Patrick Swanson has been restoring a Harrison County prairie.

The fourth iteration of the multi-day LoHi (Loess Hills) Trek was held October 16-20 in Mills and Fremont counties of southwestern Iowa. This was my third LoHi Trek, joining about 45 others hailing from Colorado to Ohio, Minnesota to Missouri, and various points in between on this unique supported camping and hiking adventure. 

Golden Hills Resource Conservation and Development (RC&D), assisted by many other partners and volunteers, organized the event and recently posted an excellent synopsis and great action photos of the daily activities. Here I will offer my own experiences as a complement to what has already been written, and reflect a bit on this journey and how it compared to the two previous treks I attended in 2021 and 2023.

Patrick Swanson has been restoring a Harrison County prairie.

Over Memorial Day weekend this year, I joined the third installment of the LoHi Trek, a multi-day hike through the Loess Hills organized by Golden Hills Resource Conservation and Development and other partners. 

I joined the inaugural LoHi Trek in 2021 through Monona County, and offered my reflection on that journey in an earlier Bleeding Heartland post. 

I missed last year’s trek and the follow-up “mini LoHi” hike in the fall. When the organizers announced that this year’s hike would be traversing the northern reaches of the Loess Hills in Plymouth and Woodbury Counties, visiting areas I hadn’t seen before, I jumped at the opportunity. 

Patrick Swanson takes over this week’s edition of Iowa wildflower Wednesday. -promoted by Laura Belin

Earlier this month marked the first of what I hope to be a more common event in western Iowa: an organized multi-day hike through the Loess Hills. 

Conceived and orchestrated by Golden Hills Resource Conservation and Development (RC&D) and other partners, the Lo(ess) Hi(lls) Trek, as it was called, gave about 30 folks the opportunity to walk a route through and between conservation lands in Monona County. Golden Hills RC&D recently posted an excellent day-by-day synopsis of the LoHi Trek, so I won’t recap the details here.

As a participant, I would like to offer some of my reflections on this journey.  

Patrick Swanson features an unusual plant growing on the Harrison County prairie he is restoring. -promoted by Laura Belin

Here we are in late spring. Seeing the prairie flowers begin their parade of blooms this year has been providing me with much needed mental respite from the travails of enduring the fallout of the coronavirus pandemic.  The resilience of spring flowers in the face of an ever-changing environment, and their interdependence with pollinators offer good reminders of what we should aspire to in ourselves.

Speaking of interdependence, last year I posted an essay describing the lifestyle of a late-summer blooming hemiparasitic plant found on my Loess Hills prairie called Slenderleaf false foxglove (Agalinis tenuifolia).

This year, I thought I would use my first Wildflower Wednesday post to describe another curious hemiparasitic plant living on my prairie, the almost ghostly pale-green Downy Yellow Painted Cup (Castilleja sessiliflora). Its other common names include yellow Indian paintbrush or downy paintbrush.

Patrick Swanson interrupts the winter hiatus of Bleeding Heartland’s Iowa wildflowers series with some lovely pictures and useful tips. -promoted by Laura Belin

Here we are in the deep throes of winter. A wistful melancholy arises from memories of greener and more colorful landscapes, and the dark days and cold dampness of our climate this time of year seems to cage us indoors, leaving us restless with cabin fever.

But the winter landscape has its own serenity, and those adventurous enough to face the chill are often rewarded by sights and sounds unique to the season. 

Last year about this time, I posted an essay here with pictures from a winter snowshoe trek depicting how the new-fallen snow transformed plants on my prairie into more magical, snow-capped versions of themselves.

Patrick Swanson has an unusual, hemiparasitic plant growing on his Harrison County prairie. -promoted by Laura Belin

As midsummer’s profusion of prairie clovers, coneflowers, and leadplant begin to fade, late August sees an unusual flower make its splash on the prairie palette: the slenderleaf false foxglove (Agalinis tenuifolia).

I had never encountered this plant before I started working to restore a native prairie remnant in the Loess Hills (an experience I wrote about here). My curiosity led me to learn more about A. tenuifolia, also known as slender-leaved false foxglove, and ultimately to share here some of the information I have gleaned about its life cycle.

Patrick Swanson describes a project to highlight “the unusual geology and scenic value of the Loess Hills, their importance as a wildlife corridor and a home to the largest tracts of native remnant prairie left in the state, and the presence of many protected areas along the backbone of the hills.” -promoted by Laura Belin

Earlier this month, I attended the dedication of Brent’s Trail, a new eight-mile hiking trail in Harrison County, near the town of Little Sioux, that links Murray Hill Scenic Overlook, Loess Hills State Forest, and Gleason-Hubel Wildlife Area.

The idea of a long-distance trail through the Loess Hills was envisioned by Brent Olson, whose career as area forester for the Loess Hills State Forest spanned 25 years before his untimely death in 2016 from cancer at age 53. His vision was championed by those who followed to create such a trail and name it in his honor.

Patrick Swanson kicks off the eighth year of Bleeding Heartland’s wildflowers series with pictures from the prairie remnant he has been restoring in Harrison County. -promoted by Laura Belin

If you have a favorite sports team, once the season concludes, there is often a period of reflection to consider how the season went. Maybe how each of the games unfolded. Perhaps how some of the games were affected by the weather. Maybe even those games you had to miss, but wished you could have attended.

Spring is now upon us, and just as we have begun enjoying the warmer weather, we must already note the passing of one of the prairie’s earliest native wildflowers – the pasque flower (Anemone patens).

We interrupt the winter hiatus of Bleeding Heartland’s wildflowers series to bring you Patrick Swanson’s lovely recent pictures of his Harrison County prairie remnant. -promoted by Laura Belin

Saturday night, February 16, brought a nice snowfall to the Omaha/Council Bluffs region. We don’t often get the kind of snow events that make me want to pull out my snowshoes, but as morning broke on Sunday, I decided to throw them in the back of the car and head to the Loess Hills to see what nature provided.

As I introduced in a previous post, I have been working to restore a native prairie remnant. I had considered trying to burn a slash pile from my summer efforts clearing cedars, as I occasionally do in the winter when the weather cooperates. This day, however, the snowplow hadn’t yet cleared one of the roads I use to access the property where I intended to burn. As a result, I had to park and hike in from a different spot.

Because the snow was deeper than I expected, I bailed out on the bonfire idea, and decided instead to take my own “snow day” to trek around on my snowshoes and capture some winter photos of the prairie and woods on the property. I posted some of my pictures to the Iowa Wildflower Report Facebook group, prompting an invitation from Laura Belin to submit a blog post.

Patrick Swanson has been restoring a prairie remnant in the Loess Hills of western Iowa. This post is a synopsis of the book he recently published about that experience, with pictures of one hillside on his Harrison County land throughout the seasons. – promoted by Laura Belin

Readers of Bleeding Heartland have seen many fine articles and commentary on environmental issues and, most particularly wildflowers, published on this site over the years. One might wonder where passion for nature, natural areas, and their denizens comes from.