“..When you move through those wide-open spaces – the American Dream becomes an awe-inspiring reality.
Driving with my family for three weeks this summer through the deserts of California, Nevada, Arizona and Utah, through canyons floored with sage-brush, joshua trees, sometimes only rocks and dust – I finally got it.
I fell hopelessly in love with the US.
It’s the implacable power of the landscape to resist the imprecations of humanity that does it.
The emptiness of the west, hundreds of miles after hundreds of miles – looms in testament to the sheer futility of attempting to make your tiny personal mark.
Occasionally, there’s a collapsed, sun-bleached cabin or an abandoned tangle of rusted agricultural machinery to drive that point home.
Mostly, this land has been divided up into national parks, places to visit but not to live in -
- places for people to walk upon lightly – leaving little trace.
Just as the Native Americans lived -
- you can’t help thinking – all that fighting -
- over land that remains too huge – too unyielding -
- for colonisation by mere people…”
(cont..)
go to source/story>>>
