"A very little deficiency, even a slight distortion of the season in which the rain falls, makes all the difference.  My family homesteaded on the Montana-Saskatchewan border in 1915, and burned out by 1920, after laying the foundation for a little dustbowl by plowing up a lot of buffalo grass. If the rains had been kind, my father would have proved up on that land and become a naturalized Canadian. I estimate that I missed becoming a Canadian by no more than an inch or two of rain; but that same deficiency confirmed me as a citizen of the West." (p. 59)

Wallace Stegner. Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs: living and writing in the West. New York: Random House. 1992.

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This is not an easy land to travel in. Driving at night or in the dusk brings images of vastness, images of the universe above and the boiling earth below. The only stability, for what it's worth, a dark strip of asphalt or slippery grid road gravel, sandpapering tires. You can feel yourself becoming like the occasional tree, protected, quiet, cautious.  You seek the basics, water and shelter. You become formed, transformed by the landscape. Exuberance becomes watchfulness, excitement becomes muted optimism and guarded hope. Unbridled speculation, freedom, individual power come to seek out friends in thoughtful prairie households, come to require reconsideration.

image © D. Wall