Kansas ranked ‘least beautiful state’ ... Seriously?

Kansas was recently ranked as the “least beautiful state” by the food and travel website Thrillist. I don’t know how that strikes you, but this hurts my feelings.

Then, as if rubbing salt into a wound, Thrillist gave us as Kansans brownie points for essentially “loving the unlovable.” I sense the writers were being tongue-in-cheek-facetious when they wrote, “Kansans are a resilient lot, able to find happiness in life’s simple pleasures.” But I consider that a compliment; thank you very much.

We may not have purple mountain majesties, but we’ve got some of the most beautiful amber waves of grain you’ll see anywhere in the world.

Mountains are nice, but they have a tendency to get in the way of a panoramic view. But not in Kansas. Here you can take in a pure, pastoral scene of cattle grazing on miles and miles of the Flint Hills, where the most beautiful shades of green blanket thousands of acres of pastureland, with a life-giving pond at the lowest point where the hills intersect and white limestone outcroppings dot the vista.

This land is our land, filled with simple pleasures, and we are darn proud of it. You can keep your high-rise buildings that block out the sky, and I will keep my wide-open spaces where I can see for miles. And you certainly can keep your twelve lanes of bumper-to-bumper traffic jams while I enjoy a ribbon of highway through hill and dale, or country roads that take me home to the place where I was born.

How dare you say our state is the least beautiful! Have you even ventured out of the big city to put on your boots and come stay awhile in Kansas? Have you driven any of the 12 marked routes in Kansas that have been designated as “Scenic Byways?”

Thrillist says its list came from “independent rankings from its staff” (I’m guessing from New York City), then a roundtable discussion to determine the final order. It doesn’t seem that Kansas factored into much of that discussion, as the website wondered how to differentiate the beauty of Kansas between Desert vs. mountains? Mountains vs. lakes? Lakes vs. forests? Forests vs. seashore? Seashore vs. glaciers? Glaciers vs. orchards?

Okay, you are right — Kansas doesn’t fit into all of those categories, and we won’t feign any disappointment because we like being in a category all our own: “Wide, open spaces and familiar, friendly faces.” We will continue to treasure our beautiful sunrises and sunsets; starry, starry nights; rolling hills; amber waves of grain; and cattle grazing contentedly on a thousand hills.

So Thrillist: Go back to your cubicles and high rises and cities and traffic jams and unclean air and no milky way and not knowing who you are standing next to in the grocery store. Kansas is getting along just fine at the bottom of your list.

And you know what? I enjoy visiting other places around the U.S. It is fun to find new places to visit and scenes to capture on film. But in the end, to borrow a quote from a Kansas girl with a little black dog named Toto, “There’s no place like home.”