May 2020 • Nebraskaland 23
Above: The author and his camera at the square meter plot.
Opposite: This collage highlights 49 of the 113 species of plants and
animals photographed within a square meter of prairie during 2018.
Story and photos by Chris Helzer
One Square
Meter
n January 30, 2018, as I inserted
four yellow pin fl ags into the
frozen ground at Lincoln Creek
Prairie, I had no idea what I was
getting into. I'd just come up with a
quirky way to challenge myself as
a photographer and – hopefully –
demonstrate the abundance of life in
prairies. Those four fl ags marked out
one square meter of prairie, within
which I planned to photograph as
much life and beauty as I could over
the next year. I hoped the peculiar little
project, if I stuck with it, would at least
provide me with something new to talk
about on my blog. It did that, to be sure,
but that peculiar little project also took
me on one of the most inspirational
journeys of my career.
Lincoln Creek Prairie is on the
eastern edge of Aurora and includes
a mixture of small prairie patches,
wooded oxbows and creek channels.
The narrow strip of prairie hosting my
square meter plot was seeded to prairie
vegetation in 1983 by Bill Whitney of
Prairie Plains Resource Institute. A
little-used walking trail passes through
O
