Helloto all, and happy SPRING!! I have all my outdoor cleaning up finishedin my garden and all around the rest of the house. Lots of hard work,but at my age, it’s best to keep busy. I already have 1” sproutson all my rose bushes, and color is coming back into the stems of myhardwood shrubs. The grass is greening up beautifully after a reallyhard rain last week, so the mower is out and gassed up for that firstmowing job, which I also do myself.

         Meantime,during some WINTER cleaning in my office, I came across notes I madeyears and years ago, in the 70’s and 80’s. I am going to sharesome of them with you in the next couple of blogs. The first one mustbe from around 1979. I didn’t date it, but I’m sure it is fromour first trip to the American West, where I have always felt Ibelong. But I was born here in Michigan, all my family is here, andmy German husband, who has farming in his blood and loves theMichigan woods, would not be happy living anywhere else.

        So,here I am – in Michigan, which certainly has its own beauty. Partof me belongs here because of my Potawatomi blood. However, all ofyou know how in love I am with the American West and how attached Ifeel to that part of the country, which is why I write about it. Thatfirst time I got to see it for myself, I felt as though I belongedthere, came from there … that my spirit still lived there. I waseither a pioneer woman, or lived there among a Native American tribe.

        Iwant to share with you what I wrote and how I felt about the GreatWest the first time I visited. I made these notes while travelingthrough Wyoming and the Rocky Mountains:

        “Thereis a peace here unlike any you can find anyplace else. It is not justquiet. It is total silence, except when the wind blows through thepines. The wind often picks up suddenly, surging violently down fromhigher peaks ahead of a storm, giving no warning, and diminishing inminutes.

        “Weare in northern Wyoming, and it feels like home to me. I have beenhere in some other life, some other time frame. Perhaps my soulbelongs to Sacajawea, or to Annie Oakley. Whoever has moved into thisearthly body to live for whatever years God will grant me, she camefrom this place, just as surely as I live and breathe today. Some dayI will live here again, if not in the flesh, then in spirit. My boneswill be buried here, or my ashes scattered here, and I will at lastbe home again.

        “Thereis a life to this land I never could have imagined. What at firstseems like desolation becomes something of beauty. What lookslifeless comes alive, and each time I come here in the future, I knowwhy those who live here love it, as I, too, feel a love for it. Ifeel drawn to it. This is home, this Great West, all of it, from thearid deserts of Arizona to the snow-covered peaks of Colorado andMontana, from the green, rolling hills of eastern and middle Wyomingto Yellowstone.

        “Thereis truly nothing like our West in all the world, not one place thatcan match its beauty, its endless horizons, its thousands of miles ofsnowy peaks, its delicate ecology. It is wide and wild and beautiful.It is colorful and full of a unique history unmatched in its rapidgrowth, its untamed territories and once-rugged and hard-edgedsettlements. I can understand why those who came here first, forwhatever reason, gold, free land, investments, exploration, or to getrich quick, ended up coming back again and again, or settled here permanently.

        “IfI could, I would never go home. Never.”