It’s another lovely week in Portage County, and there are two quick things to think about before we all head out to Schmeeckle Reserve and visit the Ron Zimmerman Prairie.

First is that there is now a Ron Zimmerman Prairie. Second, I hope if Ron ever reads this column that he’s a forgiving guy, because I might have fibbed a little about pine needles not too long ago.

Not that he has anything to do with the pine needles, but a column needs a transitional sentence every now and then, and Ron, among his other laudable traits, probably doesn’t concern himself with charging royalties to use his name in things like that.

Schmeeckle dedicates Zimmerman Prairie

The prairie has been around for 30 years, and most visitors to Schmeeckle will have seen it at one time or another, but perhaps not realized – as I did not – that it once was the lawn of the farmstead that became Schmeeckle, converted back to sand prairie under Zimmerman’s direction.

It now will be easier to recognize the area of native grasses next to the parking lot, as it has been formally named in Zimmerman’s honor, and the new sign marking it has been erected. A ceremony will take place next week to dedicate the prairie, said Jim Buchholz, the reserve’s assistant director until his promotion into Zimmerman’s former position in July.

Zimmerman, who was the first and only director of Schmeeckle for 36 years, led a group of students who replanted the one-acre prairie site near the reserve’s visitor center in 1986.

He retired at the end of 2015, and the reserve’s staff, along with board members of the Friends of Schmeeckle, felt naming the prairie in his honor was one appropriate way to help recognize his accomplishments. Among those accomplishments is the raising of a $25,000 endowment through his friends, family, the College of Natural Resources and Friends of the Schmeeckle Reserve.

Zimmerman will receive a commemorative list of those donors at the event.

The one-acre spot was identified as one of the few spots in the reserve capable of supporting native prairie, Buchholz said. It’s a great place to watch wildlife and contemplate nature, as well as conduct research, he added.

“This prairie, being a sand prairie, is extremely dry. Typically prairie sites don’t support trees because they are so dry,” he said. “So you have grasses and other types of plants that have really long root systems. Some of those root systems go down six to eight feet into the ground because they’re trying to find that water that’s down below.

“That’s what makes the prairie really unique.”

I walked for a short way with Buchholz and Schmeeckle’s Megan Espe down the meandering trail through the prairie as Buchholz pointed out the tall Indian grass, milkweed, butterfly weed and goldenrod that were prominent.

It reminded me how woefully inadequate my ability to recognize plants is, but it’s always comforting to know that as a result of folks like the staff and Friends of Schmeeckle, among many other dedicated souls, it doesn’t take much more than a little bit of time and a little bit of mindfulness to visit, observe, ask questions, read and learn about all of our fantastic surroundings.

Which brings me to my next point.

Little fiction that never hurt anyone

I got away with a bit of unintentional fiction in my column a couple of weeks ago, but it had the wonderful side effect of reminding me to make my outdoor experiences more relaxing.

A quick explanation: in a column about how a bike ride on the Green Circle helps escape the irritations of work, I wrote the line, “Not when I curved through the fresh-smelling pine groves near the riverside retirement communities, where tree needles make a bike feel and sound like it’s traveling on air.”

Maybe it’s a testament to the power of imagination and desire that such a statement appeared in my column, and I actually believed it. But something reminded me of that particular line later ,and I realized that it might not be 100-percent accurate in the journalistic sense.

But let me pretend I’m a politician here and just say that it was a slight exaggeration in the service of a far greater truth (and that, dear readers, is true, although I encourage you to ride the Green Circle so that you may judge for yourself).

As it turns out, the place I was talking about, over by the Wisconsin River just off of Sherman Avenue, doesn’t have enough pine needles on the trail to cushion the noise of tires crunching on gravel or to smooth out the ride substantially. The pines are not so numerous. There are nearby trail portions that are more dirt than gravel and the pine needles and other vegetative matter help make the trail quieter and softer.

I know this because on another recent lunchtime ride, I was much more mindful of the trail surface, the sounds I was hearing, and the surrounding trees, among other things. I made sure of it, because I was thinking about the pine-needle line – one I wrote because the column was about finding escape in nature and how that could be difficult under stressful life circumstances.

My later ride was all about paying closer attention to the little things that make nature so relaxing. With mindfulness, little things start breaking through those dams made from life’s problems: a bird’s singing, a perfectly shaped red leaf fallen on green grass, a more silent stretch of trail that seeps into our subconscious.

The last is something I clearly recall happening on the ride I wrote about. It was one of many things to trickle through cracks in that dam, which eventually broke, sending all my worries down the metaphorical Relaxation River, which carried them away for at least a few hours.

The next time I hit the trail, I wasn’t thinking about work and troubles. I was looking for pine needles and listening to all the noises surrounding me: a stiff breeze rustling all our early-autumn leaves, the clanking of small stones off my bike frame, the “howdy” of a stranger on the trail.

Now, I could go on opining (see what I did there?) about the loveliness of the Green Circle and the absolute necessity of getting outdoors to maintain sanity, but I’ll just leave it at that for now.

My philosophical platitude for the week, therefore, is that sometimes we have to work at relaxation to make relaxation work. Now, some literary silence is in order.