Getting the flavor of...Kansas’s tallgrass prairie

The 11,000-acre Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve has a "serene, understated beauty.”

Kansas’s tallgrass prairie

Returning to my native Kansas recently, I was worried about “how far from my cowgirl roots I’d strayed,” said Annie Gowen in The Washington Post. Tornado warnings greeted my plane’s arrival in Kansas City, and I spent the whole drive to the historic town of Council Grove with eyes glued to “the ominous rose-and-gray sky.” At Hays House, the longest continually operated restaurant west of the Mississippi, I expected a better steak. But I’d come mostly to see the land, so my friend and I were soon off to the 11,000-acre Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve. “The place had a serene, understated beauty about it” that grounded me again. As meadowlarks sang, we glimpsed the preserve’s tiny bison herd in the distance. That evening, we attended the Symphony in the Flint Hills—a concert held every June on the nearby prairie. Ranch hands were still working the cattle on a nearby ridge as the sun settled behind them and the orchestra played Aaron Copland.

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