SEEN: You can actually hear the wind blow through the grass

BY CHRISTOPHER SMITH World Photo Editor
Sunday, October 21, 2012
10/21/12 at 4:43 AM

Editor's note: Seen is a weekly feature showcasing the work of a Tulsa World photojournalist.

We are accustomed to compartmentalized living. Being boxed in is natural. The modern world is built on barriers. Walls, fences, property lines and roads divide the land beneath us. But it has not always been this way. There was a time when these barriers did not exist. There was once a continuity of landscape. Uninterrupted land rolled as far as the eye could see.

Places like this are more and more scarce, but there is still a place where open land stretches seemingly to infinity.

The Tallgrass Prairie Preserve north of Pawhuska is the largest preserved tract of native tallgrass prairie in the world. Yellow and green waving grasses softly stretch onward to the distant horizon. Rolling gold hills tumble on and on. Breezes catch the wispy grass, and it dances back and forth in hypnotic time.

And there is the sound. You can actually hear the wind blow through the grass. Soft, whispering and gentle, it ebbs and flows. As soon as you have a handle on it, it fades, then silence follows.

The land is as big as the sky. And they are limitless. There are huge swaths of land without fences or buildings. Nothing to break the continuous stretch of native earth. No convenience stores, no housing developments, only land and grass.

I had a friend from Chicago in town and felt challenged to share the best of the state with him while he was here. We chose the Tallgrass Prairie, and I'm glad we did. We went for the bison and we saw the bison, but once we were there, we realized they were only a small fraction of the appeal of the land. It was something less tangible. Something neither of us could put our finger on.

It was the space. It was the land. It was the wind and the air. It was the presence of everything and the lack of everything else.

Associated Images:

Grass blows in the wind at the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve north of Pawhuska. The Tallgrass Prairie Preserve is the largest preserved tract of native Tallgrass Prairie in the world. The Nature Conservancy manages the land. Free-roaming bison and horses can be found walking in the preserve, which rolls on for miles. CHRISTOPHER SMITH/Tulsa World