Spring can be a trying season in the Flint Hills. The temperature fluctuations and swirling winds make picking out the right jacket nearly impossible on any given morning. And if it happens to be nice enough to not need any extra layering one morning, you’ll likely need it by late afternoon.

The fickle weather is what makes the truly beautiful spring days so enjoyable. The kind where a light breeze is needed to temper the warmth of the sun because the treetops are still a tangle of tender limbs and buds, but not a shroud of leaves to offer any shade. Even cloudy days bring hope of gentle rains that tame the dust and fuel an explosion of vibrant colors.

Kansas native prairie is undergoing a similar awakening against a backdrop of warm days and cool nights. Stunning blue skies are sometimes interrupted by smoke from prescribed burns. In a few short weeks the barren landscape left after prescribed fires will transform into an ocean of green grass supporting grazing for millions of cattle.

This is a cycle that’s been repeated for thousands of years. The diverse mix of native grasses and forbs that blanket the countryside are adapted to episodic fire that clears away woody plants like eastern red cedars or non-native forbs like sericea lespedeza.

Protecting the state’s 15 million acres of grassland is a year-round process and despite farmers’ and ranchers’ use of prescribed fires, the prairies of Kansas are facing significant threats from invasive species that outcompete the native vegetation.

Over the past 30 years, Kansas has seen woodlands advance across its eastern flank, with large swaths of the central portion of the state transitioning to land that’s not quite a forest but isn’t prairie either.

Invasive species go beyond fence lines, and the westward march of woodlands is changing the landscape of Kansas.

Prescribed burns are essential to maintaining the prairie that’s left, and they will be vital in reversing the encroachment that has already taken place. I also know there’s a significant consternation when plumes of smoke create a nuisance in towns and cities.

More than once I’ve had to close my windows on a pleasant day and turn on the air conditioner because the erratic atmosphere of spring has trapped smoke close to the ground. Usually the fires are relatively close when this happens, but there are days when the sky is deep blue in the morning but it morphs into a gray haze as the smoke from distant burns filters in.

It’s easy to curse the smoke when it settles in, clinging to a spring day that feels too nice to waste indoors. I’ve done it myself. But that haze is also a sign that those who depend on the prairie for their livelihood are caring for it in a time-tested manner.  

The same winds that make us second-guess our jackets each morning are carrying something else across Kansas this time of year — the work it takes to keep the prairie from slipping away.