We tend not to imagine the prairie grasslands as wilderness. The landscape lacks any upward reach. No mountains rise here like they do in western Alberta. No towering black pines or Sitka spruce shadow the terrain. But what grasslands lack in verticality they make up for below the ground. Ninety per cent of grasslands biomass exists as deep-reaching root systems invisible to those of us on the surface. All we see is a vista so flat and featureless you can watch your dog run away for three days, according to a tired joke.

The origin story of Western Canada begins with this myth of prairie emptiness. The Dominion Lands Act of 1872 gave this expanse away for free, parcel by parcel, to European settlers as long as they promised to destroy it. The newcomers earned their property deeds by clear

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