A Lifetime of Reading About the West
When I was 10:
My Friend Flicka by Mary O'Hara
Later I read the others in the trilogy, Thunderhead and Green Grass of Wyoming, written in the 1940s, set on a ranch in southern Wyoming, just over the Colorado border. I got a map out and studied it for hours, willing myself to see what it looked like from the lines on the map. This was when I first realized, at age 10, that I was supposed to live in the mountain west.
I went through that silly phase of obsessing about horses when I was a young girl in the 1950s, but it wasn't the animals, really, and I never wanted anything to do with English riding lessons or the experiences I could have riding in a ring in Connecticut. It was horse ranching and the physical landscape of the west in this book that fascinated me.
This book was my beginning. I still have all three original volumes, they have moved with me everywhere I have lived.
When I was 30:
Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner
This is the Pulitzer Prize winning historical novel that defined a whole genre of western writing. Stegner is often called the dean of western literature. It's a beautiful book that brought me from vague immature yearnings for a different life in a different place to an understanding of what it was about western history and landscape that intrigued me. This is my favorite novel and still is even though much later it was discovered that he had lifted whole passages intact from real letters written in the 1800s, and not crafted them himself.
Still, this book is my foundation.
When I was 40:
Great Plains by Ian Frazier
I found this book in the library at the ranch in Wyoming the first year we went there. It was my first time ever in the west and I knew, absolutely knew, from the moment we landed in Billings, Montana to drive to the ranch in the Big Horn mountains, that I would some day live somewhere out west. The book is a travelogue and history and comedy with sometimes lyrical descriptions, written by a Harvard educated journalist. His writing captivated my imagination just when my first visit to Wyoming captured my heart.
This book was my validation.
When I was 45:
Cowboys Are My Weakness by Pam Houston
A collection of linked short stories about love and adventure and mostly about the challenges for a young woman raised on the east coast and living alone in the rural west. It's mystical and soul searching. She has a new book out, a memoir about the ranch she bought in Creede, Colorado, that I am just now reading. She's a few hours from here, and she teaches writing workshops on occasion at the Santa Fe Indian Arts School.
This book was my fantasy. If she could do it I could, or maybe a way less risky version of it.
And now, approaching age 70, I am finally at home surrounded by the southern Rockies. I have visited Wyoming many times as a dude, seen one son settle in Colorado, the other in California, vacationed in the mountains, rafted on the Snake and Arkansas rivers, crossed the Continental Divide, seen Indian ruins, geysers, and canyons, and skied a little bit in the Rockies.
And yes, I got to ride horses.
I have been to the kinds of places I read about so hungrily for so long. I've read lots of books to feed my fascination with the west, but these few books, read and re-read, are the ones that stayed with me over a lifetime.
My Friend Flicka by Mary O'Hara
Later I read the others in the trilogy, Thunderhead and Green Grass of Wyoming, written in the 1940s, set on a ranch in southern Wyoming, just over the Colorado border. I got a map out and studied it for hours, willing myself to see what it looked like from the lines on the map. This was when I first realized, at age 10, that I was supposed to live in the mountain west.
I went through that silly phase of obsessing about horses when I was a young girl in the 1950s, but it wasn't the animals, really, and I never wanted anything to do with English riding lessons or the experiences I could have riding in a ring in Connecticut. It was horse ranching and the physical landscape of the west in this book that fascinated me.
This book was my beginning. I still have all three original volumes, they have moved with me everywhere I have lived.
When I was 30:
Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner
This is the Pulitzer Prize winning historical novel that defined a whole genre of western writing. Stegner is often called the dean of western literature. It's a beautiful book that brought me from vague immature yearnings for a different life in a different place to an understanding of what it was about western history and landscape that intrigued me. This is my favorite novel and still is even though much later it was discovered that he had lifted whole passages intact from real letters written in the 1800s, and not crafted them himself.
Still, this book is my foundation.
When I was 40:
Great Plains by Ian Frazier
I found this book in the library at the ranch in Wyoming the first year we went there. It was my first time ever in the west and I knew, absolutely knew, from the moment we landed in Billings, Montana to drive to the ranch in the Big Horn mountains, that I would some day live somewhere out west. The book is a travelogue and history and comedy with sometimes lyrical descriptions, written by a Harvard educated journalist. His writing captivated my imagination just when my first visit to Wyoming captured my heart.
This book was my validation.
When I was 45:
Cowboys Are My Weakness by Pam Houston
A collection of linked short stories about love and adventure and mostly about the challenges for a young woman raised on the east coast and living alone in the rural west. It's mystical and soul searching. She has a new book out, a memoir about the ranch she bought in Creede, Colorado, that I am just now reading. She's a few hours from here, and she teaches writing workshops on occasion at the Santa Fe Indian Arts School.
This book was my fantasy. If she could do it I could, or maybe a way less risky version of it.
And now, approaching age 70, I am finally at home surrounded by the southern Rockies. I have visited Wyoming many times as a dude, seen one son settle in Colorado, the other in California, vacationed in the mountains, rafted on the Snake and Arkansas rivers, crossed the Continental Divide, seen Indian ruins, geysers, and canyons, and skied a little bit in the Rockies.
And yes, I got to ride horses.
I have been to the kinds of places I read about so hungrily for so long. I've read lots of books to feed my fascination with the west, but these few books, read and re-read, are the ones that stayed with me over a lifetime.
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