wallace stegner

If you have not already been introduced to this poet activist, look him up as soon as you can. He is literary, wise, historical, and political all bound up in poetic passion that makes you read slowly and hesitate to turn too many pages lest you get to the end too quickly.

He was born in early years of the 20th century and carried the yoke of early environmentalism when that was a lonely burden to bear.

He reminds us of the great swath of land that made us, that inspired us just by being there. West was more than a direction for Americans - it was the frontier, the place of opportunity, escape, freedom, chance, choice that we had safe in the bank whether we ever needed it and used it or not. It was a calling. And we all hear it still.

There was a carelessness we thought we could afford here, for there was always an out-there waiting for us, by our right.

And while we still act that way, and that sense of possibilities still fires the American spirit, we have long passed the time when the land can afford all the misuse, disregard and hope that we put on it.

Stegner speaks of all this in ways that do not fail to move us - there are times it is like reading psalms, and the psalmist's paeans to nature, only in the landscape we know as America instead of the sacred land of Israel. But how better to remind us of all the earth's sacredness?