At the time, it seemed a Herculean feat: Create a huge tent city in the middle of the Kansas prairie, haul a major orchestra out there and invite 5,000 spectators to bake in the sun and ward off the &rsquo;skeeters while listening to a musical prayer for the tallgrass.</p><p>As it turned out, though, the Symphony in the Flint Hills was just getting started.</p><p>For the fourth annual concert, taking place Saturday on a ranch between Florence and Strong City, there will be more to see and do during the half-day lifespan of the temporary metropolis than ever before. </p><p>It would be easy &mdash; well, let&rsquo;s say less strenuous &mdash; to merely repeat the playbook of that first symphony at the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve in 2006. But as the event&rsquo;s executive director, Emily Hunter, put it: &ldquo;You have to take a risk for magic, don&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;</p><p>This year, the magic starts at noon as early birds take the mile-long nature walk from the parking area to the gate. The concert is on a ranch owned by the Doyle Creek Land and Cattle Co., the fourth venue in four years. The gate to the 45-tent site opens at 1 p.m. with a variety of activities: wagon rides, guided walks through the prairie flora, daytime stargazing and things for the kids.</p><p>At 2 p.m. the educational component of the Symphony in the Flint Hills begins, which may sound boring only to people who haven&rsquo;t heard any of these lectures. It has been expanded from three tents to four this year. </p><p>One tent, named Sunflower, will feature talks on the natural and archaeological history of the region. The Blue-Wild Indigo tent will offer local history, much of it related to Chase County&rsquo;s most famous visitor, Zebulon Pike, who camped nearby in 1806.</p><p>The Butterfly Milkweed Tent will feature the owners of the Doyle Creek ranch talking about living and working in the Flint Hills. This tent will also host an annual highlight at 4 p.m. &mdash; a roundtable of old Flint Hills cowboys talking about the way things were way back when.</p><p>A fourth tent, named Evening Primrose, is devoted to poetry. The Kansas poet laureate, Denise Low, and her successor, Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, are among the area bards who will lead talks and readings.</p><p>Veteran concertgoers will notice that the program, a softcover in previous years, has been upgraded to a hardcover and resembles a journal, like the kind Pike or John Muir might have scribbled in while traipsing through the wild.</p><p>&ldquo;There is this whole idea that the prairie has a presence in our creative cycle,&rdquo; Hunter said. That extends to the non-white settlers of the region as well. Both the poetry and history tents will draw upon thousands of years of influence by American Indians.</p><p>&ldquo;The site is about a mile from where we think Zebulon Pike camped and named the Flint Hills from this site. We are pretty certain the Osage worked in this area, as well as the Pawnee, the Cheyenne and the Wichita. There is even some historic consensus that the Comanches made raids into this area. So it was a very lively place even before Zebulon Pike came there. We want to invoke the memory the land holds of all the human passages through it.&rdquo;</p><p>Latecomers, or people who dawdle too long in nearby Cottonwood Falls and Florence (which are also sponsoring prelude activities), will miss all that. </p><p>But at least they won&rsquo;t be unexpectedly delayed. Burlington Northern Santa Fe, which operates the railroad tracks that every car heading to the event will have to cross, has agreed not to run any freight from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. on Saturday.