Old Wally

I love the writing of Wallace Stegner. I've read a great deal of what he published (at least in book form, I know he published many many articles for newspapers and magazines) and I enjoy it all. Last night we went to Hastings and I found two of his books, looking like new, but priced as used. It was a windfall I tell you. I got "Wolf Willow" and "Where The Bluebird Sings To The Lemonade Springs". I'm particularly enjoying the latter. Somehow he manages to convey everything I feel about being a Westerner. Not really the boots and Stetson stuff, but rather how grand, beautiful, open and free the West is. And he includes his feelings on how sometimes us folks in the West have been misguided in settling this vast area.

I was thinking the other day about how big the West is. How large even the State of Oregon is - compared to places in the East. I wonder how people from there feel about coming here. How they adjust to the large distances one needs to travel to get from one place to another. Or maybe from one place of any populace to another place of any populace. I once overheard a conversation between my uncle and a friend of his. She'd been raised in the West, but had lived back East for most of her adult life. She had returned to California for my uncle and aunt's wedding and made a comment on how she'd forgotten about how long it took to get anywhere. How if she drove for two hours in the East, she'd be in an entirely different state. Made me think. Probably I should throw in a disclaimer: I've never been to the East Coast. I've never been farther east than a small town in Colorado. So I'm not the expert to be casting judgement. I'm simply a person who is beyond grateful to have been born here, to have lived out my life here so far.

Thanks Mr. Stegner, for putting that into words.