jack E. Davis, author of “The Bald Eagle,” credits Paynes Prairie for helping to save America’s national bird when the species was all but wiped out throughout the rest of the country. Basically they were exporting unhatched eagle eggs from the prairie to the rest of the U.S.
“We have more than a dozen active nests now around Newnans Lake,” Davis, the UF environmental historian told me. “When Paynes Prairie was dryer, you could go out on the (La Chua) trail and see eagles fishing – and stealing fish from ospreys. It’s a wonderful thing to see.”
Paynes Prairie has always held a certain fascination for humans, whether it’s the bewildered automobile driver at the mercy of his vehicle, or the prehistoric Indian standing at the prairie’s edge planning his next meal: Mammoth? Mastadon?…20-ft long ground sloth?
Lars Anderson
FreeGNV 