Patty Ankrum's Prairie Legacy
Patty Ankrum was passionate about creative and socially conscientious endeavors. In her final years, she was devoted to monarch butterflies and pollinator habitat. Knowing that she was facing her passing, Patty worked with INHF to set up a fund to be used for the enhancement and preservation of diverse and healthy ecosystems through the creation of a prairie area available to residents of the Mount Vernon community to enjoy, primarily through non-motorized, non-violent recreational activities such as hiking, bird-watching, star-gazing and “prairie bathing”.
Any donation made to Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation in honor of Patty Ankrum will go toward the creation of the Patty Ankrum Prairie.
Learn about Patty's extraordinary life: https://www.thegazette.com/obituaries/patty-ankrum/.
Listen to a selection of Patty's music:
The Summer Day, by Mary Oliver
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean —
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down —
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
