Biographies

Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents vii
3. Introduction xi
4. Big Grass 1
5. Wealth of the West 5
6. Whose West? Which West? West of What? 11
7. Viewed from Ground Level 16
8. Naked Time 19
9. Why the West? 25
10. The Fence 27
11. Two or Three Places 33
12. The Light at the Bottom of the Mind 37
13. Points 45
14. Between the Sans Bois and the Kiamichi 48
15. Excerpt from Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen 57
16. Slurry, Drainage, Frontage Road 63
17. Geopiety 70
18. River Sequence I–VII 72
19. Wolf and Coyote and Kumbaya 77
20. What We Leave 82
21. Reading Montana 87
22. Ranching in Suburbia 94
23. Chasing the Lamb 102
24. The Summer of Now 111
25. The Native Home of Governors on Horseback 118
26. The Way Home 123
27. The Imaginary Book of Cave Paintings 129
28. Livingston Blows 138
29. Where Should We Be? 143
30. Self-Portrait as the Strong and Silent Type 146
31. Blood West 149
32. Motherlands and Mother Tongues: Five Reflections on Language and Landscape 156
33. Blame It on Rancho Deluxe 164
34. The Conceit of Girls 168
35. Pinus Contorta 178
36. Where the Burn Meets the Dead 182
37. Two Illustrations of the West, the first being second- hand, the second first 187
38. Cowboy Up, Cupcake? No Thanks 193
39. The Fatal West 197
40. A Shape- Shifting Land 203
41. Moving West, Writing East 208
42. Tasting a Sense of Place in the Arid West 212
43. Entre Mundos/Between Worlds 217
44. Matins in the Cathedral of Wind 223
45. On Language: A Short Meditation 226
46. Utah Cabin Under Heaven, July 3 230
47. Plucked from the Grave 232
48. Two Poems: 241
49. Tumbling Toward the Sea 245
50. Friendship 251
51. Red 252
52. Growing Up Western 255
53. No Direction Home 264
54. Beyond This Place There Be Dragons 266
55. City of Nomads, City of Second Chances 268
56. Places Names 275
57. East to the West 290
58. Three Poems: 294
59. Celilo Falls 296
60. Dark Light in the West: Racism and Reconciliation 299
61. Dirty Stories 319
62. Two Poems: 324
63. “It’s Like They Tilted the Whole Country East- to- West. And Everything that Wasn’t Tied- Down Slid” 327
64. Star Struck 332
65. Días de los Muertos 339
66. The San Francisco Psyche 341
67. Three Poems: 349
68. Maria Evangeliste 351
69. Headed 362
70. The Sense of No Place 367
71. Biographies 371