CHASE COUNTY, Kan. (KPR) - The Symphony in the Flint Hills has had its final run. The 20th anniversary and grand finale of the symphony was held in the middle of June in Chase County. Those who loved it will miss it. Commentator Rex Buchanan says the annual event served as a great promotion for the Flint Hills and for the state.
(Transcript)
The Legacy of the Symphony in the Flint Hills
By Rex Buchanan
Every June for the past 20 years, the Kansas City symphony has played a concert in the Flint Hills. The location changed each year, but the premise remained the same: draw people to the prairie with music.
This was the final year for the Symphony. But the event’s impact on the Flint Hills will last a long time.
I’ve often pondered the Kansas inferiority complex, how the rest of the world seems to look down on us and how we sometimes look down on ourselves. But that isn’t true of the Flint Hills. People there are proud of the place they live. They extol its beauty, productivity, and culture. They work hard to take care of it, protect it.
I can’t prove any of this, but I think the Flint Hills are more appreciated today than ever. And I think the Symphony had something to do with that. It brought people to the prairie who would otherwise never have had that experience.
A few years ago I was walking from the parking lot to the Symphony grounds with a family from Manhattan, the one in New York. They stopped to visit with one of the outriders along the trail. When they were done, the father turned to the son and said, “Now you’ve talked to a real live cowboy.” And you know what? They had. I’ll bet they remember that visit, and the Flint Hills, with affection.
But appreciation for the Flint Hills has been fostered by other things. Like the Flint Hills Discovery Center in Manhattan. It’s educated people about the Flint Hills for 13 years. The Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve, established outside Strong City in 1996, gave the prairie a prominent place in the national park system, and brought thousands of people to the Flint Hills who probably otherwise wouldn’t have known it existed.
Here’s another event from the early 2000s that cemented the state’s appreciation for the Flint Hills. When Kathleen Sebelius was governor, she put together a voluntary agreement to keep wind farms out of the Flint Hills. Subsequent administrations followed suit, and today, wind farms are largely absent from the Hills.
No matter how you feel about wind power, that voluntary effort made it clear that all Kansans care deeply about that landscape, about its plants and animals. The fact that a consensus-built, voluntary agreement still works is testimony to that care. And it represents a very Kansas solution to the issue.
Still, threats to the Flint Hills abound. Habitat fragmentation from development. Invasive species. The unknowns of climate change. But we won’t deal with any of those issues unless we know the place. And that’s where the Symphony came in.
At a time when funding for the arts and humanities is under attack, remember this: the Symphony in the Flint Hills would not have happened without the arts.
Like most things, the future of the Flint Hills is uncertain. What kind of Flint Hills will we leave behind for future generations? I hope it’s one of rimrock outcrops, big skies, and tall grass, where the land is lightly touched by people. And if it is, the Symphony will have played its part. ###
Commentator Rex Buchanan is a writer, author and director emeritus at the Kansas Geological Survey. He lives in Lawrence.