And miles to go before I sleep…
Robert Frost
Last year, when the boys took their final Junior Ranger oath of the summer at Mesa Verde, the Ranger in charge of the swearing in ceremony took a little liberty with the official words. He ended the oath by having the boys swear, hands raised, that they would bring chocolate chip cookies to every ranger that they meet.
He was working for a laugh from two tired boys, but he may very well have unwittingly started a Hicks family tradition.
Before we headed out to the Tallgrass Prairie National Park this morning, we stopped by the grocery store to purchase some bakery fresh chocolate chip cookies to take to the rangers in charge of the facility.
We parked in the gravel parking lot below the stone house and headed to the visitors station located in the barn right after it opened. We were some of the first people on the property that morning and Ranger Ron Clark was working the desk when we arrived. He met us at the door.
Isaac’s first order of business was to give him the cookies while I explained to him how that he had a Mesa Verde ranger to thank for those. And we got what we wanted – we caught him completely off guard.
There were three rangers working Springhill Ranch that morning and as we saw each of them, they all smiled and thanked us for the cookies. Ranger Ron,
who also gave us a guided tour through the one room school house and drove the tour bus a little while later, told us that we had accomplished a first in the history of the Tallgrass Prairie. Those reading this blog, maybe we can start a trend.Ranger Ron started us off in high style by giving Isaac his Junior Ranger activity booklet and firing up the orientation video for us to see. The video
was excellent, giving a history of how the land came to be part of the park service and how the park rangers were working to restore the natural state of tallgrass prairie that once was all over the region. I will confess that I did not tune in to the video entirely as my attention was drawn away by two 
barn swallows flying in and out of the rafters above us. The air was quiet and smelled lightly of horse manure and hay. It was a scene that took me back to days on the farm growing up and it was heavenly.After the video, Ranger Ron gave us a brief orientation to the trails that we should walk and what the outbuildings were. While he was talking, a large, fat, orange cat resembling Puss in Boots from Shrek IV meandered from the depths of the barn. “That’s Lou,” he said, as the cat opened its mouth and squeaked out a meow. “He and Bob are on rodent patrol,” Ranger Ron explained. “As you can see, they do a pretty good job.”
We decided to take advantage of being the only people on the grounds at that moment and took a Ranger led tour of the stone house. The tour was led by Ranger Pete and it started on the front porch. We walked there from
the barn on the gravel drive that connected the two buildings in the back of the house. As we walked, Sam said, “This is just like being at Uncle Vernon’s house.” And it was.The three story house is built into the side of a hill in the Second Empire style. It was built by Mr. and Mrs. Steve Jones who moved to Kansas from Texas after Mr. Jones noticed that the grasses growing in this area were perfect for grazing cattle. He, his wife and his young daughter built Spring Hill/Z Bar ranch in 1881 out of native limestone mined from the area. Mr. Jones also built the
Lower Fox Creek school for his daughter Luttie to attend in 1882.We entered the house through the formal front door and entertainment parlors and then went into the parts of the home that were underground – the winter kitchen, walk in root cellar and spring house. Then, we walked upstairs to the middle of the house to tour the Mr. Jones’ office, the family parlor and the dining room. Mrs. Jones had a dumb waiter and butler’s pantry on the main floor that she used to bring food upstairs from the kitchen below. The upstairs, where the Jones’ had their bedrooms was not part of the tour as the park service is currently using those as offices. A very nice gift shop was located in the dining and living areas of the second floor.
In back of the house was a fancy, limestone outhouse with three different seats – one for each member of the family. There was also a summer kitchen, a nod to Mrs. Jones’ southern roots. The hill on which the house was located was populated by cedar trees and the Ice House on top
of the hill was the beginning of one of the most popular, and shortest nature trails on the L-shaped property.And it was there, after spotting a school bus from Marion USD, that we disappeared onto the Southwind Nature Trail which led across the creek and to the Lower Fox school. This short, two mile trail wound up around behind the house to the top of some hills overlooking the pasture land to the west. We wound through the short grassy hillside watching for wild roses, yellow primroses, BobWhites, meadowlarks and lizards.
It was a bright sunny day on the prairie with no rain in sight. The sun and wind had dried up much of the damage done by the rain earlier in the week. The only downside to our walk was the 25 mile an hour wind gusts that were, depending on the direction we were walking, urging us forward or holding us back.
Let it be said that I am not a big fan of Kansas wind. The wind is the one downside that holds spring well below fall as my favorite of the four seasons. But I didn’t mind the wind on the Tallgrass Prairie. This land was pasture land. Where I have experienced wind, it has been farmland. The wind held no dirt that I could feel. It didn’t sting. There was no spray of sand to close the mouth and eyes against. It was a clean wind, blowing back the hair and cooling off the body. It was actually quite pleasant which was a huge surprise.
After a cool respite at the school house with Ranger Ron, we headed back to the ranch house and the car for a quick sack lunch on one of the picnic 
tables in the parking lot. The gift shop offers light snacks and soda, so if you want a lunch, you have to bring your own. By now, the parking lot held a few more cars and so we checked out license plates just for fun. Scattered in among the various Kansas counties, there was a plate from Virginia, California and Tennessee. Pretty cool. Pretty cool.When we finished our lunch, we headed back to the barn to talk to the rangers about longer hikes through the pasture land. Based on the ranger’s recommendation, we chose the Scenic Overlook Trail which was just over 6 miles round trip. The “trail” was actually a gravel road winding back into the pasture land for three miles to the highest elevation at the park – 1,495 feet. A regular bus tour follows the same route so we figured, when we got tired, we could just hitch a ride on the bus.
Before we headed out, though, we made sure to have Isaac’s Junior Ranger activity booklet checked out and verified. Ranger Eric Patterson had a conversation with Isaac about the things
that he had learned that morning and swore him in as a Junior Ranger of the Tallgrass Prairie. Earlier in the day, Ranger Eric had abruptly interrupted a tour he was giving of the barn to Marion field trip goers to thank us for the cookies as we walked by. “There are many of us who wear this uniform,” he said to Isaac during the swearing in ceremony, “but only 2,000 who can call themselves Park Rangers.” He knelt down to Isaac’s level to give him his Tallgrass Prairie badge and Junior Ranger patch, shook Isaac’s hand and said, “So Isaac, we need your help.”Ranger Ron was back in the barn after Isaac was sworn in, so we talked with him that the other rangers about the trail we were about to hike. Making this trail a little more interesting was the small herd of bison occupying the Windmill Pasture. The rangers were working hard to re-establish the herd and were bragging that their very first baby calf had been born on Mother’s Day weekend. Depending on their grazing habits, it is sometimes difficult to see the bison, but on
that day, the rangers reported that they had been hanging out close to the Scenic Overlook trail road.“Just give them some space,” said Ranger Ron. “The mother appears to be used to people, so they shouldn’t give you any trouble. And if they do,” he winked, “just make sure you aren’t the slowest person in the group.”
With those words of advice ringing in our ears, we headed out with at least one wide-eyed boy who thought we were going on a death defying adventure into the Kansas prairie.
While we were not as impressed as the folks from Tennessee who were blown away by the ability to see over 18 miles from the scenic overlook, it was still wonderful to get back in over the hills and away from Highway 177 to hear the birds singing among the grass, look for wildflowers
and walk by the herd of buffalo lounging about 200 feet to the north of the trail.I walked remembering the earlier conversation with the docent in the Kansas History Museum in Topeka who described the experiences of the settlers traveling the Oregon trail. I walked remembering the Kansa Indians, otherwise known as “the people of the southwind,” who made these hills their home. I walked thinking about the 12 and 15 foot root systems that were under my feet and supporting the big blue stem and little blue stem grasses that are common on the tallgrass prairie. I walked and enjoyed the movement of my body over familiar gravel and
grassy terrain.As we expected, the boys did great for the first three miles, but by the time we crossed the third pasture gate into Big Pasture, they were ready to call it quits. So, we caught the bus as it was coming back from the scenic overlook. The couple from Tennessee were aboard and it was interesting to hear their reactions to land that was a familiar to me as my front porch.
Ranger Ron was driving what he called “his favorite 95 minutes of the day.” He had great stories of the people in the area, the grasses that were growing, the cattle that were grazing and the different areas of burning that were occurring throughout the park. True to his park ranger nature, you could tell that he enjoyed being on the tallgrass prairie and was passionate about the job that he was doing.
On our hike, we had noticed that on one side of the trail, the pasture land was green and fresh, as if it had just been burned and was now reestablishing itself. On the other side of the trail the pasture contained lots of brown, unburned grasses in among the green and growing ones. When we asked Ranger Ron about the uneven burning practice, he said that they are burning the park in sections in an attempt to mimic the natural burns that would have occurred before the area was settled.The rangers figured that in a natural state, the prairie would burn every three to seven years. We were right, the one side of the trail had just been burned that year – Ranger Ron called it a one-year burn. The other side of the trail represented an area of two-year burn. Then, as we drove, he pointed out additional areas that were two and three-year burns. He said that his dream was that as people flew over the park in an airplane that they would see this splotchy, some-brown and some-green, L-shaped area that was the national park surrounded all around
by brilliant, green rolling hills.The other thing that he taught us on the bus ride was the different grazing habits of cattle versus bison. He said that cattle tend to walk in a nose to tail fashion over a pasture land carving it up and making trails. They graze in certain areas causing the grass to be overgrown in places and very short in others. Bison, on the other hand, do not walk in lines. They walk spread out, in a herd and graze the grass evenly. Ranger Ron said that a pasture grazed by bison looks like a neatly manicured lawn. He couldn’t explain the behavior, just was an observer of it.
After the bus ride back to the barn, we were tired, sun and wind burned and ready to get in the car and go home. We said goodbye to all the Rangers, grabbed an annual events brochure, vowed to come back in the fall when the grasses on the bottom land pasture trail were seven and eight feet tall and headed south on Highway 177 towards Winfield.
We rounded out the trip by traveling through Bazaar, Kansas – the town near where Knute Rockne’s plane crashed, passed the dude ranch just north of Cassidy, Kansas and zipped around El Dorado lake. We hooked up with Highway 77 just outside of El Dorado and headed on south, getting into Winfield around 6:00 p.m. We unpacked, relaxed on the couch and went to bed tired but having had a satisfying, four-day Kansas adventure.
