- [Narrator] This episode of Wish You Were Here with Eliza Blue is brought to you in part by South Dakota Public Broadcasting and the South Dakota Arts Council.

Thanks for watching.

(gentle music) ♪ Back roads and byways ♪ ♪ Campfires will lay awake ♪ ♪ Sweet grass and summer sage ♪ ♪ Come on babe ♪ ♪ Come and take my hand ♪ ♪ Take my hand ♪ ♪ Take my hand ♪ ♪ We're Dakota bound ♪ (enchanting music) Join us as we travel to share stories and songs from the Prairie.

- Hi, I'm Eliza blue.

And for this episode, I Wish You Were Here.

We aren't going to be going to just one location.

We are gonna be taking you all across the Dakotas looking for signs of spring.

We're glad you're here.

Winter on the Northern plain last a long, long, long, long time.

So long.

In fact, sometimes we begin to wonder if it will ever be warm again.

So when spring finally arrives, there is much rejoicing.

Everybody probably has their own favorite first sign of spring.

For me here on the ranch there's a lot to look forward to.

New life is in abundance.

It's everywhere.

The budding lilac trees and plum blossoms awakening from their slumber.

The subsequent return of bees and rainbows, our milk cow, pumpkin freshened.

So we have milk for our table straight from the source.

Snuggling the sweet softness of see baby lambs especially those that for whatever reason require a little extra care.

Baby kittens chicks, pretty much baby everything is my personal favorite part of spring.

There is a specific event, however, that most of us from this region recognize as the official end of winter.

Even if it doesn't always coincide with the onset of warm weather.

The emergence of the Prairie Crocus also called hoochichecpa, pasque flower, wind flower, and Prairie anemone among other names.

Her blooms are not forwarded by ice or snow.

She's beautiful and a resilient understated way.

Like so many of the plants, animals and humans that call the Prairie home.

Usually on Wish You Were Here, We take you with us to one location, but for this episode we are going to celebrate the long awaited much anticipated signs of spring in a different way, because if spring doesn't deserve a big celebration, I don't know what does.

Together we will journey across the region, joining some very special guests who will share own springtime favorites, a feast for all our senses, just like spring herself.

Todd and I are gonna share one of our favorite springtime songs.

It's actually a hymn, but it was made famous by Cat Stevens.

So his version is probably the most well known.

And while we've been rehearsing it today we've had blackbird singing along.

So we'll see if they will join us for this rendition now.

♪ Morning has broken like the first morning ♪ ♪ Blackbird has spoken like the first bird ♪ ♪ Praise for the singing, ♪ ♪ Praise for the morning ♪ ♪ Praise for them springing fresh from the word ♪ ♪ Sweet the rains new fall, sunlit from heaven ♪ ♪ Like the first dew fall on the first grass ♪ ♪ Praise for the sweetness of the wet garden ♪ ♪ Sprung in completeness where His feet pass ♪ (lady humming) ♪ Morning has broken like the first morning ♪ ♪ Blackbird has spoken like the first bird ♪ ♪ Praise for the singing, ♪ ♪ Praise for the morning ♪ ♪ Praise for them springing fresh from the word.

♪ (speaking foreign language) - Hello relatives, I shake your hand with a good heart.

My name is Tiana Spotted Thunder and my Lakota name is Good Voice Meadowlark Woman.

When I was writing the song, Meadowlark, I wanted to mimic how Meadowlark sounded.

I heard meadowlark songs from all different regions, North Dakota, Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, and basically anywhere Meadowlarks are found, they have a different song.

So I just wanted to incorporate all of the different songs that they have.

I love recording meadowlarks on my phone.

And I just thought that that was like the biggest inspiration for this song.

And I'm super glad that it came together so well.

And that it's such a popular song.

I had no idea but I did wanna make a song that basically entailed what my name was and what meadowlark animal was, and what the bird singing sounds like to me.

So I just wanted to share their song through my voice.

(Tiana singing) - I'm Lori Walsh, I'm the host of In The Moment on South Dakota Public Broadcasting.

And I'm sitting in the conservatory of the Butterfly House & Aquarium in Sioux Falls.

We're like 500 miles from where Linda Hasselstrom lives in Hermosa.

And I'm thinking about her because she has such an influence and she's one of our most widely read and appreciated and beloved writers and poets.

But Linda suffered an extreme and tragic loss.

She lost her love.

She lost Jerry, her partner, in an accident.

And after that period of time, she went into a place of deep and painful suffering and mourn and grief.

So she's not here with us today to share her work.

I hope that you will let me share it for her.

The poem I'd like to read is called, Cleaning The Greenhouse, it's by Linda Hasselstrom and the greenhouse you should know was built for Linda by Jerry.

You built me a beautiful space for growing things, windows surround earth contained by stout black timbers, a work bench with shells holds pots and tools.

The roof curves like a Chinese pagoda.

Along the clean white window sills, I placed sand dollars.

I found walking beaches far from this prairie grass.

I started with tiny ones, then a little larger looking at the leaf shapes on each one until I reached the largest.

When I think of the greenhouse, I see it this way, filled with light, with wheels of white sand dollars, spinning in the scent of green plants solidly rooted in the earth.

To day, I faced the truth.

Dead flies lay in drifts along each shelf, spiders crouched in corner webs, the window glass was spotted, shelves filled with plastic pots I'll never use.

Thinking of you, hoping you are headed home.

I cleaned each surface, wiped, polished, dusted, and swept sorted and tossed.

The garbage can is full, the greenhouse windows sparkle.

The sand dollars are still far from the ocean.

I tucked radish seeds in the dark dam earth a spider dangles in the rafters ready to catch flies.

Satisfied, I sat on the old kitchen chair, saturated in sunshine, inhaled the fragrance of spring and started a poem.

- Hi friends.

We're here today at the Old Card House Museum in Sioux falls South Dakota, a place that we love to do with performance.

And so we're here to do a little for you today.

I've got my family here, we're The Teals, this is my dad, Clyde, my sister, Liz, my husband, Dalton and I'm Abby.

And today we're gonna share with you one of our favorite Irish folk songs, it's called Pretty Fair Made.

And as most Irish folk songs, it tells a story.

And that's why it reminds us of spring because it talks about love that has been lost, but that's come back home.

And, so we're gonna share this with you today.

We hope you enjoy it.

♪ Pretty fair maid was in her garden ♪ ♪ When a stranger came a riding by ♪ ♪ He came up to the gate and called her ♪ ♪ Said pretty fair maid would you be my bride ♪ ♪ She said I've a true love who's in the army ♪ ♪ And he's been gone for seven long years ♪ ♪ And if he's gone for seven years longer ♪ ♪ I'll still be waiting for him here ♪ (guitar tune playing) ♪ Perhaps he's on some watercourse drowning ♪ ♪ Perhaps he's on some battlefield slain ♪ ♪ Perhaps he's to some fair girl married ♪ ♪ And you may never see him again ♪ ♪ Well if he's drown, I hope he's happy ♪ ♪ And if he's on some battlefield slain ♪ ♪ And if he's to some fair girl married ♪ ♪ I'll love the girl that married him ♪ (guitar tune playing) ♪ He took his hand out of his pocket ♪ ♪ And on his finger he wore a golden ring ♪ ♪ And when she saw that band a-shining ♪ ♪ A brand new song her heart did sing ♪ ♪ And then he threw his arms all around her ♪ ♪ Kisses gave her one, two, three ♪ ♪ Said I'm your true and loving soldier ♪ ♪ That's come back home to marry thee ♪ (guitar tune playing) ♪ Pretty fair maid was in her garden ♪ ♪ When a stranger came a-riding by ♪ ♪ He came up to the gate and called her ♪ ♪ Said pretty fair maid would you be my bride ♪ - [Narrator] And now some notes from the field.

(bird chirping) (lighthearted music) - Yesterday, the robins returned to our yard.

We saw them through the living room window on the Western side of the house, a small flock of them between the branches of the tallest ash in the tree break.

It was a damp gray day and it was far enough away that it was difficult to make out the burnt orange feathers of their breasts, but the plump curve of their bellies and the stuttered swoop of their flight was unmistakable.

After a winter's worth of sparrows.

"Let's take the binoculars upstairs and see if we are right," I told the kids and we trumped up to look.

I threw open the window and the cacophony of robins song filled the room.

Even before we spotted the telltale coloration through the binoculars lenses.

The kids satisfied went back down to their Lego table but I stayed to marvel.

"Hello friends."

I called out the window.

In 2018, Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris created a children's picture book called, "The Lost Words."

The impetus of the book was the editing of the Oxford junior dictionary, which had removed many of the words used to describe the natural world.

Some of them relatively common words, such as acorn, fern, dandelion, raven, gold finch, otter, and king fisher.

The editing body of the OED determined that the excised words were of increasingly less importance to modern children and moving them made sense for newer words, with greater relevance, like blog, broadband database and voicemail.

The editors argued that they couldn't include everything but Macfarlane explained what was being lost this way.

We find it hard to love what we cannot give name to and what we do not love we will not save.

Today the weather is warm and bright.

The robins that gathered beneath the chili clouds yesterday are scattered across the yard now.

We hear them calling from every direction, a giant plume of red wing blackbird swoop down to occupy the tall ash, their coarse whistles and trills even louder than the robins chatter.

They move on quickly though.

Our tree break merely a short respite in their journey.

In a tree by the patio we see a downy wood pecker skipping along the bark and then a single goose honks past so low to the ground, we could practically reach up and touch its feathers with our fingertips.

"Birds, birds, everywhere."

I tell the kids and they smile at me before returning to draw with chalk on the cement patio.

The one bird we don't hear is the meadowlark whose bright song is usually Western Dakotan's know that spring has arrived.

Their voices, unavoidably ubiquitous once the weather warms.

In total we've lost 3 billion American birds since the 1970s and the meadowlark population in particular has seen a precipitous decline in the last decade, though their numbers in our region are still strong or have been.

Where are the meadowlarks, I wonder aloud.

Evening begins to settle around us.

The shadows are long and stark across the first brushes of green rising softly from the dusty field the sun resting just above the horizon is pure gold.

I go out for a run and I am just about to turn back when I hear it.

Two long notes followed by a dizzling avalanche of trills, it's a meadowlark.

We live surrounded on all sides by a wilderness of grass, land that though has changed, still looks surprisingly similar to the way it did a millennia ago.

And yet my children, children of the Prairie winds and grasses would rather listen to bird song on YouTube than out in the pasture.

Unlike the editors of the OED, I've tried to give them words for both the world of human creation and the world in which humans are simply one voice in a marvelous and ancients symphony.

But I fear Macfarlane may be wrong.

What if the things we name and love, we still don't love enough to save.

Perhaps it's time we stop saying those names quietly, perhaps it's time to start shouting less what we lose, we lose for good ♪ Back roads and byway ♪ ♪ Campfires will lay awake, ♪ ♪ Sweet grass and summer sage ♪ ♪ Come on babe ♪ ♪ Come and take my hand ♪ ♪ Take my hand, take my hand ♪ ♪ We're Dakota bound.

♪ (enchanting music)