On Location: Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve, Kansas
Crossing the United States, It was my first feeling of limitless expanse as if being on The Oregon Trail itself.
By Gray Shealy
I was on my second week of driving across the United States, a zig-zagged route from Washington, DC to Seattle, an 8,000 mile journey that would take me through some of America’s most majestic landscapes. As I moved west of the Mississippi River, my geographical perception is that I am now truly in the American West, the prairies being the foreboding expanse before getting to the more iconic Rockies.
Oklahoma’s rolling hills and scrubby landscape quickly became a flat, agrarian paradise as we entered Kansas, dotted with skyscraper-like grain silos & wind turbines, blanketed with flowers and soils of all different riches of colours. I adored the flatness of it all; it was new to me, and it made my eyes focus on other, vivid details.
We crossed the state diagonally entirely on back-roads, with a quick stop at Wichita’s airfield museum, and the towns of Manhattan and St Mary’s. But nothing was as beautifully breathtaking as the largest, unbroken preserve of Tallgrass Prairie on the continent.
Prior to the use of the steel plow, this ecosystem was widespread across the American Midwest, now only existing in a few remaining plots. Dependent on wildfires for their very existence and propagation, they are generally resistant to damage, and have incredible root systems that stretch nearly 3.5m (11 ft) deep.
I only stopped for two hours at the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve, managed by the Nature Conservancy rather than the US Parks Service – but it is so precious and so emblematic to Kansas that it might as well be a National Park.
Hillsides filled with sunshine-yellow flowers, purple thistles, white Queen Anne’s Lace, and the grasses themselves stretched to the horizon with barely a tree in sight. Birds and insects broke the silence of the soft wind. It was peace at its best. I felt as if I were on the Oregon Trail, seeing what the pioneers first saw of this land so many years ago.
VISIT:
Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve, Strong City, Kansas
Photo Credit: Syllogi
Syllogi’s ‘On Location’ is a series of trip reports reflecting on our personal travels, as we research and experience the bounty the world has on offer.
