Never in a million years did I believe I’d refer to a field as stunningly gorgeous, but this one took the cake. It stretched on nearly forever, with patches of Johnson, wire and switchgrasses interspersed with bicolor lespedeza, pearl millet, both big and little bluestem and a fringe of broomstraw. The land had character, with slight elevations and dips and, in the lower parts, seeps that drained into a series of nearby ponds. Loblolly, longleaf, shortleaf and slash pines added pockets of shade, and big stands of oak formed a perimeter. When I got close to those trees, I smelled charcoal from last spring’s burn read more