WEBVTT - The Shocking Vastness of Prairie , Part 2 0:00:03.000 --> 0:00:06.760 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:13.039 --> 0:00:14.920 Hey, welcome this Stuff to Blow your Mind. 0:00:15.040 --> 0:00:18.040 My name is Robert Lamb and I am Joe McCormick, 0:00:18.120 --> 0:00:20.400 and we are back with the second part in our 0:00:20.480 --> 0:00:25.320 series on the Prairie, the temperate grassland ecosystem of North America. 0:00:26.040 --> 0:00:29.880 This subject was inspired Robbed by your recent family visit 0:00:29.920 --> 0:00:33.920 to Colorado, spending some time in the western Prairie. I 0:00:33.920 --> 0:00:36.120 guess this is in the region just before the landscape 0:00:36.159 --> 0:00:39.320 turns into the rocky mountains. I couldn't remember if you 0:00:39.400 --> 0:00:42.280 mentioned last time. Did you see bison on your trip? 0:00:42.520 --> 0:00:45.400 We did. Yeah, at the Arsenal, we saw some bison. 0:00:45.560 --> 0:00:48.400 Like I say that, that area has a number of 0:00:48.400 --> 0:00:52.360 bison and there's a lot of bison conservation that is 0:00:52.960 --> 0:00:56.280 focused there, and so we got to drive through that 0:00:56.400 --> 0:00:58.520 area and we got to see the bison, not super 0:00:58.560 --> 0:01:00.680 close because they're going to do exactly what they want 0:01:00.720 --> 0:01:02.640 to do, but we still got to see them at 0:01:02.680 --> 0:01:04.000 a distance, which was pretty cool. 0:01:04.120 --> 0:01:06.200 It's not a petting zoo there, right right. 0:01:06.240 --> 0:01:09.360 This is not one of those places where you hold 0:01:09.400 --> 0:01:14.800 potatoes out your window the livestock comes over. No, No, they 0:01:14.800 --> 0:01:16.959 do what they want and if you are close enough 0:01:17.000 --> 0:01:18.200 to see them, and then you're lucky. 0:01:19.400 --> 0:01:22.600 So in the previous episode of this series, we talked 0:01:22.640 --> 0:01:26.440 about the definition of our prairie and its similarity to 0:01:26.520 --> 0:01:31.200 other ecosystems like the step. Prairies are relatively flat or 0:01:31.319 --> 0:01:35.240 rolling landscapes that are dominated not by trees and shrubs 0:01:35.280 --> 0:01:40.440 but by grasses and flowering herbaceous plants called forbes, and 0:01:40.520 --> 0:01:42.319 so one of the questions that we talked about in 0:01:42.360 --> 0:01:47.560 the last episode somewhat extensively was why are prairies filled 0:01:47.600 --> 0:01:51.360 with grasses and forbes instead of trees? What historically has 0:01:51.440 --> 0:01:54.720 kept the trees out. The answer to this question turned 0:01:54.720 --> 0:01:58.800 out to be kind of complicated, involving, but possibly not 0:01:58.960 --> 0:02:04.480 being limited to factors of climate and rainfall, pressure from herbivores, 0:02:05.000 --> 0:02:10.040 and very importantly, frequent fires, fires to which native grasses 0:02:10.080 --> 0:02:14.239 and forbes are very resilient, while young trees and shrubs 0:02:14.240 --> 0:02:18.079 are typically not. Of course, human behavior in recent centuries 0:02:18.120 --> 0:02:21.320 has altered basically all of the factors that are upstream 0:02:21.440 --> 0:02:24.760 of the natural plant balance, and as a result, North 0:02:24.840 --> 0:02:29.960 America's prairies are seriously endangered. The vast majority of the 0:02:30.040 --> 0:02:33.800 original Eastern tall grass prairie is already gone, as we 0:02:33.919 --> 0:02:37.600 talked about last time. There are different ways of calculating 0:02:37.639 --> 0:02:41.000 how much of it remains, but some estimates say like 0:02:41.080 --> 0:02:45.680 four percent, others say less than one percent. It's mostly gone, 0:02:45.760 --> 0:02:49.040 and so this is a very precious, endangered type of 0:02:49.120 --> 0:02:53.200 landscape and there are ongoing conservation efforts to try to 0:02:53.560 --> 0:02:56.760 return some of this landscape more to its original plant 0:02:56.800 --> 0:03:02.200 balance and original ecosystem characteristics. After that, we went on 0:03:02.320 --> 0:03:06.520 too a fascinating sort of historical niche subject about the prairie, 0:03:06.840 --> 0:03:10.760 which was about grizzly bears, grizzly bears of the plains. 0:03:11.280 --> 0:03:15.239 Today most people think of grizzlies as animals that live 0:03:15.320 --> 0:03:19.480 exclusively in like remote mountain forests, but grizzlies used to 0:03:19.560 --> 0:03:22.360 be apex predators of the prairie as well. And we 0:03:22.400 --> 0:03:26.320 talked extensively about the journals of the Lewis and Clark 0:03:26.360 --> 0:03:29.280 expedition in the early nineteenth century, which had lots of 0:03:29.360 --> 0:03:33.080 encounters with prairie bears, and we analyzed at least one 0:03:33.120 --> 0:03:36.000 of those encounters at length. We are back today to 0:03:36.280 --> 0:03:39.960 talk some more. Now, Rob, I understand for today's episode 0:03:40.440 --> 0:03:43.240 you got somewhat obsessed with prairie madness. 0:03:43.680 --> 0:03:46.040 That's right. The other topics have had quite an effect, 0:03:46.040 --> 0:03:47.920 but this one will drive you absolutely mad. 0:03:49.600 --> 0:03:51.280 I'd never heard of this, you know. 0:03:51.320 --> 0:03:54.960 I wasn't really familiar with it either, though it certainly 0:03:55.000 --> 0:03:57.400 makes sense considering some of the things we talked about 0:03:57.440 --> 0:04:01.960 in the last episode. On one hand, you discussed your 0:04:02.000 --> 0:04:05.880 own personal response to the treeless openness of the prairie, 0:04:05.880 --> 0:04:09.640 that it had maybe a sort of uncanny or even 0:04:09.760 --> 0:04:12.360 threatening feeling to it, like, you know, too much space, 0:04:12.440 --> 0:04:13.240 not enough trees. 0:04:14.120 --> 0:04:17.280 Yeah, as I said in the last episode, I don't 0:04:17.400 --> 0:04:19.000 like that I feel this way. I feel like I 0:04:19.120 --> 0:04:22.160 want to I should be able to appreciate, you know, 0:04:22.320 --> 0:04:24.919 the beauty of all different types of landscapes equally. But 0:04:25.040 --> 0:04:29.040 for some reason, maybe just the environment I grew up with, 0:04:29.279 --> 0:04:31.720 I do have a kind of bias or preference for 0:04:31.720 --> 0:04:36.760 forested landscapes. And when there is not anything taller than 0:04:36.800 --> 0:04:40.000 me vertically in an area and it's just you know, 0:04:40.200 --> 0:04:43.720 vast open space all around, that does feel kind of 0:04:43.880 --> 0:04:47.800 exposed and vulnerable and uncomfortable to me. I need tall 0:04:47.880 --> 0:04:51.600 things around me, I think, And I don't know, maybe 0:04:51.600 --> 0:04:53.760 this is something I could get over one day, spending 0:04:53.800 --> 0:04:54.880 more time in the prairie. 0:04:54.960 --> 0:04:56.760 But I do have that tree bias. 0:04:56.800 --> 0:04:59.040 I think, well, this, I think this is going to 0:04:59.120 --> 0:05:02.000 arguably play the scenario here. But another thing that I 0:05:02.040 --> 0:05:04.040 think plays into the scenario that we touched on last 0:05:04.040 --> 0:05:06.680 time is how we have a lot, a great deal 0:05:06.720 --> 0:05:10.520 of writing and poetry about the about about the planes 0:05:10.560 --> 0:05:14.080 the great American prairies. Particularly, we talked about the words 0:05:14.080 --> 0:05:20.240 of William Cullen Bryant, the poet who described this sense 0:05:20.279 --> 0:05:24.840 of awe at beholding the prairies. And yeah, I think 0:05:24.880 --> 0:05:28.760 both of these examples steer us naturally into discussion of 0:05:29.000 --> 0:05:32.800 prairie madness, sometimes called prairie sickness, and so forth. And 0:05:32.880 --> 0:05:35.000 I do want to stress at the outset here. This 0:05:35.040 --> 0:05:37.560 is not a scientific term. This is not a medical term, 0:05:38.560 --> 0:05:42.680 and it is primarily reported as a phenomenon of the 0:05:42.760 --> 0:05:47.440 nineteenth century, and specifically in cases where you had European 0:05:47.839 --> 0:05:53.039 and American homesteaders, American homesteaders from the East who ventured 0:05:53.040 --> 0:05:55.279 out onto the prairies, you know, trying to you know, 0:05:55.960 --> 0:05:59.600 creating a new life, grabbing some land, you know, trying 0:05:59.600 --> 0:06:02.960 to make a lot life out there, who then experienced 0:06:02.960 --> 0:06:09.600 an array of psychological symptoms such as depression, withdrawal, behavioral changes, 0:06:09.640 --> 0:06:14.960 and in the extremes, even violence in response to the crushing, vastness, 0:06:15.000 --> 0:06:18.719 the open landscape and the howling wind of the prairie. 0:06:19.080 --> 0:06:20.839 Now, based on what you were reading, would you say 0:06:20.839 --> 0:06:23.800 that this is something that is probably culturally contingent. You 0:06:23.839 --> 0:06:29.880 mentioned it's among like European American homesteaders, European colonizers basically 0:06:30.360 --> 0:06:33.360 in the prairie landscape. It's not something typically reported by 0:06:33.400 --> 0:06:36.080 like indigenous peoples of the prairies. 0:06:35.640 --> 0:06:39.880 Correct, And that is very important to note, Like there's 0:06:39.920 --> 0:06:43.760 been indigenous people living on the prairies for more than 0:06:43.800 --> 0:06:49.400 ten thousand years, so this is not something that they experienced. 0:06:49.680 --> 0:06:52.600 And so probably also not something that's like an objective 0:06:52.920 --> 0:06:56.599 human body response to the prairie landscape. It's probably more 0:06:56.680 --> 0:06:59.120 like a conditioned cultural type of response. 0:06:59.440 --> 0:07:01.960 Right, if you fly into Denver, people will warn you 0:07:02.000 --> 0:07:05.800 about the altitude difference, but nobody's going to warn you 0:07:05.839 --> 0:07:10.520 about prairie madness because it's not really a thing in 0:07:10.600 --> 0:07:12.680 terms of it's not something that is going to just 0:07:12.760 --> 0:07:16.520 objectively be a factor in anyone's life. And again, it's 0:07:16.680 --> 0:07:21.720 really mostly talked about within this particular historic context and 0:07:21.880 --> 0:07:26.800 among particular people who were venturing out into this landscape. 0:07:26.960 --> 0:07:28.640 And there are a number of other factors that are 0:07:28.640 --> 0:07:33.960 involved here. So the explanation for what's going on or 0:07:34.000 --> 0:07:36.760 allegedly went on here have more on that in a minute, 0:07:36.800 --> 0:07:41.040 and is that you could basically underline by two examples 0:07:41.040 --> 0:07:44.000 that we've already touched on. First, the poetic awe of 0:07:44.040 --> 0:07:47.280 the prairie, of which there are many examples, and this 0:07:47.560 --> 0:07:50.320 awe kind of finds its dark reflection in the fiction 0:07:50.480 --> 0:07:53.200 and nonfiction of the time that cast the prairie is 0:07:53.200 --> 0:07:57.000 something ominous and unnatural. Part of that is just sort 0:07:57.040 --> 0:08:00.520 of the power of poetry and literature. If you're going 0:08:00.600 --> 0:08:03.240 to describe a landscape, you know you're going to lean 0:08:03.280 --> 0:08:07.280 into one direction or the other. Is it awesome and 0:08:07.320 --> 0:08:10.480 does it make you feel like a god? Or is 0:08:10.520 --> 0:08:13.680 there something creepy about it? It makes you feel less than 0:08:14.920 --> 0:08:18.800 you know? Both There are you know, potentially rewarding directions 0:08:18.800 --> 0:08:22.040 to go in in definite choices in any given work 0:08:22.080 --> 0:08:23.280 of fiction or nonfiction. 0:08:23.600 --> 0:08:26.720 Well, I think every landscape on earth has this this 0:08:26.840 --> 0:08:31.920 dual quality. I mean, is the forest a soothing, calming, 0:08:32.040 --> 0:08:35.720 shady landscape, where you are, you know, covered nicely in 0:08:35.800 --> 0:08:39.680 these calming greens, or is it a spooky place where 0:08:39.679 --> 0:08:42.440 you hear sounds that echo between the trees and maybe 0:08:42.480 --> 0:08:44.439 spirits are trying to lead you off the path. 0:08:45.000 --> 0:08:47.800 Yeah, and kind of going into something we talked about 0:08:47.880 --> 0:08:50.840 last time. I feel like, and this is highly subjective, 0:08:50.840 --> 0:08:53.959 but I feel like the desert environments they tend to 0:08:54.000 --> 0:08:55.880 speak more clearly on this way, and it's like, oh, 0:08:55.880 --> 0:08:57.760 it's a land of death, but it's alive, you know. 0:08:57.800 --> 0:08:59.960 It seems like the back and forth there's a lot 0:09:00.120 --> 0:09:04.080 more balanced. Prairies can maybe I'm just making them the 0:09:04.080 --> 0:09:06.800 personal argument here that they can maybe be a bit 0:09:07.760 --> 0:09:11.640 harder to wrap your head around because they're not barren. 0:09:11.720 --> 0:09:14.040 They are full of life. But then there is the 0:09:14.760 --> 0:09:19.120 more or less flat topography and some other factors environmentally 0:09:19.120 --> 0:09:21.640 that we're going to get into here. And then the 0:09:21.640 --> 0:09:24.600 other factor is there was this frequent observation that these 0:09:24.679 --> 0:09:29.200 lands were fundamentally different compared to the lands that homesteaders 0:09:29.240 --> 0:09:33.880 called home, either in the eastern United States or elsewhere 0:09:33.920 --> 0:09:37.800 in Europe and on the literary front, some of the 0:09:38.640 --> 0:09:40.960 some really famous examples of this, and some of the 0:09:40.960 --> 0:09:46.760 most famous examples stem from Oliovog's nineteen twenty seven novel 0:09:46.960 --> 0:09:50.840 Giants in the Earth. This is a book that concerns 0:09:51.400 --> 0:09:56.520 pioneer Norwegian immigrants in the Dakota territory, with the character 0:09:56.920 --> 0:10:02.520 Barrett Hansa particularly experiencing literary, very prairie madness. Joe, have 0:10:02.600 --> 0:10:03.520 you ever read this book? 0:10:03.640 --> 0:10:04.320 No, I haven't. 0:10:04.840 --> 0:10:08.520 I had to read it in junior high or high school, 0:10:09.000 --> 0:10:11.280 and this is one of those books that was assigned 0:10:11.280 --> 0:10:13.080 to me, and I do not think I give it 0:10:13.080 --> 0:10:17.280 a very dedicated reading. I remember virtually nothing of it 0:10:17.640 --> 0:10:19.719 except for the you know, the the obvious that it 0:10:19.840 --> 0:10:22.440 concerned no actual giants in the earth or no actual 0:10:22.640 --> 0:10:25.800 FLM crawling out and attacking anyone. 0:10:26.720 --> 0:10:29.600 So I really false advertising. 0:10:29.760 --> 0:10:32.680 One star false advertising, I guess if you're in you know, 0:10:32.760 --> 0:10:35.000 junior high or high school, well whatever age I was. 0:10:35.120 --> 0:10:38.200 But looking back on it, and you can find the 0:10:38.240 --> 0:10:40.800 full text online and you can, you know, find it 0:10:40.840 --> 0:10:43.520 in print very easily to get a copy of this book. 0:10:43.559 --> 0:10:47.040 But there are some beautiful passages that deal with this, again, 0:10:47.120 --> 0:10:52.720 particularly concerning the character Barrett, and it's it is telling 0:10:52.920 --> 0:10:55.080 that she's the one that experiences it because a lot 0:10:55.120 --> 0:10:59.360 of the alleged cases of prairie madness are very gendered 0:10:59.360 --> 0:11:03.880 in their general focusing on the housewife in a given scenario. 0:11:05.200 --> 0:11:07.440 So I'm going to read a few passages from giants 0:11:07.440 --> 0:11:10.280 in the earth. After they had bustled about for a 0:11:10.280 --> 0:11:13.040 little while, the others left her. The moment they had gone, 0:11:13.080 --> 0:11:15.160 she jumped up and crossed the tent to look out 0:11:15.200 --> 0:11:18.520 the door. How will human beings be able to endure 0:11:18.559 --> 0:11:21.679 this place? She thought? Why? There isn't even a thing 0:11:21.760 --> 0:11:25.480 that one can hide behind. Her sensitive, rather beautiful face 0:11:25.640 --> 0:11:28.679 was full of blank dismay. She turned away from the 0:11:28.720 --> 0:11:31.520 door and began to loosen her dress. Then her eyes 0:11:31.559 --> 0:11:34.800 fell on the center pole, with its cross piece hung 0:11:34.800 --> 0:11:38.679 with clothes, and she stood a moment irresolute, gazing at 0:11:38.720 --> 0:11:41.880 it in startled fright. It looked like the giants she 0:11:41.880 --> 0:11:44.240 had read about as a child. For a long while 0:11:44.280 --> 0:11:46.800 she was unable to banish the picture from her mind. 0:11:48.720 --> 0:11:51.000 And then here's some more that gets I think, gets 0:11:51.000 --> 0:11:55.280 back to the landscape. The broad expanse, stretching away endlessly 0:11:55.360 --> 0:11:58.960 in every direction, seemed almost like the ocean, especially now 0:11:59.000 --> 0:12:02.680 when darkness was It reminded her strongly of the sea. 0:12:02.760 --> 0:12:06.120 And yet it was very different. The formless prairie had 0:12:06.120 --> 0:12:10.000 no heart that beat, no waves that's sang, no soul 0:12:10.120 --> 0:12:14.080 that could be touched or cared. And then one more here, 0:12:14.800 --> 0:12:17.800 but more to be dreaded than this tribulation was the 0:12:17.880 --> 0:12:22.520 strange spell of sadness which the unbroken solitude cast upon 0:12:22.559 --> 0:12:26.640 the minds of some. Many took their own lives asylum. 0:12:26.679 --> 0:12:30.800 After asylum was filled with disordered beings who had once 0:12:30.880 --> 0:12:33.600 been human. It is hard for the eye to wander 0:12:33.600 --> 0:12:37.400 from skyline to skyline year in and year out without 0:12:37.480 --> 0:12:38.840 finding a resting place. 0:12:40.240 --> 0:12:42.040 Well, that sounds pretty extreme. 0:12:42.840 --> 0:12:45.680 Yeah, and I think we'll come back to this, but 0:12:45.960 --> 0:12:49.359 I think everyone can. Certainly, if you have any familiarity 0:12:49.400 --> 0:12:52.120 with the literature, you can definitely pick up on Gothic 0:12:52.240 --> 0:12:57.080 tendencies in this writing. Really latching onto this idea. I 0:12:57.120 --> 0:12:59.960 referenced our recent Weird House cinema selection in the Mouth 0:13:00.040 --> 0:13:03.520 of Madness earlier, and these passages could very easily be 0:13:03.640 --> 0:13:06.679 passages that Sutter Kane has written about. You know, the 0:13:06.760 --> 0:13:09.240 void opening up in Monsters, spilling out of it. You know, 0:13:09.240 --> 0:13:11.120 it's that level of darkness. 0:13:11.920 --> 0:13:15.320 I don't know what the author's intention here is, whether 0:13:15.400 --> 0:13:19.920 it's to actually project these characteristics onto the landscape, or 0:13:19.960 --> 0:13:23.000 to do what sometimes happens in fiction, which is to 0:13:23.160 --> 0:13:28.880 show what are really characteristics of the human character of 0:13:28.960 --> 0:13:32.440 the character, and they are reading their own psyche onto 0:13:32.480 --> 0:13:35.120 the landscape. It might not actually be something that is 0:13:35.480 --> 0:13:38.720 the landscape's fault, if that makes any sense. It's the 0:13:38.800 --> 0:13:41.760 person is having feelings and they're looking at the world 0:13:41.800 --> 0:13:44.280 around them, and they see their feelings in the world. 0:13:44.960 --> 0:13:47.120 Yeah. Again, it's been too long since I read it 0:13:47.400 --> 0:13:50.719 to provide full context here, but it's my understanding that 0:13:51.400 --> 0:13:55.160 most of these ideas are centered in this particular character, 0:13:55.600 --> 0:13:58.120 and that it's not present in other characters. So I 0:13:58.120 --> 0:13:59.760 think it is very character focused here. 0:14:00.120 --> 0:14:00.679 Yeah. 0:14:00.800 --> 0:14:02.679 So there are other examples from this book. I might 0:14:02.679 --> 0:14:06.120 come back and read another line from it. But all 0:14:06.160 --> 0:14:08.720 of this effectively underlies the idea that there was something 0:14:08.760 --> 0:14:12.880 about the landscape or the contrast of landscape, combined with 0:14:13.040 --> 0:14:17.920 isolation and the severity of frontier life that could lead 0:14:18.120 --> 0:14:22.440 to mental breakdown in some and the topic seems to 0:14:22.560 --> 0:14:26.600 have entered the larger American consciousness in eighteen ninety three 0:14:26.960 --> 0:14:31.160 three via the paper or the publication The Isolation of 0:14:31.240 --> 0:14:35.840 Life on Prairie Farms by E. V. Smaali sm A L. L. E. 0:14:36.040 --> 0:14:39.000 Y published in the Atlantic and still available on the 0:14:39.040 --> 0:14:42.040 Atlantic's website. You can pull it up. I think there's 0:14:42.440 --> 0:14:44.200 a paywall if you want to read it in full, 0:14:44.320 --> 0:14:47.160 but you can also click and look at a scanned 0:14:47.280 --> 0:14:48.800 version of it as it printed. And that's how I 0:14:48.880 --> 0:14:49.120 read it. 0:14:49.840 --> 0:14:50.560 Read it in full. 0:14:51.880 --> 0:14:55.760 This individual, EV Smally was an American journalist, editor, and 0:14:55.920 --> 0:14:58.960 Republican political writer, closely tied at the time to US 0:14:59.040 --> 0:15:02.960 President James A. I'm going to read a few samples 0:15:03.000 --> 0:15:05.560 from this just to give everyone the vibe. Okay. It 0:15:05.960 --> 0:15:09.280 more or less begins with the following In no civilized 0:15:09.320 --> 0:15:12.440 country have the cultivators of the soil adapted their home 0:15:12.520 --> 0:15:15.640 life so badly to the conditions of nature as have 0:15:15.800 --> 0:15:20.440 the people of our great northwestern prairies. Okay, Yeah, And 0:15:20.600 --> 0:15:23.320 from there he goes on to argue that the like 0:15:23.440 --> 0:15:26.000 there are some there's some arguments here that I don't 0:15:26.040 --> 0:15:29.640 think really stand up to close scrutiny, including the idea 0:15:29.720 --> 0:15:32.640 that the European peasant. He refers to the quote European 0:15:32.680 --> 0:15:36.400 peasant as a type of person who lived a life 0:15:36.440 --> 0:15:40.360 of joy and social interaction and that on the and 0:15:40.480 --> 0:15:43.480 that prairie dwellers essentially had none of this and were 0:15:43.560 --> 0:15:50.160 basically doomed. Here's another passage. An alarming amount of insanity 0:15:50.240 --> 0:15:53.600 occurs in the New Prairie States among farmers and their wives. 0:15:54.160 --> 0:15:58.280 In proportion to their numbers, the Scandinavian settlers furnished the 0:15:58.400 --> 0:16:03.040 largest contingent to the The reason is not far to seek. 0:16:03.440 --> 0:16:06.760 These people came from cheery, little farm villages. Life in 0:16:06.840 --> 0:16:10.400 the Fatherland was hard and toilsome, but it was not lonesome. 0:16:11.080 --> 0:16:15.240 Oh well, I don't know if there's like actual experiment 0:16:15.320 --> 0:16:17.520 to back this up, but it seems plausible to me 0:16:17.840 --> 0:16:22.120 that loneliness and isolation could be a major contributor to 0:16:22.160 --> 0:16:23.960 people having psychological problems. 0:16:24.880 --> 0:16:28.880 Yeah, and that is certainly a possibility here. Like, one 0:16:28.920 --> 0:16:33.000 of the realities is that you did have these homesteaders 0:16:33.120 --> 0:16:36.880 going out living in very isolated circumstances and living a 0:16:37.280 --> 0:16:40.160 hard life in an environment that they were not accustomed 0:16:40.200 --> 0:16:44.480 to different environmental factors that we'll get into here. So yeah, 0:16:44.960 --> 0:16:46.840 I want to stress that, even though I'm having some 0:16:46.960 --> 0:16:49.720 fun with the way that this is written, and also 0:16:50.160 --> 0:16:52.120 certainly singling out that this is a paper that made 0:16:52.160 --> 0:16:55.480 a big impact on how people thought about prairie madness. Yeah, 0:16:55.560 --> 0:16:57.920 not everything in here should just be dismissed. Like there 0:16:57.960 --> 0:17:00.800 are some possible connections to be made here. 0:17:01.360 --> 0:17:03.720 Yeah, I mean, like it even strikes me as possible 0:17:03.760 --> 0:17:05.320 to pick up on something I was saying about the 0:17:05.400 --> 0:17:11.480 characters in that novel that one could easily read psychological 0:17:12.040 --> 0:17:17.080 difficulty stemming from, say, loneliness and isolation. Could you know, 0:17:17.359 --> 0:17:21.800 take those problems and interpret them as problems related to 0:17:22.000 --> 0:17:24.760 the landscape, when really maybe the landscape doesn't have that 0:17:24.960 --> 0:17:27.480 much do with it. It's just like what you're looking 0:17:27.560 --> 0:17:29.920 at while you're feeling the fact that you don't have 0:17:30.000 --> 0:17:32.960 any friends and haven't seen anybody but your husband and years. 0:17:33.359 --> 0:17:37.240 Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. You're a few more quotes though, 0:17:37.280 --> 0:17:41.720 from this paper quote the silence of death rests on 0:17:41.840 --> 0:17:45.360 the vast landscape, save when it is swept by cruel winds. 0:17:46.600 --> 0:17:49.800 And then here's one more. There is but one remedy 0:17:49.920 --> 0:17:52.359 for the dreariness of farm life on the prairies. The 0:17:52.520 --> 0:17:56.080 isolated farmhouse must be abandoned, and the people must drawl 0:17:56.160 --> 0:17:59.399 together in villages. The peasants of the Russian steps did 0:17:59.440 --> 0:18:02.040 this century years ago, and so did the dwellers of 0:18:02.080 --> 0:18:06.639 the Great Danubian Plane. And so he ultimately positions isolated 0:18:06.720 --> 0:18:09.280 life on the frontier plane as standing in just stark 0:18:09.320 --> 0:18:14.240 opposition to sanity, to intellectual development, and just the rational 0:18:14.320 --> 0:18:18.840 progression of society. So he's not the final word on 0:18:18.920 --> 0:18:21.480 all of this. And there have been some papers that 0:18:21.600 --> 0:18:23.920 have really gone into this and looked at it in 0:18:24.000 --> 0:18:28.359 different ways, looking at it as a literary trope, looking 0:18:28.480 --> 0:18:32.679 at it and as it may connect to sensory deprivation 0:18:33.400 --> 0:18:37.399 and so forth. I was looking at a particular paper, 0:18:37.520 --> 0:18:41.800 This is Unsettling Landscapes, Prairie Madness and Eco Gothic Themes 0:18:41.840 --> 0:18:45.600 in US Plains Literature, published in Great Planes Quarterly from 0:18:45.640 --> 0:18:51.119 twenty nineteen by Vanessa stein Rotter, And in this she 0:18:51.240 --> 0:18:54.080 points out that prairie madness is of course a recurring 0:18:54.119 --> 0:18:56.880 theme in the fiction and poetry of the US Great Plains, 0:18:57.200 --> 0:18:59.000 and the author stressed various ways that the feature of 0:18:59.000 --> 0:19:03.119 the plain's environment stabilized non native settlers sense of place 0:19:03.320 --> 0:19:06.320 and control. So she points out that this was of course, 0:19:06.520 --> 0:19:09.680 again not a medical phenomenon, This was not a scientific term, 0:19:10.160 --> 0:19:14.159 and she also citing the work of Sarah Brooks. Sundberg 0:19:15.080 --> 0:19:18.240 points out the cases of white female settler mental and 0:19:18.440 --> 0:19:21.359 or emotional decline in the prairie might not have actually 0:19:21.480 --> 0:19:25.280 been that widespread. But even though we see this all 0:19:25.320 --> 0:19:27.200 the time with things, even though there may not have 0:19:27.280 --> 0:19:30.439 been as many cases of it, it became an idea 0:19:30.560 --> 0:19:33.520 that was difficult to dispel. It became a popular way 0:19:33.640 --> 0:19:37.440 of thinking about life on the prairies because again, outside 0:19:37.520 --> 0:19:40.080 of the actual environments of people living out there, you 0:19:40.160 --> 0:19:43.240 had people, say, reading that article in the Atlantic or 0:19:43.320 --> 0:19:47.440 reading poetry and fiction that drove home this Gothic idea, 0:19:47.920 --> 0:19:51.159 and therefore it becomes very difficult to shake, and it 0:19:51.280 --> 0:19:54.840 just becomes a staple of fiction and nonfiction writings of 0:19:54.880 --> 0:19:56.040 the time about the Prairies. 0:19:56.600 --> 0:20:00.520 How prevalent we think a problem is often has little 0:20:00.600 --> 0:20:03.600 to do with the raw numbers of how often it's occurring. 0:20:03.760 --> 0:20:06.119 Often it has more to do with like how sticky 0:20:06.200 --> 0:20:10.320 the idea is? Is it like really interesting or scary 0:20:10.640 --> 0:20:13.160 or captivating to the imagination. 0:20:12.760 --> 0:20:13.879 In some way? Right? 0:20:13.960 --> 0:20:15.920 And of course we see a more pronounced version of 0:20:16.000 --> 0:20:19.200 that when things become actual social panics, you know, so 0:20:19.280 --> 0:20:23.880 for instance, satanic panic, the idea there's the satanic forces 0:20:23.920 --> 0:20:27.680 at work in the world today. We've we've done episodes 0:20:27.720 --> 0:20:30.040 about this before. In this case, I don't think that 0:20:30.200 --> 0:20:33.439 prairie madness ever reached a level of true social panic, 0:20:33.960 --> 0:20:36.320 but it just becomes this sort of sticky idea. 0:20:36.760 --> 0:20:36.960 Yeah. 0:20:37.520 --> 0:20:40.359 So, the author here points out that fiction writers were 0:20:40.440 --> 0:20:44.800 especially drawn to the idea because of those terrific Gothic undertones, 0:20:45.600 --> 0:20:49.439 as well as quote its potential to engage larger, often 0:20:49.600 --> 0:20:54.480 gendered anxieties or feelings of powerlessness within restrictive social and 0:20:54.600 --> 0:20:55.639 cultural roles. 0:20:56.480 --> 0:20:56.680 Yeah. 0:20:57.000 --> 0:20:58.680 So, and I think there's a case to be made 0:20:58.720 --> 0:21:00.639 that that's maybe what we see in and Giants in 0:21:00.720 --> 0:21:03.639 the Earth. You know, it's not just about spooky landscape 0:21:03.680 --> 0:21:06.320 making people feel spooky, but maybe getting into some of 0:21:06.359 --> 0:21:11.520 these deeper concepts. Steinroder focuses on the landscape's role in 0:21:11.560 --> 0:21:14.320 the scenario, but points out that other scholars have examined 0:21:14.320 --> 0:21:19.159 the importance of gender and family relationships, domestic violence, and 0:21:19.320 --> 0:21:22.680 cultural and physical isolation that are often bound up in 0:21:22.720 --> 0:21:25.200 the scenario. So again, any as we've been alluding to 0:21:25.400 --> 0:21:30.600 any given potential case of prairie madness, any individual experience 0:21:30.680 --> 0:21:34.600 that could be chalked up as being prairie madness. They're 0:21:34.680 --> 0:21:37.720 going to be, They're potentially all these other factors as well, 0:21:37.880 --> 0:21:40.560 and again just potentially a hard life as well. I 0:21:40.680 --> 0:21:44.520 was reading some of the settler accounts of how frightening 0:21:44.960 --> 0:21:47.639 prairie fires could be. You know, we touched on that already, 0:21:47.760 --> 0:21:51.160 just the idea that like a fast moving fire could 0:21:51.240 --> 0:21:53.240 just rip across the prairie. 0:21:53.960 --> 0:21:54.639 Yeah, totally. 0:21:54.720 --> 0:21:57.280 And as we talked about in the last episode, fear 0:21:57.440 --> 0:21:59.800 of these prairie fires and what they would bring the 0:22:00.080 --> 0:22:05.280 led to attempts by European American settlers of the planes 0:22:05.359 --> 0:22:09.280 to suppress naturally occurring prairie fires to stop them from spreading, 0:22:09.640 --> 0:22:13.560 which actually ended up being very harmful to the prairie ecosystem. 0:22:14.440 --> 0:22:19.120 You know, the indigenous peoples of the Great Plains more 0:22:19.240 --> 0:22:24.399 often intentionally both used intentionally set prairie fires in some 0:22:24.560 --> 0:22:27.640 cases for like the management of bison prey and things 0:22:27.720 --> 0:22:30.560 like that, and also allowed them to occur more, which 0:22:30.720 --> 0:22:33.359 was much healthier for the prairie because, as we know, 0:22:33.720 --> 0:22:36.400 the natural plant balance depends on the fires. 0:22:37.040 --> 0:22:38.680 Yes, absolutely. 0:22:48.200 --> 0:22:48.240 So. 0:22:48.359 --> 0:22:52.320 Steinroder again focuses on the landscape's role, and I'm just 0:22:52.400 --> 0:22:55.679 going to boil like our key findings down here are 0:22:55.760 --> 0:22:57.840 key arguments, and that is that the features of the 0:22:57.960 --> 0:23:02.760 landscape can destabilize one sense of control. It can make 0:23:03.200 --> 0:23:07.240 it feel like you are not a complete autonomous agent 0:23:07.840 --> 0:23:11.760 in this kind of humanless wilderness. That and that also 0:23:11.840 --> 0:23:15.920 it can just be very difficult to just comprehend the 0:23:16.040 --> 0:23:19.600 landscape around you, that there's something ineffable about it, and 0:23:19.760 --> 0:23:22.240 that that can can also feel kind of crushing. 0:23:22.880 --> 0:23:23.560