Home Sweet Home

There's a place up north where a small stream trickles out of a fresh water lake and makes its way south to become the mighty river that splits the nation in two. From there the plains reach to the west, rising ever-so slowly to where they meet the very backbone of the continent.

There's a place where a hidden valley runs right into the mountains; where a wild river snakes past and licks at the heels of craggy peaks covered with snow and ice; where the grass waves in great seas of green; and where the sky is a most beautiful shade of blue.

Just north of there the land boils in blasts of steam or mud or constant streams of mineral filled water; a river runs over bluffs to form a series of breathtaking falls; a crystal clear lake stretches toward distant horizons; bears and wolves and elk and moose and bison roam freely across the plain and hills; mountains rise to the sky; and trout, found only in that place, swim the streams and rivers.

Further to the south and west, a road made up of steep switchbacks and treacherous drop-offs cuts through a high mountain pass flanked by crimson stone, past old mining towns and steam-powered locomotives and a river that can become a man-killer in an instant.

A short distance to the west stand cliffs of gold that hold secrets of those who farmed the green mesas and lived in the shelter of the rocks.

To the southwest of that place lies a red and orange valley where great monuments of stone stand sentry over the region, reaching to the amber sky as their shadows stretch long in the fading evening sun.

A few miles away a fast-moving river cuts its path through a deep canyon on the way to a distant desert; past the reservoirs held back by dams used to produce electricity for men; past the cities of lights and the Joshua trees and the salt basins and on to the marshes of the Baja delta.

North and west of the great crevice, years of rain and wind have left the land filled with brightly colored bluffs and hoodoos and places where tall, slender canyons become highways of water slicing through sheer rock cliffs.

Further west, a mountain range plays host to a variety of monolithic rock formations, cascading falls, and trees so big around that you could live in them and so tall they seem to reach to the sky.

In the center of the coast, past the vineyards and the orchards and the groves and the fields, the ocean reaches eastward to the shore in a bowl shaped bay that draws the soul into quiet reverie. Not far from there forests of giant redwoods hide in the rain and fog and sneak kisses from the sky.

Gee but it's great to call this land my home.