Poll a group of average Americans about the national park they’d most like to visit, and you’re certain to get answers like Yellowstone, Glacier Bay and Yosemite – places where massive heaps of ice and stone cut dramatic jags across the sky.

Who could blame them? Soaring mountains, dense wilderness, plunging waterfalls and seemingly endless sheets of frozen water assail the senses, leaving no doubt that they are, to put it obviously, there.

But hike to the scenic overlook at the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve in Chase County and gaze out over the Flint Hills, and you’re confronted with an entirely different sight.

“Open sky, open land, unending horizon …” essayist Verlyn Klinkenborg writes in this month’s issue of National Geographic magazine. “But the word that also springs to mind may be ‘nothing.’ A glorious nothing, but nothing nonetheless.”

That emptiness may be one reason more people don’t appreciate or even know about the Flint Hills – a situation that Kansas native Jim Richardson wants to remedy.

Richardson, a regular contributing photographer to National Geographic, pitched the Flint Hills story to the magazine’s editors about two years ago as part of an ongoing series about the nation’s great landscapes. The resulting package spills across 22 glossy pages in the April issue, introducing the magazine’s 9 million subscribers worldwide to one of the few great stands of tallgrass prairie left in the country.

Despite their apparent simplicity – or because of it – Richardson found the hills challenging to capture.

“They don’t shout at you. They aren’t big and tall like the Grand Tetons and blare in your face,” he says. “What you see off in the distance wants to fade when you get up close. Part of what I had to do this time was really learn how to see them.”

Richardson, who also shot the Flint Hills during his first job as a news photographer for the Topeka Capital-Journal, worked on the Geographic project from last spring until September. He got up in small planes and down in the grass with a macro lens. He shot at all times of the day and night, and in all seasons. Only once did he have an uncomfortably close encounter with wildlife: A skunk ran him out of a meadow of wildflowers.

But that wasn’t his most surprising moment.

“The amazing thing about the Flint Hills is that – seeing them at drive-by speeds – while they look simple, they are highly complex,” he says. “The community of plants and animals that live there, who make a living in a harsh environment, is quite amazing.

“It’s a place that rewards you for looking long and hard.”

Mother Nature’s victory

The Flint Hills are generally accepted by geologists to be an area in Kansas that runs from southern Mitchell County in the north to Cowley County in the south, continuing into Oklahoma, where they’re called the Osage Hills.

They emerged from the erosion of limestone and shale that contained high levels of chert, or flint. Most of the bottomland prairie has been planted to corn and milo, but the uplands – which dominate – remain mostly unspoiled.

“The flint in the Flint Hills is the only thing that kept this area from being developed and farmed. Nature itself prevented the plows from tilling the upland prairie,” says Heather Brown, chief of interpretation at the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve. “Usually people find a way, but Mother Nature won.”

The preserve opened in 1996 and covers nearly 11,000 acres – a mere fraction of the hill system. Visitors learn that only 4 percent of America’s original tallgrass prairie still exists. Last year, more than 20,500 people journeyed to the preserve, where guided walking and bus tours introduce them to the prairie ecosystem.

“We’ve had people from all over the world come to the preserve,” Brown says. “Especially when they come from areas that are densely populated, it’s amazing the reaction that is on their face. They can’t believe there’s this much open space.”

She hopes to lure as many people as possible to the national park to increase awareness of the beauty and rarity of the Flint Hills. She says statements by Gov. Kathleen Sebelius and advertising efforts by the state’s travel and tourism division seem to have helped. Attendance numbers have climbed steadily over the past two years.

‘Sense of renewal’

Richardson shares Brown’s mission to get people out into the prairie, where they can experience its grandeur firsthand. In addition to their display in National Geographic, his Flint Hills shots are traveling the state in an exhibition that includes 34 large-scale photos. Many measure 3 feet by 4 feet and show an unusual level of detail.

“It is time that we all learned to stop looking beyond the borders of our state for inspiration, learn to see what has been here all along and cherish what we have,” Richardson says. “The Flint Hills should never play second fiddle to our nation’s more recognized landmark landscapes.”

Of course, some folks already appreciate the area.

Ranchers have long recognized the benefit of the prairie for nourishing cattle, which graze on the big bluestem grass that thrives in the hills’ shallow soil. Mimicking the prairie’s natural system of regeneration, the ranchers torch their pastures each spring, encouraging healthy regrowth.

That annual burn attracts artists to the hills. Photographers and plein air painters flock to the area each April for inspiration. They come at other times, too, drawn by the big skies, lush grasses and seasonal colors.

The hills also attract scientists like Craig Freeman of the Kansas Biological Survey. He studies plants and animals that live there, and he says many researchers are drawn to the area because it is a relatively pristine landscape that offers opportunities unavailable in small or isolated prairie remnants.

He concedes that grassland-dominated landscapes generally don’t elicit the same visceral response in people as more grandiose natural scenery. But for him, the Flint Hills are refreshing.

“I find the vistas in the Flint Hills particularly alluring, especially in the spring when the vegetation has turned green and many of the wildflowers are in bloom,” he says. “It gives me a sense of renewal.”