A peace of land

Jan Jantzen

The vastness of the Kansas Flint Hills often awakens unexpected emotions within first-time visitors. Some react to Flint Hills vistas with joy, and others find the openness exhilarating, even a bit overwhelming. I’ve even heard more than one story about fresh-from-the-city visitors who wept when faced for the first time with nothing but a distant and prairie-covered horizon in all directions.

The authority on bringing visitors to the Flint Hills tells of yet another response: peace, the kind of peace that can change lives.

“I think I want them to take back the peacefulness of it,” said Jan Jantzen when asked what he hoped visitors would take with them after visiting the Flint Hills. “I have heard them describe the Flint Hills as a spiritual vortex, as a place that can absorb all of their pain in some cases and anxiety and they can leave it out there. It’s a very special and meaningful place to a lot of people.”

This would make Jan, who is a well known resident of the Flint Hills, the region’s peacemaker extraordinaire. A native of Kansas, Jan has lived in many other locales, but returned by choice to the Flint Hills, where he runs Kansas Flint Hills Adventures at the Grandview Ranch, located between Emporia and Cottonwood Falls. Jan is a cowboy-entrepreneur, having learned how to create a successful business by bringing visitors into the Flint Hills and offering them the chance to experience the Flint Hills up-close and hands-on. Through personal tours of the hills, horseback riding, and even the chance to participate in the spring burning of the prairie, visitors see, touch, and smell for themselves what the tallgrass prairie and the Flint Hills are all about.

“The population density is very very light in the Flint Hills,” Jan said, “giving rise to this big, unobstructed view and it allows everyone to forget about the hustle and bustle of the city. When you look out over peacefully grazing herds of cattle and other than the cattle themselves about the only sign of human industrialization might be a vapor trail overhead, which is easily ignored in that big dome of blue sky.”

It’s the uniqueness of the Flint Hills that brings out this calming response among visitors. Wide open spaces can be found in many western states and big skies cover many regions outside of Kansas. None of those open places, however, offer the visitor as much tallgrass prairie as the Kansas Flint Hills and that makes all the difference.

“These days the footprint of the tallgrass prairie is right on top of the geological formation we call the Flint Hills,” Jan explains. “They are not the same, but because nowadays they have the same footprint for reasons that can be known and explained, we use them interchangeably. The Flint Hills and the tallgrass prairie together are necessarily an unpopulated area because it’s ranching land and it takes a lot more acres of grass to graze enough cattle to support a family than it does of acres of corn or soybeans.”

Having the tallgrass prairie in the Flint Hills is a happy coincidence of geology and climate, plus the perceptiveness of ranchers that understood how maintaining the prairie was beneficial to the environment and the cattle industry. The flint and limestone protected the prairie from the plow, and the amount of rainfall in these hills supports tall grass. If the hills were farther to the west, there would be insufficient rainfall to grow the right kind of grass. Farther to the east and too much rain would quickly turn the prairie into forest. The hills and the prairie intersect at this place and this time, creating a unique environment that evokes deep feelings within those who experience it.

Jan understands how to bring visitors to the hills and get them to experience the real story of the Flint Hills and appreciate it. They are not searching for an artificial tourist experience, like make-believe castles and princesses among amusement park rides. These visitors crave something real, something tangible, something that will touch them in ways a roller coaster can’t. And Jan knows how to give it to them.

“So people have a chance to breathe deeply,” Jan explained, “and just relax and let the tension in their face go out and become more introspective and calm. And their thoughts come to them about spiritual things and the meaning of life and why they are working and what they want to do with the rest of their lives. The Flint Hills, through that infusion of peacefulness, allows them to be peaceful and take it back. They come back a lot because they now know there is a place where they can do that.”

Jantzen’s own connection to the Flint Hills runs deep. He chose to return to Kansas and live in these hills because they fit.

“Somehow,” he said, “the Flint Hills let me be myself. Somehow, the personality of the Flint Hills and my personality just work together.”

He understands the emotions visitors discover when they hike through the prairie and watch the sunset over the rolling hills. He understands how the vastness of the region presses down the senses and squeezes out the anxieties of life. He understands because he feels those same emotions himself.

“In a way,” Jan said, “feeling alone out there makes me feel special and in another way it makes me feel appropriately insignificant. I like realizing I’m a very small part of a bigger network of life. It’s the combination of the grasses and the sky, which in Kansas and the Flint Hills comes all the way down to the horizon as opposed to being in the mountains where you can only see the sky between 10 o’clock and 4 o’clock. It seems like the days are longer and sky is brighter and I can breathe more deeply. I can suck in a whole lot of prairie-grass filtered sweet air and just be myself.”

That’s the Flint Hills. A place to find yourself.