How I learned to love the “flatland”
Flint Hills Trail, Osawatomie, Kansas
Here’s the secret to becoming a raving fan of nature in your hometown of Kansas City.
By Roy Harryman
Publisher
When it comes to natural beauty and hiking adventure, Kansas City is not one of the top destinations mentioned in outdoor magazines. (Is it mentioned at all?)
And if we switch from cities to states, Kansas and Missouri fall in the bottom half of destinations visited by tourists. No surprise there.
The states drawing the most visitors are the usual suspects: New York, Florida, California, Arizona, blah, blah, blah. Locals know Missouri and Kansas (especially Kansas) get regularly berated for their lack of interesting geology and general unhipness.
Now, I’m a fan of experiencing the natural wonders of the whole world. And I’ve seen a few. But for most of us – most of the time – Kansas City is where we spend our life. And that includes time spent in the great outdoors.
Cooley Lake Conservation Area, Clay County, Mo.
Checking our lenses
There are two ways to look at this. The first is to spend every waking moment trying to get out of this “flatland hellhole.” Whenever life lets up, hop on a plane and fly to the land of wonderous places and beautiful people. “Good riddance!”
The other approach is to take a second look at where we are right now. What’s under that rock? Down that path? If we’re looking for the Grand Tetons or Yosemite, we won’t find them. But we can find something else.
The cliché says, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” And of course we all have our own preferences for scenery. But I believe we can all cultivate an eye for beauty if we’re willing.
C.S. Lewis advised correspondents not to move to that spot they considered a vacation wonderland. Why not? Because, viewed daily, it will become routine. Discontentment will set in. “Maybe there’s a more beautiful place than here. What about. …?”
Instead, Lewis said the search for beauty can begin and end in our own backyard. Think about it. What’s back there? Or in the park down the street?
Take a wildflower. Do you ever stop and really look at one of these brilliant, exquisitely detailed creatures? Watch as they’re visited by pollinators and then slowly close as the sun fades. In the morning, they burst open, soon to be covered with beads of dew. It could be a delicate Columbine deep in the forest, or a vibrant blue Chicory flower in a roadside ditch. Either way, they’re nature’s fireworks.
Lewis tells us that, until we can appreciate the beauty of common phenomena around us, we’ll soon tire of even the world’s most-renowned natural sights.
Another word for this is contentment. It does not mean losing all aspirations to see Patagonia or glaciers passing Greenland by sea. Rather, contentment is the ability to enjoy and find wonder in our surroundings, wherever we happen to be.
I’m getting better at this as I age. Years ago, I’d zip through an entire field of wildflowers and never see them. Now I literally “stop and smell the roses” – but usually they’re wild roses as opposed to the cultivated variety.
Seeing what’s under our noses
Of course in Kansas City we have more than wildflowers. Such as? When I walk past a limestone outcropping, I can stop and look at the millions of fossils in front of me. It stirs awe and wonder to know I’m standing in what used to be an inland sea.
When I’m on the shore of the Missouri River, I wonder how many centuries it has flowed past my location. I consider that some of the water flowing by me started as snowmelt in Yellowstone National Park. The immensity of it all boggles the mind.
And what about the viciously bullied state of Kansas? Of course the same principles of contentment apply. Yet Kansas has treasures to discover for those willing to leave the interstate. Eternal Flint Hills. Canyons, bluffs and buttes. Even badlands.
Mt. Mitchell Heritage Prairie
The view depends on us
Depending on the prism we use to view our hometown, it can be either Dud City or a land of wonder waiting to be discovered. I’ll take the latter. In fact, discovering a waterfall, ravine or wildlife when I’m not expecting it is quite thrilling.
I’ll close with an anecdote that shows narrow-mindedness about nature goes both ways. My great grandmother was born and raised in mostly flat southwestern Missouri. She lived with her adult children on a rotating basis, moving around from state to state so that siblings shared the load. One of those locations was Colorado.
When she returned to Hickory County, Mo., she was asked about the sights she had seen.
“Well I honestly don’t know,” she said. “I couldn’t see anything because the mountains were in the way.”
Roy Harryman is the publisher of Kansas City Hiker and finds his hometown more delightful with each passing year.
