By John Sutter
The Tallgrass Prairie Preserve, in Osage County, along the Kansas border, got a visit this month from a group of Colombian activists, according to this story.
The Tulsa World writes:
The Tallgrass Prairie Preserve, near Pawhuska, is the world’s largest remaining tract of tallgrass prairie. Since 1989, the Oklahoma chapter of the Nature Conservancy, one of the world’s leading conservation organizations, has maintained the 39,000-acre protected area, encouraging a return to its natural state. The Conservancy hopes to similarly protect an area known as the Orinoco River Valley in Colombia.
I was talking a couple of weeks ago with a coworker about how I’ve never been to the preserve, and would like to visit. She said the best time of year to go is the spring. That’s when the wildflowers are out, when you’ll get to see the most buffalo and when you can catch the prairie chickens in their strange mating rituals. That section of land is among the only pieces of prairie in the world that’s never been plowed up for farming, which is rather amazing when you think about it. On a recent reporting trip, I drove across Osage County from west to east, late at night. The county is enormous and the drive seemed to take forever, but it had a certain magic to it. A big moon sat on the horizon, and there are almost no lights around on the side of the highway — none of the billboards and things you see everywhere else. That drive left a big impression on me, and I definitely want to go back to explore in the daylight.
For some more info, check on the Nature Conservancy’s page on its preserve here.
Have any of you visited Pawhuska or Osage County? I’d love to hear your stories, tips or recommendations. Feel free to comment.
October 6th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
the tallgrass prairie is a vivid reminder of all that we stand to lose when ecosystems are destroyed. it is a wildly beautiful place, vast in its expanse and ability to remind you of what we’ve lost along with what we’ve gained, and wish for more of these kinds of wild spaces. when i visit, i always feel a sense of having touched something beyond words, beyond civilization, something old, wise and universal, like being in sync with the world as it really is, rather than the way we see and feel it through the hectic veneer civilization.