Primo Ventello
The Flint Hills, Kansas

Growing up a suburban punk in New Jersey did not afford me the pleasure of seeing idyllic landscapes. To see a vista at all, a trip to the seashore or an elevator ride to the 29th floor of the Fidelity Building in Philadelphia was required. Not so in Kansas.

Kansas surrounds you in immense, inescapable horizon. Nowhere is this more striking, more serene, and beautiful than in the Flint Hills. By day, carpets of undulating brome and native prairie grass hiss softly in the breeze, seducing the eye along the curvature of the Earth, broken only by groves of hedge trees and sunlight glinting off flint rock. Ring-neck pheasant spring up awkwardly into flight, showing the oily auburn of their long tails, then quickly set a rhythm as liquescent as a swimmer. By night, cicadas hum, coyotes cry, and the sky is stippled with millions of stars, as if the hand of their creator had shaken them from a great paintbrush.

Kansas is the least visited state in the Union—just the way I like it. In fact, whenever an eavesdropper asks, “Kansas? Did you say Kansas is beautiful?” I reply, "No, no, partner, Kansas is a wasteland."

Primo Ventello is an editorial assistant at TRAVELER.