Great Plains Anywhere: Stephen Bridenstine on the Flint Hills

Center for Great Plains Studies Author

11/28/2023 Added

27 Plays

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In this episode, Stephen Bridenstine, assistant director of the Flint Hills Discovery Center in Manhattan, Kansas, talks about what the Flint Hills are, who cares for the land, and how people can experience this unique landscape. The Discovery Center's mission is to inspire people to celebrate, explore, and care for the Flint Hills with an array of exhibits and programs meant to educate about the geology, ecology, and cultural history of the area.

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[00:00:00.150]Welcome to Great Plains Anywhere,
[00:00:02.070]a Paul A. Olson lecture
[00:00:03.750]from the Center for Great Plains Studies
[00:00:05.430]at the University of Nebraska.
[00:00:08.100]Today's guest is Stephen Bridenstine,
[00:00:10.110]assistant Director of the Flint Hills Discovery Center
[00:00:12.900]in Manhattan, Kansas.
[00:00:14.700]The Center's mission is to inspire people to celebrate,
[00:00:17.280]explore, and care for the Flint Hills, with an array
[00:00:20.220]of exhibits and programs meant to educate about the geology,
[00:00:24.210]ecology, and cultural history of the area.
[00:00:27.450]The University of Nebraska is a land-grant institution
[00:00:30.540]with campuses and programs on the past, present,
[00:00:33.510]and future homelands of the Pawnee, Ponca, Otoe-Missouria,
[00:00:38.220]Omaha, Dakota, Lakota, Kaw, Cheyenne,
[00:00:41.820]and Arapaho Peoples,
[00:00:43.440]as well as those of the relocated Ho-Chunk,
[00:00:46.050]Sac and Fox and Iowa Peoples.
[00:00:49.560]Hi everyone, I'm Katie Nieland.
[00:00:50.850]I'm the Associate Director here
[00:00:52.200]at the Center for Great Plains Studies
[00:00:54.060]and with me today is the assistant director
[00:00:56.070]of the Flint Hills Discovery Center.
[00:00:57.900]Stephen Bridenstine.
[00:01:00.360]Hi everyone.
[00:01:01.193]Katie, it's great to be here.
[00:01:03.390]As Katie said, I work here
[00:01:04.860]at the Flint Hills Discovery Center,
[00:01:06.420]and that's what you're looking at on the screen right now.
[00:01:09.960]So what we are is we're a municipal science history
[00:01:13.620]and heritage center located in downtown Manhattan, Kansas.
[00:01:18.510]So we were actually opened back in 2012
[00:01:22.560]and we were part of this very large
[00:01:25.147]$200 million downtown redevelopment,
[00:01:28.350]kind of this urban renewal project here in Manhattan.
[00:01:31.350]And some of the city leaders had this idea
[00:01:34.320]for a center like this,
[00:01:36.840]and they debated lots of different topics.
[00:01:39.000]And what they eventually settled on is what we have today.
[00:01:42.180]That's the Flint Hills Discovery Center.
[00:01:44.670]So when I describe what we are to people,
[00:01:46.860]we're kind of a combination of a history museum,
[00:01:50.940]a heritage center, a nature center,
[00:01:54.480]and a community center all rolled into one.
[00:01:58.590]So we talk about the history of the Flint Hills,
[00:02:01.770]the cultures, but also the plants, the animals,
[00:02:04.860]the ecosystem, and do traveling exhibits
[00:02:09.120]and education programs and lots of different things.
[00:02:11.430]So in terms of what we are,
[00:02:15.630]so we have a mission statement like a lot of places
[00:02:18.390]and ours is to inspire people to celebrate,
[00:02:21.300]explore, and care for the Flint Hills.
[00:02:23.520]So as an institution, it's really important to us
[00:02:27.660]that people leave our facility having learned something
[00:02:31.920]and hopefully that they're inspired to go out
[00:02:36.210]and do something that really helps
[00:02:40.200]continue the preservation of the Flint Hills ecosystem
[00:02:44.280]that we're so proud of here in Kansas.
[00:02:46.080]So, but when I say Flint Hills,
[00:02:50.520]we're talking about what we have here in central Kansas.
[00:02:55.170]The Flint Hills stretch from almost the Nebraska line
[00:02:58.050]all the way south into Oklahoma.
[00:03:00.960]And down in Oklahoma they're also called the Osage Hills,
[00:03:04.680]but it's the same ecological region
[00:03:06.750]and it is a tallgrass prairie.
[00:03:08.910]That is what we are.
[00:03:11.520]When we say tallgrass prairie,
[00:03:13.440]I know this photo doesn't really do it justice.
[00:03:16.110]This is about May when things start growing,
[00:03:18.900]but the grass can grow eight to 10 feet tall,
[00:03:22.140]that blue stem, the other switch grasses,
[00:03:25.230]they can grow very tall.
[00:03:27.570]And then the forbs and other flowering plants that are here
[00:03:31.050]really make for a beautiful scene.
[00:03:32.970]But it's also a dynamic landscape.
[00:03:35.550]This is that same scene looking the other direction.
[00:03:38.130]Four or five months later,
[00:03:40.650]the native tallgrass prairie changes constantly
[00:03:43.680]throughout the months.
[00:03:45.270]The grass grows, it changes, when fall comes around
[00:03:49.230]it dries out that sunlight,
[00:03:52.260]that heat that we're getting right now really transforms
[00:03:56.100]that prairie into that beautiful brown that you see.
[00:03:59.970]But the other thing that is really distinct
[00:04:02.850]about the Flint Hills is that there's tallgrass prairie
[00:04:07.590]in all over the US in the Dakotas and Missouri and Illinois
[00:04:12.030]and Iowa, down in Texas.
[00:04:14.610]What you see in this image right now
[00:04:16.200]is what makes the Flint Hills unique,
[00:04:18.450]and that is the geology here.
[00:04:20.670]So we have these underlying layers
[00:04:23.550]of flint and limestone rock that are
[00:04:28.620]serve kind of as these impermeable caps.
[00:04:32.370]And the way that it works
[00:04:33.900]is that we've got these different layers.
[00:04:36.600]The limestone and the flint, the shale and the mudrock
[00:04:40.470]are in different layers.
[00:04:42.210]The shale is very soft.
[00:04:44.100]It erodes away easily.
[00:04:45.660]The limestone is very tough.
[00:04:47.880]It forms a cap.
[00:04:49.350]And so what you get is sort of these terraces that you see
[00:04:53.700]that form on the side of the Flint Hills.
[00:04:56.010]And so it's a very distinct
[00:04:59.190]and uniquely looking landscape.
[00:05:01.920]These are not smooth hills.
[00:05:03.360]They have sort of these ridges to them,
[00:05:05.730]which surprises a lot of people when they come here.
[00:05:09.540]But it's also the story of why the Flint Hills
[00:05:11.790]is so important because this was an area
[00:05:14.640]that because of those very shallow soils sometimes mirror
[00:05:19.320]inches deep with that limestone right below it,
[00:05:23.220]you could not farm here.
[00:05:25.410]Large scale farming just wasn't feasible in this area.
[00:05:28.590]And so historically in the settlement area,
[00:05:32.130]this is when this area became known as a great pasture,
[00:05:36.540]great grazing lands.
[00:05:37.920]And so the bison loved it out here while the bison left,
[00:05:41.820]they brought in cattle.
[00:05:43.080]The cattle love it here,
[00:05:44.340]which is why this is still today cattle country.
[00:05:49.230]So when we look at the map here,
[00:05:50.730]so this is a great little representation
[00:05:53.520]of all the prairie regions in North America.
[00:05:57.330]Flint Hills are the dark green
[00:05:58.680]that you see on the screen there.
[00:05:59.940]So you've got the tall grass, the mixed grass,
[00:06:02.967]and the shortgrass prairie.
[00:06:05.670]We have all three here in Kansas.
[00:06:07.650]But I'm personally most proud of the Flint Hills
[00:06:10.560]because it truly represents the last 5%
[00:06:17.600]of the remaining native tallgrass prairie.
[00:06:21.870]That's really the message we try
[00:06:23.550]to impart here at the Discovery Center,
[00:06:25.680]is that this is a threatened ecosystem
[00:06:29.040]that this unique collection of plants and animals
[00:06:31.590]that we know as a tallgrass prairie,
[00:06:33.960]about 95% of that is gone.
[00:06:36.210]It's been fundamentally changed.
[00:06:37.980]Here in the Flint Hills it's pure,
[00:06:40.710]merely this fluke of geology that created the region
[00:06:45.660]that we now know today.
[00:06:48.000]Now, as I'm sure is the case up there in Nebraska,
[00:06:52.260]we're more of a diverse state than people
[00:06:55.050]like to give us credit for.
[00:06:56.340]So there are eight ecological regions here in Kansas.
[00:07:00.390]The Flint Hills is just one of them.
[00:07:03.270]You know, it's distinct I would say in the state
[00:07:07.170]and even across the region in terms of the fact
[00:07:10.110]that it is still this tallgrass prairie,
[00:07:13.320]but it's not the only region here in Kansas.
[00:07:15.270]We have many others as well as you see on the screen.
[00:07:18.480]In terms of what we are as a facility,
[00:07:21.630]so we have an immersive film
[00:07:25.740]that gives you the background,
[00:07:27.690]that story of the Flint Hills it's called Tides of Time,
[00:07:31.260]we always tell every guest
[00:07:32.310]who comes here to go see that first,
[00:07:33.930]it's got really cool special effects in it.
[00:07:36.900]We also have our main galleries on the first floor
[00:07:40.020]that talks about the history, the people,
[00:07:42.930]the culture, the plants and animals.
[00:07:45.330]It gives you that whole overview of the Flint Hills.
[00:07:49.560]Only last year we completely renovated
[00:07:51.990]our kids play area on the second floor.
[00:07:55.110]Like any museum or science center,
[00:07:56.820]families are a huge audience for us.
[00:07:59.310]Kids are the next generation of prairie stewards.
[00:08:02.700]So it's really important to us
[00:08:04.290]that we really impart this message on the young people
[00:08:07.050]in our community that they understand that they have a role
[00:08:10.110]to play in the future to help preserve the Flint Hills.
[00:08:13.260]And so we do focus a lot on kids in our facility as well.
[00:08:18.090]And then we also bring through traveling programs as well.
[00:08:21.750]One of the things that's really neat
[00:08:23.430]is we have a bit of a property here downtown,
[00:08:26.580]and all of our landscaping
[00:08:28.470]outside the building is all native prairie grasses
[00:08:32.190]and flowering plants.
[00:08:33.960]And so when you come visit our facility,
[00:08:36.720]we're actually a gold lead certified facility.
[00:08:40.350]So our building has many elements
[00:08:43.710]of sustainable design in the facility,
[00:08:46.860]its construction, the green roof
[00:08:49.290]that we have on top of our building,
[00:08:51.360]some bioswales that collect and retain stormwater runoff.
[00:08:55.560]A bunch of really neat features in our facility
[00:08:58.950]that really help lessen our impact
[00:09:02.430]on the environment as a facility.
[00:09:05.430]And lastly, I can't emphasize enough
[00:09:08.280]that we are fundamentally an educational institution.
[00:09:11.940]We have 70,000 guests a year come through our doors.
[00:09:16.140]8,000 of those are school kids in formal programs,
[00:09:20.640]in field trips and summer camp.
[00:09:22.710]And, you know, we do outreach programs,
[00:09:25.590]we go out to schools, we give tours in the prairie.
[00:09:29.910]Education is our mechanism
[00:09:32.850]by which we get to this end goal of preservation.
[00:09:36.690]And so that's fundamentally what's important to us.
[00:09:39.960]And we're proud to be a premier educational facility
[00:09:45.120]here in Manhattan, Kansas.
[00:09:46.680]And I invite all of you listening to come visit us
[00:09:50.220]next time you're in town.
[00:09:52.890]How is the Flint Hills managed?
[00:09:54.720]Is there somebody who's like taking care of it?
[00:09:57.240]Is it Kansas Game and Parks?
[00:09:59.010]Like how does that work?
[00:10:00.300]Yeah, so great question
[00:10:02.520]and it's one we frequently get at the Discovery Center.
[00:10:06.450]I'll tell you a quick story actually.
[00:10:08.280]We had a tour bus come with mainly older adults
[00:10:13.050]from all over the country.
[00:10:14.160]And we at the Discovery Center were one of their stops.
[00:10:16.770]And I was talking to this older couple
[00:10:19.080]and they were from outside Kansas
[00:10:21.207]and we have a big oversized map of the Flint Hills.
[00:10:23.850]And I was explaining them this story about, you know,
[00:10:26.700]how it's a threatened ecosystem
[00:10:28.350]and we're working to preserve it
[00:10:30.510]and really imparting that message.
[00:10:32.340]And the woman said to me, so this is mostly,
[00:10:36.690]is it federal land?
[00:10:37.800]Is it state land?
[00:10:38.850]Is it parkland?
[00:10:41.250]And I had to explain to her, well no, actually
[00:10:44.700]almost all of the Flint Hills is privately owned
[00:10:48.120]and privately managed.
[00:10:50.340]And she was very confused by that.
[00:10:53.700]Because it is such a different
[00:10:56.550]story than what we're used to.
[00:10:58.350]When we hear about threatened ecosystems and preservation,
[00:11:01.620]we usually think of public lands
[00:11:04.620]and government intervention and nonprofits.
[00:11:07.650]What makes the Flint Hills kind of unique is that
[00:11:12.400]the preservation of the Flint Hills,
[00:11:14.880]the continuation of this ecosystem is good
[00:11:18.480]for the bottom line of landowners
[00:11:21.300]because this is a ranching area,
[00:11:24.150]because this is used as pasture
[00:11:26.730]that which is good for the prairie
[00:11:28.980]ecologically is also good for the landowner
[00:11:33.690]who's putting cattle out on the land.
[00:11:36.870]And so in some ways it's this truly unique
[00:11:41.400]and distinct combination that exists
[00:11:43.710]where private landowners have taken on,
[00:11:47.610]whether they've known it or not,
[00:11:50.170]this job of preserving the prairie
[00:11:55.170]because it's good for business.
[00:11:57.930]I mean, that's really is
[00:11:59.190]one of the simple ways of explaining it.
[00:12:01.080]That, you know,
[00:12:03.660]cattle as the primary grazing species have a role
[00:12:06.990]in the ecosystem.
[00:12:07.980]They fill the niche that bison used to fill
[00:12:10.860]for thousands of years.
[00:12:12.030]And so the prairie is better
[00:12:14.400]with cattle than without cattle.
[00:12:16.650]And that's another important point to know as well.
[00:12:20.550]Right, well it seems like the reason that it still exists
[00:12:24.690]whereas so many other places have been, you know, plowed up,
[00:12:27.690]is that because it was good for cattle,
[00:12:29.610]because there it was impossible to plow
[00:12:32.130]with the limestone- Yeah.
[00:12:33.280]Being right there.
[00:12:34.230]So really like different forces acting upon the landscape
[00:12:38.190]has left us a big, you know,
[00:12:41.070]this big chunk of prairie, which is-
[00:12:42.810]Right.
[00:12:43.643]And the key word there is, impossible,
[00:12:46.440]because at the time of settlement
[00:12:48.090]in the 1850s and '60s and '70s
[00:12:51.390]if those first wave settlers who came out
[00:12:54.360]to this part of Kansas, if only they had a way
[00:12:58.680]to plow up the Flint Hills, they would have.
[00:13:02.370]It's an interesting thing
[00:13:03.203]because so much of the Great plain is privately-held land.
[00:13:07.410]It's hard to do conservation
[00:13:09.810]unless you are able to work with landowners
[00:13:12.960]and, you know, give them a reason
[00:13:16.260]Yeah. To do conservation.
[00:13:18.090]Yeah and we, you know, being here in Manhattan,
[00:13:21.030]Kansas State University,
[00:13:22.410]their research and extension office,
[00:13:24.840]sort of their land management specialists,
[00:13:28.710]I mean, there's a lot of great resources out there
[00:13:31.920]for landowners to really get them on board
[00:13:35.520]with some of these best practices.
[00:13:37.110]And so it's kind of this public-private partnership
[00:13:42.870]informally that helps also work towards the best end goal
[00:13:48.750]that we wanna get to,
[00:13:49.740]which is still preserving this landscape.
[00:13:52.530]Yeah so in that case,
[00:13:54.870]how do people visit the Flint Hills?
[00:13:56.670]Are there some trails,
[00:13:57.570]like how do people get out in there?
[00:13:58.560]Yeah, well it's a big region.
[00:14:02.850]I'll start there.
[00:14:04.800]And so most people experience it
[00:14:07.140]by simply driving through it.
[00:14:09.660]That really is people's first introduction to it
[00:14:13.980]and some people's only introduction to it.
[00:14:17.340]And so, you know, we're crossed
[00:14:18.840]by several major interstates.
[00:14:22.110]When you travel I-70 across Kansas,
[00:14:24.450]you go through the heart of the Flint Hills
[00:14:26.850]and it's some beautiful scenery.
[00:14:28.830]And so it stands in stark contrast to the area you came from
[00:14:33.270]and the area you're going into along the highway.
[00:14:35.370]And so we do encourage everyone
[00:14:37.380]to get out of their cars and off the road.
[00:14:40.080]So there are some public lands, some public trails.
[00:14:44.490]The Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve
[00:14:46.230]is a national park service site that's down in Strong City,
[00:14:50.400]Kansas, kind of in the heart of the Flint Hills.
[00:14:53.160]And then there's some other public trails and areas.
[00:14:55.650]The Konza Prairie Biological Research Station
[00:14:59.100]is a research station
[00:15:01.650]owned and operated by Kansas State University
[00:15:04.230]along with the Nature Conservancy.
[00:15:06.270]And they actually have a selection
[00:15:07.590]of freely accessible public trails
[00:15:11.160]up to nine miles of trails
[00:15:12.750]through beautiful tallgrass prairie.
[00:15:15.270]It's one of my favorite spots to go hiking
[00:15:17.430]and it's just a 10 minute drive outta Manhattan,
[00:15:21.360]so nice if you're in our area.
[00:15:23.730]Absolutely.
[00:15:24.870]What sort of species do you all see in the Flint Hills?
[00:15:28.500]Well, we certainly get our share
[00:15:31.890]of migratory birds coming through.
[00:15:34.560]We're not the most important flyways north and south.
[00:15:40.470]Those are areas to our east and west,
[00:15:43.320]so we don't get quite the number or quantity of species
[00:15:47.550]that you get in those other places.
[00:15:49.800]But certainly, yeah, we do get
[00:15:53.700]good numbers that come through here.
[00:15:56.340]You know, it's easier
[00:15:58.380]to talk about almost what's not here anymore.
[00:16:00.750]I mean, the iconic species, bison, wolves, some of those,
[00:16:06.326]the larger mammal species have been gone
[00:16:10.140]for over 100 years, even longer for the bison.
[00:16:13.980]Some have been reintroduced.
[00:16:15.390]There's elk that have been reintroduced in the prairie.
[00:16:18.180]There are ranches
[00:16:19.170]that specialize in raising bison in the prairie.
[00:16:21.930]And so you can drive through the Flint Hills
[00:16:23.820]and you'll still see herds of bisons
[00:16:26.130]but they are essentially domestic herds.
[00:16:28.740]So, but many of the other iconic species,
[00:16:33.810]you know, a lot of reptiles, box turtles,
[00:16:36.420]there's amphibians, there are fish in the Flint Hills
[00:16:39.720]that are unique.
[00:16:41.100]You know, I also always wanna emphasize too,
[00:16:43.620]some of the unique plants we have in the Flint Hills.
[00:16:47.640]You know, what I love most about the Flint Hills
[00:16:50.280]is how it changes throughout the seasons.
[00:16:52.800]What you see flowering in May
[00:16:54.200]is not what you see flowering in August.
[00:16:57.300]And that's what I love about it
[00:17:00.420]is that you're gonna see different things,
[00:17:02.550]different times a year, different times a day.
[00:17:07.140]The Flint Hills is a canvas
[00:17:08.760]that gets painted differently every minute you're out there
[00:17:12.960]and it's such a wonderful place to be out in
[00:17:16.260]because you're guaranteed
[00:17:17.820]to see something new every time you're out.
[00:17:20.040]Yeah. That's really great.
[00:17:21.990]Do you get like some comments back from people
[00:17:24.780]who have been out there like for the first time?
[00:17:27.720]How do they experience it?
[00:17:30.540]Well, for folks who aren't from the prairie states,
[00:17:36.720]it's the distance.
[00:17:38.010]It's how far you can see.
[00:17:42.540]it's just the other,
[00:17:46.110]well, the other thing too is a lot of what you see
[00:17:50.370]in the Flint Hills in the prairie
[00:17:52.920]is not quite as diverse as you might otherwise see.
[00:17:59.370]There are areas where you can go hiking,
[00:18:01.650]but they don't have any grazing animals.
[00:18:03.810]There's no cattle there, for example.
[00:18:05.940]And the lack of cattle means that that action on the land
[00:18:10.020]is not present where you're hiking.
[00:18:13.500]And so oftentimes I like to tell folks,
[00:18:16.740]if you really wanna see the Flint Hills as historically,
[00:18:20.400]you would've seen them,
[00:18:22.140]find a pasture with a huge herd of cattle in it.
[00:18:26.550]Their actions on the land, rough it up,
[00:18:31.470]for lack of a better term.
[00:18:32.850]And a pristine prairie with all these tall grasses
[00:18:36.810]is kind of an image that people think of.
[00:18:43.099]But a true Flint Hills' native prairie
[00:18:46.830]has a lot of that action on it
[00:18:48.660]from those larger hoofed grazing animals
[00:18:53.340]who rough up the landscape.
[00:18:55.770]I mean, bison wallows are these huge,
[00:18:58.710]massive blowouts with sand and dust and dirt
[00:19:03.300]that they just wallow around in.
[00:19:04.920]And you can still find those in the Flint Hills.
[00:19:07.920]We haven't had bison here permanently
[00:19:09.690]for the last 160, 170 years,
[00:19:13.710]but you can still find those same bison wallows today
[00:19:17.670]that were around for hundreds if not thousands of years.
[00:19:20.640]And so that's another example of an element
[00:19:24.240]that those bison wallows can host sort of a microclimate
[00:19:29.850]and a micro ecosystem
[00:19:31.440]when they fill with water certain amphibians and reptiles
[00:19:35.400]and they kind of become these little pots
[00:19:39.120]of biodiversity on the prairie.
[00:19:40.830]And so they're not as common as they used to be.
[00:19:43.650]They're not as many,
[00:19:44.490]they don't get replenished and refurbished.
[00:19:47.820]Cattle don't wallow quite the same as bison.
[00:19:50.820]And so, you know,
[00:19:52.350]the native tallgrass prairie we have here
[00:19:54.240]is a pretty good representation of the historical prairie,
[00:19:58.860]but it's not quite a one-to-one either.
[00:20:01.050]So there's some nuance in there as well.
[00:20:04.530]Is there any research on if climate change is affecting
[00:20:07.890]the prairie or anything like that?
[00:20:11.370]Yeah, well, again, I look to my colleagues
[00:20:14.820]at Kansas State University,
[00:20:16.830]the Konza Prairie Research Station.
[00:20:19.620]They're doing some excellent
[00:20:21.570]state-of-the-art research out there,
[00:20:23.640]and it's also an LTER site, long-term ecological research.
[00:20:29.130]And so they've been tracking climate data
[00:20:32.400]and other information for decades and decades,
[00:20:35.700]and they're gonna continue that well into the future.
[00:20:37.770]And so that's part of this larger project
[00:20:40.530]to try and tease out these changes over the long term.
[00:20:45.990]And so they're actively doing the research right now.
[00:20:48.960]They're, I'm sure as we move forward in time,
[00:20:52.980]they're gonna have even more insights about how our climate
[00:20:56.400]and therefore how the Flint Hills are changing.
[00:20:59.880]One of the things I like about it is that,
[00:21:04.110]and this is something we talk a little bit about here
[00:21:06.930]at the Discovery Center,
[00:21:08.037]and that is you can look out on the landscape
[00:21:13.950]and you can experience it in certain places
[00:21:18.690]and certain times,
[00:21:21.210]as someone would've experienced it 200 years ago,
[00:21:24.583]1,000 years ago, 2,000 years ago,
[00:21:27.840]that there is a certain continuity to this place
[00:21:33.000]that my background's in history and culture.
[00:21:37.620]And so for me to go somewhere and imagine that
[00:21:41.940]that is how someone would've seen it 200 years ago
[00:21:44.760]is pretty remarkable.
[00:21:47.310]I'm from back east
[00:21:48.450]where things have changed quite a bit more, I would say.
[00:21:52.830]And so seeing that continuity
[00:21:56.940]is quite remarkable.
[00:21:59.940]What you have to do in the grasslands
[00:22:01.920]that you may not have to do as much
[00:22:03.420]in other places is focus.
[00:22:08.070]And because the grasslands are misleading,
[00:22:12.870]you think you look out and you see a sea of green
[00:22:16.572]and it's all the same and it's monotonous.
[00:22:20.130]The grasslands force you to focus, look closely,
[00:22:23.730]look deeply, find the nuance, find the difference.
[00:22:27.600]If you're in a true native prairie, it's a little easier,
[00:22:31.920]but it still forces you to look,
[00:22:34.350]look down, look closely, focus,
[00:22:37.290]tune your hearing to the things you're hearing,
[00:22:39.960]the wind, the birds, the insects, the coyotes,
[00:22:43.920]the all the beautiful sounds we have on the prairie.
[00:22:46.530]And so I think it's a place that forces you to sort of stop,
[00:22:52.320]catch your breath and look and listen
[00:22:55.290]and you'll appreciate it that much more.
[00:22:58.020]Well, if you're in the Fall of 2023,
[00:23:02.242]if you're watching this, and it's still that time,
[00:23:05.040]we're actually hosting an exhibit here
[00:23:06.690]at the Discovery Center
[00:23:07.770]called Great Plains: America's Lingering Wild.
[00:23:10.800]That's from photographer Michael Forsberg
[00:23:14.070]at the University of Nebraska.
[00:23:15.510]So we're hosting his exhibit here opens on, let me check,
[00:23:20.610]September 23rd is here, go through January 4th,
[00:23:26.160]excuse me, January 7th, 2024.
[00:23:29.490]So if you're able to,
[00:23:30.690]if you're in Manhattan, it's a great exhibit.
[00:23:33.000]We're excited to be having it.
[00:23:34.320]So one extra thing to come check out here
[00:23:36.990]at the Discovery Center.
[00:23:38.910]We'd like to thank Stephen
[00:23:40.050]for speaking with us today.
[00:23:41.460]Find all of our short Great Plains talks
[00:23:43.530]and interviews as videos
[00:23:44.910]and podcasts at go.unl.edu/gpanywhere.

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Great Plains Anywhere: Stephen Bridenstine on the Flint Hills

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