Why I Still Live Here, Despite The Legislature

“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!)

3 thoughts on “Why I Still Live Here, Despite The Legislature

  1. 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…

  2. 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.

  3. 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.

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