I was not born here, but I call this region home. Like so many before me, I heard its call from across the continent, and came chasing a dream. A formless dream, not of riches, but of a landscape of beauty and myth, romance and adventure. To “see the West before it’s gone,” but of course it is not going anywhere; it is just changing. The land is not a static backdrop for the human drama, but a dynamic aspect of the one great story.

I just read Paulo Coelho‘s The Alchemist, the story of a boy who leaves the seminary to become a shepherd so that he can read and travel, and who lives out his own personal legend seeking treasure, physical and spiritual, crossing the Sahara. I had thought that sometimes we, at least some of us, need to strike out cross-country instead of following the established path. Now I see that we all need to find our own way.

My goal is to live as part of the Western landscape, in a way that makes sense in the greater whole, that not only does not degrade it but sustains and restores it. Success is measured in terms of a triple bottom line of ecological, economic, and sociocultural resilience.