Michael R. Jeffords is a photographer, naturalist and educator.
One summer day, just outside of East St. Louis, I drove by a wheat field ready for harvest. The low afternoon light cast a beautiful glow, and I was struck by a lone thistle growing amidst the wheat. I stopped my university vehicle with the official state seal on the side, set up my tripod and was busy photographing.
I stopped only when I heard an ominous double click to my right. I am not a hunter, but I knew the sound of the hammers being drawn back on a double-barreled shotgun! A glance revealed a red-faced farmer. While the gun was not exactly leveled at me, it was still intimidating. We locked eyes and he stated, “What you doing here, boy?”
I took a few moments to collect myself before answering, “Just photographing this wheat field; it’s really quite pretty.” Those lame words had little effect on him, as he continued with, “You better put away that camera and git.”
By then I had recovered a little from my shock and tried to explain what I was doing in the area (I had been sampling bean-leaf beetles in soybean fields). To his credit, he listened, but I’m not sure he really believed me.
I soon found out what the problem was, at least from his perspective. This was his wheat field, and even though I was not trespassing, he saw that I was focused on the thistle, which was the exotic, invasive musk thistle. The species had just been declared a noxious weed by the state of Illinois. All noxious weeds, by law, are to be controlled when possible. His perception was that I was documenting the fact that he had failed to remove this noxious new weed.
His final statement to me was, “Get on out of here, and, by the way, why don’t you go on up to the state park and look at their grounds? They got more of them damn weeds than you can believe. Tell them to kill them before they come looking in my fields.”
My curiosity piqued, I drove the few miles north to Horseshoe Lake State Park, and, lo and behold, Mr. Farmer’s statement had been right. At least two acres were inundated with musk thistle, making an impenetrable thorny thicket that was likely the seed source for most of the surrounding agricultural land. All of a sudden, his perception of the previous scene came into sharp focus. Mine, however, failed to change, as both scenes remained remarkably attractive, and I enjoyed photographing them both.
Editor’s note:
This is an excerpt from “Curious encounters with the natural world: From grumpy spiders to hidden tigers,” a new book by Illinois Natural History Survey educators, wildlife photographers and researchers Michael R. Jeffords and Susan L. Post. The book is now available from the University of Illinois Press. The authors will present the book and give a talk in the Auditorium of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, 1205 W. Clark St., Urbana, on Sept. 19 from 4 to 6 p.m. The INHS is a division of the Prairie Research Institute at the U. of I.
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