Written by Molly Stoddard, Upstream Unsung Caretaker 2024

Congratulations to Upstream Unsung Caretaker Molly Stoddard who is making Minnesota a better place through her stewardship efforts.

It is very tough to highlight just one favorite place outside in Minnesota, so let me say this, the prairie. Most people go up north to the woods, I challenge you to go out west and down south to the prairie.  Yes there is a lot of ag land, sometimes it’s flat as a pancake and yes there are pockets of prairie that remain, less than 1% of the original, scattered remnants. They are worth visiting and exploring in any season.  In the prairie you will find the sky so large that you can observe the weather coming and going. You may feel small, you may feel part of something bigger than yourself. The land is so open you can see 360 degrees of horizon around you, it’s spacious and peaceful. Some prairies are dotted with wetland jewels and lakes or fed by gentle streams or rivers, some are shaped by hills and cliffs. You may find plants and animals that cannot live anywhere else, perhaps you have never even heard of, like bobolinks, skinks, scuds, and ladies’ tresses.  One-third of our state was once all prairie, a good chunk.  Agriculture’s heritage is prairie.  Let the first Prairie City USA, Fergus Falls, be your springboard into western Minnesota’s often overlooked and intriguing prairies.

I retired from working for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service one year ago. The last 18 years of my career, I worked at the Prairie Wetlands Learning Center in Fergus Falls. Over the years, the Service staff and the Prairie Science Class public school teachers developed an innovative approach to teaching outdoors which we named The Compass to Nature.  Dave Ellis and I co-authored a booklet designed by Kia Donais to articulate this approach and to share it with other educators virtually and via training workshops. I now work on-call as a substitute teacher for the Prairie Science Class and worked part-time last winter and spring for the Friends of the Prairie Wetlands Learning Center to teach the Prairie Science Class, filling in during an ongoing staffing crisis.

My friend Rud Wasson and I have been vocal advocates in Fergus Falls to bring awareness to this staffing crisis which exists here and across the country through the National Wildlife Refuge System.  We spoke with local service clubs, the city council, the school board, and hosted a letter-writing event.  Thanks to our community’s love of the prairie and conservation values, this campaign was well-received and resulted in a quick response from the Service to fill two of four vacancies this year.  We continue to collaborate and build capacity with local and national organizations to hopefully influence our members of Congress to fund the other two positions and address the more than 10 years of flatlined budgets for the Service and return to full funding, full staffing, and full operations.

Other past and present related volunteer activities include participating in two Nibi Walks on the Otter Tail and Pelican Rivers, hosting river clean-ups via kayaking, helping to install and maintain the Adams School and public library rain gardens, installing and maintaining two small pollinator gardens at the Federated Church, creating resource materials for Adams School teachers to use for the rain garden, mentoring local teachers in using outdoor classroom spaces, leading Braiding Sweetgrass walks with Jacob McArthur, organizing and staffing an EV car show for Earth Day, chaperoning an annual outdoor youth confirmation retreat for Federated Church, and networking and publicly advocating for clean water and land.  

Although I have a background in western science, I am also a follower of Jesus and a student and appreciator of Indigenous ways of knowing. I believe that our Creator made this earth with all of its beauty and interdependence for us and others to live on. I believe we humans were created last among the Creation and as such, we are all related, and we humans are the youngest members.  We have a lot to learn from our elders. I believe the spirit of life moves through all, and our Creator and this earth loves us as evidenced for one through its constant giving of itself so we may simply live, live simply, and experience joy. I also believe we have a responsibility to live sustainably, to respectfully show our gratitude, and curiously seek out the wonder and surprises of this earth every day.  These are acts of reciprocity that allow for all of our lives to continue into the future and to be good ancestors.

My other hopes for the future include starting a small business partnership in nature education with a teacher colleague, seeing the Prairie Wetlands Learning Center fully thriving again, and a requirement for pre-service practicum coursework in place-based education for college students studying to become teachers.  The outdoor classroom is the original, traditional classroom and with frequent access to nearby nature, children develop a lasting, meaningful, and memorable relationship with this earth that loves and sustains us.  I would love to see teachers at every school holding classes outside their building often, in all seasons, for all ages, building students’ knowledge and skills and nurturing their stewardship as caretakers of nature for the rest of their lives.

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