by JoAnn Collins
Co-Chair of the Friends of the Fort Worth Prairie Park Committee

The reason I'm writing is entirely personal. My father's family farmed close to Leonard, Texas during the Depression. They tried to make a living farming on the halves. When that didn't pan out, my grandfather became a cattle trader. My dad spoke of picking cotton, storing a grain called hi-gear that would catch fire, hunting, walking home from high school for 5 miles, all of those things that a child of the Depression lived. He lost his brother in WWII at the age of 18. He came to Fort Worth to work at General Dynamics before he was 20. Here he met my mother and raised a family. He taught my brother and me how to grow a garden (which we hated at the time.)

We spent hours in the car with my parents telling us what each crop we saw growing on the prairie. I considered this wasted time! Of course I was more interested in rocks, trees, flowers and crawdads that we caught on a bacon string at Grandma's. The blackland prairie is in my blood, but I didn't realize it until much later in life. I only wish my father was still around to show me all the places he knew when he was a boy. There are so many things I would ask....

I taught elementary school for 29 years in Arlington, Texas. My first 8 years were in special education and the last 21 were in 3rd grade. As the years have gone by and I raised my own sons, I realized what that land connection gave to me, those invisible threads that let me know I am linked to something bigger than myself.

Toward the end of my career I became involved with Outdoor Education and met Jarid Manos who spoke of his work with disconnected youth and prairies. The Blackland Prairie is now nearly all gone, but to its west there is still a chance to save some of the Fort Worth Prairie.

Somewhere in the last 25 years, most kids have lost their land connection. They don't use it to get their meal or to look for crawdads, worms, or horny toads. Most of our kids are connected to a power cord that doesn't allow them to interact with the land or the systems around them.

I have two brilliant sons who dropped out of school at 9th grade and followed their peers into drugs and alcohol. Luckily my sons are still alive and are working on fitting into society.

But not all of my students have been so lucky. One of my students was murdered as a college student by a disconnected youth, and I just attended the funeral of another former student whose heart was in the right place, but got caught up in the "culture" of youth. He was shot by police who have come to generalize all young black men in the same group. 

These young people, one white and one black, were all someone's child.

Their lives were worth something. We are failing our young people with the cookie cutter education that they receive. They need something more; they need some prairie in their blood!

I recently reconnected with Jarid and became involved with a Save the Prairie movement right here in Fort Worth. The Fort Worth Prairie Park is a dream that is becoming more of a possibility with each person we engage in our struggle.

We are trying to save approximately 2000 acres of virgin Fort Worth Prairie (a unique and rare American prairie ecosystem) from being sold to developers. Luckily the efforts of Great Plains Restoration Council and concerned citizens have kept this Prairie alive for seven years so far.

There is now a renewed effort by GPRC and a local group called Friends of the Fort Worth Prairie Park to continue this important cause. The Prairie is amazing. It has fossil-rich creeks, over 700 native species, wetlands, tallgrass expanses, shortgrass prairie barrens, an Indian marker tree, and so many other unique qualities. It is even on the Chisholm Trail. It's vast enough that you can imagine what the wilderness prairie was like thousands of years ago.

You can find out more about our efforts on our Facebook page, Fort Worth Prairie Park. The page is public.

I have another chance as I'm raising my 8 year-old girl; she goes to the Prairie with me. After her first visit, she asked, "Can I go there tomorrow?"

Join us as we spread the word and complete the process of saving the Prairie Park so that more of the world's children will have the opportunity to have that invisible but tangible land connection to their soul!

And please come walk into the past, present and future with us on one of our Second Sunday Hikes at the Fort Worth Prairie Park. Thank you.