at the Prairie Project, I decided to return one afternoon, feeling nostalgic. When I drove up to the gate, I was dismayed at what I found. It was all gone. One of the last small pockets of blackland prairie in Texas had been sold and
final year of the project. While searching, I also found a short video of the Prairie Project from 2001. In it, I was stunned to see Jane Goodall — yes, the Jane Goodall — standing in the wildflowers alongside
Children learning about nature at the Praire Project (before the author’s time). PHOTOS courtesy of Native American Seed
“ In the doing of it, it’s taught them the power that they have as individuals to make a difference in the world.” returned to what it was before Mrs. Weaver’s project: an industrial waste dump. The flowers we had planted were buried beneath piles of garbage and rubble. In disbelief, I searched the internet for some kind of explanation. It’s simple: Mrs. Weaver was and is a hero to me, but she is just one person. Over time, community interest in the project waned and eventually so did the support Mrs. Weaver needed to sustain her work — a reality that was compounded by the loss of Composite Technology Inc. as a partner. The former owner of the Prairie Project site (which happened to employ many Gililland students’ parents) moved to a new location in 2008, the
Mrs. Weaver and her students. She had come to visit, as did Lady Bird Johnson on a separate occasion. As a child, I had no idea how important this place was. More than a decade later, I can see now what a treasure those 28 acres were to my community. I am thankful for Mrs. Weaver’s generosity and for all I learned from her. She empowered hundreds of young people to care for the world around them. As Jane Goodall once said while standing in the soil of my little lost patch of prairie: “In the doing of it, it’s taught them the power that they have as individuals to make a difference in the world.” Yes, that and so much more.
WEB EXTRA Watch the video here: youtube.com/ watch?v=enmGg2957rQ
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