Before the Europeans came, the blackland prairie stretched for millions of acres. Tallgrasses and vivid Spring flowers sheltered ground-nesting, colorful birds with names like meadowlark and dickcissel.

Most of this land was plowed under for farmlands. A few isolated tracts were retained by farmers as hayfields, preserving little oases among what used to be a continent of marvels.

Park Hill Prairie sits on five hundred acres just northeast of Farmersville, Texas. It’s a county park and preserve, seated on very gently rolling hills among fields and lowing cows. It’s a place for times past, for things preserved, for the possibilities which yet arise.

I stand at the overlook, shimmering fields fading into the horizon, while birds sing and cattle low around me, and wonder at what has been and at what might yet be.