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I respectfully acknowledge that the following story involves the traditional, ancestral lands of the Osage Nation. The process of encountering the land we explored was a way of honoring and expressing gratitude for the ancestral Osage people who were on this land before us.
Generations of ranchers, though dwindling in numbers, have deepened their roots here, like the bluestem grasses that flourish in the Flint Hills. We met a rancher here whose ancestors arrived 130 years ago. Five boys and three girls made up his high school class a few decades ago, and the regional population has ebbed since then. But he was ebullient: his cow-calf and yearling operation is debt free, cattle prices are high; he and his wife enjoy elk hunting in Colorado and raising kids on the prairie. There remain a few concerns: the competitive muscle of huge out-of-state landowners and the urban lure that draws the children away.