One of my pastimes is exploring back-country gravel roads, and my favorite gravel road destination is the Flint Hills region of east-central Kansas.
I go there for views like this, where wildflowers stretch from horizon to horizon and the only sound is the wind through the grass. This landscape once covered the center of North America, from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, but the only place you can see it today is the Flint Hills.
I like the contrast between blue sky and emerald grasses, so I try to time my trips to coincide with fair weather. Sometimes though the weather doesn't cooperate. Below is a series of photographs taken one stormy morning a couple years ago. Each can be viewed in larger format by clicking on it.
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Though it was a warm day it was cloudy and threatening rain by the time I got off the highway and onto the back roads. Overcast skies can sometimes make photography a waste of time, but on occasion they actually intensify the colors.
Horses in a flowery pasture.
About the time I turned onto this westbound road the sky started getting weird.
There was thunder and lightning off to the north.
To the northwest an odd, blue-edged line of clouds rolled over the horizon.
The strange formation moved rapidly south; here it's a mile or so away.
Just as the squall line crossed the road to my west a strong wind kicked up and the temperature began falling rapidly.
It was moving fast.
I'd never seen a cloud this color before.
The wind, gusting to sixty miles an hour or more by now, made it difficult to hold my camera steady.
As the blue cloud rolled south the landscape ahead of it took on a reddish glow. I don't know why.
Cobalt sky.
Looking due south as the light goes away.
Blackness. The wind was shrieking and lightning was striking to the north, east and west, and as you can see in this shot my camera had raindrops on the lens. Time to go.
Veils of rain.
Road becomes stream.
The rain was heavy but it didn't last long. Here, clouds begin lifting over a flooded field.
An upland plover seems pleased the storm is over.
Freshly showered echinacea.
These white primrose seem lit from within.
It was an interesting morning. Rain or shine, clear skies or stormy, there are always more back roads to explore.
Note: I previously posted some of these photographs in 2009 under the title Blue Cloud Sequence. That post has since been deleted. All images ©2011 by Nanatehay.
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Comments
Rated for pretty flowers....
i never thought i would miss the flat landscapes of the midwest, but these pics (which are amazingly done) sorta made me long for it.
Rated with hugs
Up here, we know to seek shelter fast when the sky turns green. Nature is a formidable opponent.
Each time I am drawn to visit from the pics.
Ty Nana. Awesome and revealing....
Sometimes I'm nostalgic for the prairies, where you can see the weather coming, and where you appreciate the long landscape...and the close-up details.
All in all, I prefer living in the middle-range of trees and hills and stuff...but when I go back to Alberta, I'm 'home' (don't want to stay home, tho.)
Gorgeous photos...
These are terrific Nana!
`R
Mission, I've got a standing invitation to all my OS friends to take them on a tour of the Flint Hills if they make it out this way. To me it's as beautiful a landscape as mountains or seashores, though it's a beauty many people don't get.
Myriad, I'd love to see the prairies in Canada. It's a similar place for long views and sky I'm sure, but there's a different range of grasses and forbs to see, and more water apparently.
Oryoki, I haven't seen enough sky myself lately, hence this post. I want to make it out there this spring when they do the annual burn; it's an amazing thing to see, especially at night as bands of fire sweep up and over the hillsides.
Larry, I kept expecting the witch to go peddling through the sky on her bicycle.
John, I'm glad you liked them. Whenever I post photos of Kansas I half expect people to say something like "Um...nice weeds."
AKA, I did get back in my vehicle before the heavy rain swept in. As I left the spot where the blue cloud had flown over me, the rain was coming down so hard I had to stop several time 'cause I couldn't see more than 30 or 40 feet.
Hi High! I love showing people my favorite prairie places, I'm evangelical about it, so anytime.
Thank you CoL!
It's always pretty out there Tink, but it's got nothing on Fargo.
Scrolling back up the other way now:
Paul; when I see green skies I take cover. Discretion is the better part of staying alive and all that.
Fred, I was thinking the same thing!
Boanerges; Ron White is hilarious, and what's more he's right.
Linda, those stormtrackers make money for being idjits. I do it for love, though I'd take money if someone offered.
Don, it's trying to snow here too. :(
Michael K; thanks for visiting my blog.
Lorianne Lorianne Lorianne!!!!!!!!!!! :D
Stellaa, it's green here for about a week in early June. ;-)
Linnn; and in the name of the Lollipop Guild....
Trig, spectacular it was. A day spent sky watching is a day well-spent.
White and Black, I could do a whole post about just the flowers. I have before in fact, though they were deleted when I nuked my blog a while back.
Bleue, I've never seen a cloud like it before. If anyone has an idea as to why it was that color I'd love to hear it.
Jeanette, I've spent a fair amount of time back East, and there are some beautiful places there, but without open skies I get claustrophobic after a while.
Candace; storm season, from April or so into July, is my favorite time of year. It's also when the prairie is at its most beautiful.
I could feel the air get cooler and smell that electric scent in the air.
I particularly like "Cobalt Sky"- uncanny how much it resembles a wave passing, seen from beneath ... a thousand miles from any ocean.
*wanders out of room smarting from realization that I Suck Ass
♥
I missed your photos of the Flint Hills because you have an incredible eye.
I think that fourth picture is of Mammatus clouds...I stay home when those suckers are out. We don't get them often here.
"I had the right to remain silent... but I didn't have the ability."
I can relate to that one!
Sky, that was my goal. It's difficult to capture a place in a few photographs but I keep trying and sometimes even come close.
Larry, if Emily was here it might be, but I don't think the temp editor cares much for phot0 essays.
IQ, I didn't know you once lived in the Midwest. The formation itself wasn't that unusual, but I've never seen that color of cloud before, anywhere.
Kim, I hadn't thought of it like that, but now that you mention it, and from my limited experience looking at waves from underneath (for instance, being somersaulted head over heels by breakers in New England) that's a perfect description.
FTM; I love the ocean but I feel the same way.
Mike, it was a matter of luck. If only I'd had my camera with me that time I was carjacked by Sasquatch...
Rita, the look of flatness is deceptive. There are places in the Flint Hills where, if you're on top of a plateau like the place I snapped the blue cloud pics, you have flat horizons, but mostly everything is tilted and tumbled, with various strata of limestone layer-caked on top of each other and eroding away in between, all of it forming shelves and tables and cones and mounds and ridges and valleys. If a person gets out of their car and hikes a while they soon notice that they're mainly going either up or down a pretty considerable slope.
White and Black, say WHAT? You rock absolutely and that's all there is to it. :-|
Matt, umbrellas are never a good idea when a straight-line wind blows through...
Thanks Sophie!
Thank you also Margaret, and welcome to my blog. :D
Scupper, it's pretty monochromatic here too. I know I should live in the here and now but I can't wait for spring.
Maria, thanks for coming along on the road trip. I too find when I get back from one I'm better able to do the mundane things I keep putting off.
Anna, the sky tells us a lot of things we need to know.
Jane, I almost included a pic of a place, not far from where I took these photos, called the Lower Fox Creek School. It's an 1870s one-room schoolhouse; whenever I'm there I think of Laura and Mary Ingalls and all the rest of 'em.
Scarlett, if ever a wonderful Wiz there was...
Fusun, I'm glad you liked my pitchers!
Zuma, does mammatus mean what it sounds like? We don't allow those kind of references in Kansas. :-|
Thanks Michael. There aren't that many prairie enthusiasts out there, though the Flint Hills have experienced somewhat of a tourist boom since the establishment of the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve. They need to acquire enough land to re-introduce bison and elk and pronghorn and turn it into a National Park, though that's unlikely as long as so many people in the area think the idea is just an excuse for a land grab.
Catherine, I didn't know you were a prairie native. As I said somewhere earlier in the thread, there are lots of beautiful places in this country to live but I'd get homesick pretty quick without big horizons and plenty of sky.
Never Again, I suppose.
And Ernesto, yeah, most of the indigenous tribes were shoved down to Oklahoma. I attended a Kansa pow wow on their ancestral lands in Council Grove last summer; it was a 2 hour drive for me to get there, but 4 or 5 hours for them. That sucks. Even most of the tribes who were relocated here from the East - the Shawnee, Miami and so forth - were forced out once it became expedient to do so. In most cases all that's left here now is their place names and sadness.
In the photo where I'm facing due south and the sky is black you can see Roniger Hill, the highest point in Chase county, in the distance. In one of my favorite books, Prairyerth, the author (he also wrote the classic Blue Highways) says:
I am standing on Roniger Hill: I am facing West, dusk creeping up my back to absorb my thirty-foot shadow, the sun now a flattened crescent so dull I can look directly into it. The month is November, and behind me a full moon will soon rise, and I am standing on this hill. I've been to this place before. Up here in the thirties Frank and George Roniger built three stone markers to honor Indian remains they unearthed atop the ridge. The Roniger brothers were bachelors, farmers, and collectors of stone artifacts from their fields lying below, and they believed this hill sacred to the people who lived around it in the time when Europeans were building cathedrals and sending children off to take holy cities from desert tribes. To me, this ridge is singular, and, at night, almost unearthly, and I come here, in a friend's words, as a two-bit mystic, but I believe I've found my way to the top by some old compass in the blood.
Some old compass in the blood; that's what draws me out to the Flint Hills.
rate
~nodding~
I never got any angry PMs from Kerry or Joan, I've heard through the grapevine that my name is muttered under their breath as 'That damn cat!!'
~Tears~ Michael declared my Mayor of Open.Salon. I'm honored, I always saw myself as more like dog catcher for the lower east side of Open!! TEARS!!!
And yes, already added to my resume!! :D
Candace, I am a blatant doofus, there's no denying it.
Dr. Lee, it's an understated beauty compared to mountains or what have you but it's real nonetheless.
Amy, the horses shot is one of my favs too. They walked up from across the pasture like they wanted to be photographed.
Anna; I will deny that charge 'til my dying day. :D
Roger, one of the things I love about driving around out there is those roads that seem to disappear into the sky.
LSchmoopie; you totally should visit out here sometime!
Joan, beautiful and frightening at once is a good way to describe storms like the one I tried to recreate here. There's nothing quite like being out on the earth with no shelter around when one happens. It's better than drugs.
You fool Tink, he's just using you. Snap out of it before it's too late dammit. :-\
Sweetfeet; thank you and so are you!
I'm flagging your post cause I know you didn't take these pictures nor did you write any of the words, it all came from PornAMatic.com!!!!
FLAG!! FLAG!! FLAG!!!
**Wanders off, his tail accidentally hitting LIKE instead**
In my walks in those hills I've seen those types of clouds..the cobalt and aqua color is intense. The air can change so suddenly, as you have said. Summer is my favorite time, in the heat of the day. You have to be careful, the prairie gets quite hot.
At the edge of the Flint Hills, I'm sure you have seen Coronado Heights, near Lindsborg, Kansas; the highest geological locale in the state. Spanish chain-mail armour was discovered there in 1912, and they think the hill may have been the stopping point of Francisco Vasquez de Coronado's quest for the Seven Cities of Gold as he and his forces turn back towards Mexico. They think he arrived there in 1541...imagine an army of exhausted Spainish and Native American conscripts and slaves, hacking their way through 8 ft tall prairie grass.
rated
Great pics!
~R~
Lezlie
I hope you don't mind but I "borrow" your pictures for my screen saver at work but promise when I retire I will delete them. If you mind I will delete them right away but they are so pretty I love to just look at them when I get to sit down...
Yeah, I've been exercising!! PFFFtttttttt!!!!!!!!!!!!
**Wanders off into the deep dark woods where the evil creatures live**
What? :D
I took a drive around the neighbourhood on Sunday. Those storms can be a bitch...