These open areas and skies evoke memories and thoughts about the West -- of the Rockies, the High Plains, the great inclines running east from the strong backbone of the Rocky Mountains from New Mexico way into Canada, to Jasper and north. Very few of us have seen the whole range. In a sense, the plains flowing east and draining north to places like Churchill on Hudson's Bay and south to New Orleans and the Gulf are a vast mystery only a few really understand, appreciate, imagine in mystery of the vastness. One could find a home in these places, in the place -- think of it, in the place from the Gulf of Mexico to the seas of the Arctic. Not a bit of it is a place of foreboding. It is a place of home, a place of peace, a place where one knows, when one thinks slowly, of home. We come home in these vast expanses. All we have to do is to open our hearts, relax, and listen and look. People have wandered and thought about these places -- Wallace Stegner, Gretle Ehrlich, Kent Haruf, Garrison Keillor, Carol Bly, Willa Cather ... the names go on an on. And, there were those very many who passed their reverence on to their children, the children of the High Plains who lived centuries ago and whose heirs today are grasping for breath, finally, and fitfully, and forever. And, with those who by fate have become a part of . . . . . a part of vast expanse gently sloping to the east, the north and the south. It is all --- it is n0thing strange.
If one drives one of the thousands of gravel roads toward the horizon and forgets, one will, in his soul, begin to feel the remembrance of things long ago -- and, could it be?, things long into the future.
