WHISPERING HILLS: STRETCH OF THE IMAGINATION LEADS TO JOURNEY ACROSS ILLINOIS PRAIRIE

I went to a limestone barrens last week looking for prairie dock in bloom and found only stunted leaves. Because of the drought this summer, seeing certain flowers has been a matter of finding the sites which have had the most rainfall. What I call the Eldorado Railroad Prairie is my second-choice location for seeing it.

Most of the prairie remnants in Illinois occur along railroad rights-of-way and cemeteries where they have been protected from disturbance. Twelve-Mile Prairie is a good example; it runs along the railroad north from Kinmundy for 12 miles.

A stretch of the imagination turns this railroad right-of-way into a prairie too. Prairie dock (see illustration), goldenrods, tall ironweed and late boneset all bloom. Two common prairie grasses, big bluestream and Indian grass, grow here.

Pods hang from partridge pea plants. Dried milkweed plants are releasing downy seeds. Dried and drying plants tell what wildflowers bloomed here earlier (ox-eyed daises, black-eyed Susans, butterfly-weed, rosinweed, wild bergamot, yellow coneflowers, to name a few).

Grasshoppers jump in every direction when I move. Clicks and buzzes blend to make one sound because there's so many meadow grasshoppers making them. Ground crickets add a constant hum.

The blooming stalk on the prairie dock grow up to 10-feet tall and past-bloom flowers which are going to seed. The heart-shaped leaves stand to mid-thigh and have toothed edges. Insects have chewed on the leaves and eaten the petals off several flowers.

Prairie dock (Silphium terebinthinaceum) blooms from July to October in prairies, fields and open roadsides from southern Ontario to Minnesota and southward to Georgia, Louisiana and Missouri.

A grasshopper walks to the tip of a blade of grass, which bends over and sets the insect on a neighboring thistle. The sinking sun sends shadows creeping over the ground and up the plants.

The grasses stand taller than I do. The vegetation is tall enough that two yellow and black garden spiders sit over three feet above the ground. The white zigzag line in their webs shows more than they do.

A monarch nectars on a thistle. One garden spider has a grasshopper and a green jacket dragonfly wrapped in silk. Another one sits with its head down and front legs near a secured grasshopper.

I look up and see a dot in the sky. The orb weaver spider is one of the species that spends most of the day in the trees, spins its web late every afternoon and eats it the next morning. The sun is off the "prairie" but highlights the orange spider.

A row of shrubby trees blocks my view of the abandoned railroad. I concentrate on the insects to ignore the traffic noise, focus on the prairie plants to ignore the weeds and enjoy an evening on the prairie.

Kathy Phelps is a freelance nature writer and illustrator who resides in Harrisburg, Ill.