Jarid Manos is working to complete the Fort Worth Prairie Park: a thousand-acre opportunity for city kids to explore a native grassland.


to make better decisions in those crisis moments. So restora- tion work, providing refuge, is effective for both people and wildlife in crisis.


How does the outdoor setting convey these concepts differently than a classroom?


the face of what I still see as constant violence, but I step from stone to stone of good people, vitality, health, and service. I survived. What else is there for me to do but give back?


Tell me about the work you’re doing—your stepping-stones.


My organization, the Great Plains Restoration Council, is based on the principle of interdependence of people’s health and local ecosystems. In this model of ecological health, help- ing one helps the other: we combine habitat restoration with programs for inner-city youth, HIV/AIDS-affected families, homeless individuals, and others.


The Restoration Not Incarceration program works with young, often homeless men who have been in prison. People—and I believe especially men—have a basic, physical need to work. So we challenge them to be involved in tough ecological restoration work, and to repair their own bodies and lives through that same process.


What do you hope to teach these men? One of the biggest things is learning ways to become unbreak- able. When you’re trying to survive on the edge of society, you have what I call “shatter moments”—some type of crisis when things suddenly come to a head. You can’t breathe or think; you just react—and in a split second you can hurt others or yourself or both.


For people who are confronted with situations like these— and who will be again at some point in their future—this isn’t just about getting out into nature. It’s about developing the stamina and the resiliency and the critical thinking skills


28 · LAND&PEOPLE · FALL/WINTER 2015


The Great Plains is a landscape that has suffered such a loss, but there are remnant spaces still expressing beauty and life. In Fort Worth, for example, we’re working to preserve more than a thousand acres of native grassland. If we’re successful, the Fort Worth Prairie Park could put the plains in reach of more than 5 million urban residents. Our work is for every- body, not just the stricken. Keeping the Earth alive and livable is an exhilarating task and an opportunity for all of us: we all need to get outside more. Especially on the plains! How many Americans have walked a mile or more through wild prairie? In places like this, we can actually show people how this ecosystem worked in its virgin state. When you put yourself within that space and speak in terms of health—recover- ing what’s needed, tearing out what isn’t, and repairing and replanting to bring the whole system back to health—you can very much see how that process can apply to your own body and life.


If you could go back and have a conversation with your childhood self, what would you say?


It’s true that every part of this little planet is impacted in some way. It’s true that there’s hatred and ugliness and violence all around the world. But within that, there are moments of vital health and beauty: you can see it on the plains when you watch animals like prairie dogs, who worship the sun each day. In the midst of a war zone, on a landscape that has suffered so much, they retain this exuberance, this uncontainable desire to live. You can connect to that. Live in gratefulness. It’s possible to love so hard this love becomes holy.


james edward mills is an environmental journalist and author of the adventure gap: changing the face of the outdoors.


learn more about the great plains restoration council at gprc.org.


great plains restoration council


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