1. It is my homeland. I was born and raised in the West. After leaving my small Western
hometown for good after graduating from college, I have lived in half a dozen
or so other places. But all of them are Western places, either on one edge or
the other of the Great Basin, or on the Snake River Plain. Raised among
sagebrush and cedar trees (western juniper, if you’re a botanist), my eyes are
accustomed to far horizons and wide skies. And while I enjoy visiting forested
places and the confinement of wall-to-wall green-tinted shade, it is direct
sunlight and hard-edged shadows that tell me I am at home.
2. The story of the West is the story
of America and the American people. For centuries,
the stories of the West were told by the many tribes and bands of Indians who
were, and are, here. Later, the story took on a Spanish accent with the arrival
of Spanish and Mexican colonizers. French inflections arrived with the
trappers. And, since Europeans arrived on the east coast of the continent,
there has been a yearning to go west, and west they came. The resulting clashes
and collaborations that continue yet today created a place unlike any other on
earth.
Whether it is writing history, fiction,
poetry, or reporting the stories and lives of modern-day Westerners, there are
stories to be told about the American West—and those stories will never run
out. And, I believe, those stories can and will say more about the world than
any other stories can tell.
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