“Homesickness is a great teacher. It taught me, during an endless rainy fall, that I came from the arid lands and liked where I came from. I was used to a dry clarity and sharpness in the air. I was used to horizons that either lifted into jagged ranges or rimmed the geometrical circle of the flat world. I was used to seeing a long way. I was used to earth colors–tan, rusty red, toned white–and the endless green of Iowa offended me. I was used to a sun that came up over mountains and went down behind other mountains. I missed the color and smell of sagebrush and the sight of bare ground.”
Wallace Stegner, from the essay collection Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs: Living and Writing in the West. (The title’s from the Big Rock Candy Mountain song!)
March 4, 2009 @ 6:30 pm
The book Big Rock was the obligatory semi-autobiographical first novel about his childhood and young manhood in the western states. Lots of interesting stuff about 1920s Salt Lake in there. He wrote a sequel called Recapitulation decades later…
March 3, 2009 @ 11:52 am
I haven’t read Big Rock Candy Mountain, but I’m pretty sure the hobo ballad came before the book. I have Beyond the Hundreth Meridian (about John Wesley Powell) right now.
March 2, 2009 @ 10:41 pm
Great quote from one of my fave authors… I’m not so much of a nature boy myself, but I can relate to the line about the sun and mountains.
Have you read his novel Big Rock Candy Mountain? I can’t recall if it or the song came first. Good book, though… his first, if I recall correctly.