Getting Back to Our Grassroots

You know sometimes you have to get out of your urban prairie with the salty smell of fast food frying at the Wendy’s one block down, and the sounds of motorcycles and lawn mowers growling all around you. You need to get yourself out into a place where the smell of spring grasses and the sounds of white tails darting through the trees and the wind blowing strong across the land start speaking life back into your soul.  After a long, busy winter battling sickness and spending too many long hours in the office, my soul had been craving some prairie time and so we packed a picnic and the pups and we took off for the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve in Pawhuska, OK. 

The Tallgrass is a very special place to us because when we were first dating we went hiking there with just the Oreo dog, it is the place where Matt claims I first “grabbed his hand”. It is also the place where my wild dog managed to break the key to Matt’s car off in the trunk lock, so that we had to call someone to drive almost two hours into nowhere to bring us a spare.  I thought that if Matt still liked me in spite of my insane dog that he was worth keeping around.  Matt kept his composure, and I kept Matt, so I think it was a pretty successful trip.

Since adopting my second blue heeler mix, we have been itching to take both dogs to the Tallgrass and to get some quality hiking time in.  The weather and my immune system finally decided to cooperate, so this weekend we found ourselves on a much needed day trip. The Tallgrass is just far enough away that it makes me feel like I am getting out and away from my city life, but close enough that our only expense for this date is the cost of the gas to get there.  (with gas prices on the rise as we head into summer, we had added incentive to go now instead of later in the summer!)  That's right this beautiful place is free to enjoy, although they do accept donations.  And, I feel like I gotta give them a shout out for having clean and comfortable bathrooms.  I mean, I like getting out in nature and feeling the pioneer spirit soar within me, but when nature calls, I also really like modern toliets.

For this trip I experimented with two other Pinterest inspirations, mason jar salads and smoky sweet potato hummus.  I wanted healthy awesome hiking foods and I also wanted to see how well these foods would do as possible road trip foods for an upcoming cross country trip. The verdict: delicious and cost effective.

Oreo thinks this delicious spread is for him. Sorry buddy. 

Smokey Sweet Potato Hummus

I made several adjustments to recipe for the sweet potato hummus to suite my personal preferences, but overall, I gotta say that it was awesome and was excellent with our fresh cut veggies.  Will make again.

So the supposed trick with these salads in a jar is to layer the ingredients starting with the dressing and heavier items first and then working up to the lighter items that are prone to wilting.  I guess I just like my salad with too many goodies in it, but I ended up not being able to fit the lettuce into the jars at all and we brought another container of lettuce and then dumped the mason jar ingredients out on our lettuce when it was time to eat.  This isn’t really a problem to me, but the appeal of having your whole salad in the cute little mason jar was lost. Oh well, the food was delicious, satisfying, and just what we needed for hiking in the prairie.



Salad fixings (sans lettuce) in extra large jars

So, one of the reasons to go to the Tallgrass is definitely to see the buffalo. That’s right.  The Tallgrass Prairie Preserve is home to 2,500 American Bison that roam free on 23,000 of the Preserves 39,000 acres.  In previous Tallgrass trips I have not been very close to the buffalo.  While it is still pretty neat to see the herds way off on the prairie horizon, it is quite an experience to watch them grazing right alongside your car.  This was the first time where we really got to spend some time with these beautiful creatures, total highlight.

We saw this herd upclose during our hike



We saw several decent sized herds right along the road as we drove through the Preserve

While the drive through the free roaming bison acreage is quite breath-taking, my favorite part of the Tallgrass is the Prairie Earth Trail. This trail takes you through a very bio-diverse and extremely beautiful section of the preserve. It offers a lot of variety in terms of terrain and wildlife and is just about the right length for us.  Here are several of my favorite scenes from our time on the trail.



I can't decide what this is, but it was beautiful!



Spring Beauty, true to its name

Prairie Iris, and my favorite flower from this trip

Happiness is a cool mud pit on a hot spring day

Heelers <3 Prairies

We saw 7 or 8 white tailed deer in this wooded area and the pups tracked one of them up this trail for a while before getting distracted by squirrels

When we drove home that afternoon, exhausted and windlbown, our feet were a little more tired, but our souls felt a lot more peace.  It is amazing how this place has the power to just settle your soul.  Sometimes I go out here expecting for God to speak to me in the quiet of a wide open space, and while I don't always recieve the wisdom or direction I had come seeking, I always carry home a deep revelation of more joy. I can feel that same joy even now, sitting in my little homestead in this urban prairie.  And that is the true value to me of the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve.