126 STARK & WILD
100
the
prairies
MIDWESTERN
UNITED STATES
The prairies of the Midwest are one of the
great mythic landscapes of America, a place
whose wide skies seem to speak directly to
the pioneering soul. “This was my country,”
said writer and painter Georgia O’Keefe,
“terrible winds and a wonderful emptiness.”
Today it remains an epic landscape that
has the capacity to inspire—where change,
said Walt Whitman, comes over us “like the
stealthy perfume of wildflowers hidden in
the grass.”
DON’T MISS
Visit Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve in
Chase County, Kansas, at the heart of the Flint
Hills to explore America’s last great swath of tall-
grass prairie.
An early morning rainbow arcs over meadows of wild
tall-grass prairie in the Flint Hills of Kansas.