“If there is such a thing as being conditioned by climate and geography, and I think there is, it is the West that has conditioned me. It has the forms and lights and colors that I respond to in nature and in art. If there is a western speech, I speak it; if there is a western character or personality, I am some variant of it; if there is a western culture in the small-c , anthropological sense, I have not escaped it. It has to have shaped me. I may even have contributed to it in minor ways, for culture is a pyramid to which each of us brings a stone.”

— Wallace Stegner, from The American West as Living Space

1. 
   sylvan 2010 07 20 at 8:47:58 pm

   Yes.  Thank you.

2. 
   CherryBomb 2010 07 20 at 9:53:05 pm

   I can really relate to this. I grew up in the Mojave desert. Nothing to do really, except play with rocks, minerals and disarticulated rabbit skeletons. I never thought much about it until I got to college and took an introductory geology course as a freshman (from the director of JPL, no less!). I had an epiphany, realizing OMFG! I was pre-adapted, and you can do this for a living!

   Where do you live, by the way? I lived close to Boron.

3. 
   Chris Clarke 2010 07 21 at 1:02:52 am

   I’m in Los Angeles these days, but I get up to the west Mojave fairly often. And I was in Barstow today.

4. 
   Thomas M. 2010 07 22 at 9:09:51 am

   I found the collection of essays that came from to be a great read*, and I found that quote particularly striking.  Good call. :)

   
   *If this came from a collection of an essays, that is.  I am reasonably certain that I read it in Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs.

5. 
   spyder 2010 07 24 at 3:33:24 pm

   the Pacific Ocean surf~

6. 
   Rachel Shaw 2010 07 27 at 8:53:28 pm

   Yes.

   (Sometimes I think it took leaving to make me realize how true that is.  I’m a Westerner in my bones.)