The West: Locked in a spell of deep wonder, poetry and awe

Writing in 1973, Andy Russell, the Lethbridgeborn trapper, grizzly bear hunter, photographer, trail guide, rancher and writer, exulted in the classic Western vista. And the love was obvious. He gloried in the "sprawling peaks of the Great Lewis Overthrust," and of how "mountains, meadows, lakes and ageless stone couple into solid magnificence." In a description of the sunrise at the foothills of the Rockies, he characterized the moment as "sudden-bursting life, a marriage of light and life," and wrote of how "the mountains light up at first sun in deep rose, swiftly changing to gold, and all shot through with deep purple's shadow." It was, he wrote, as if "the whole universe pauses for a long, heart-stretching moment, locked in a spell of deep wonder." Such awe at the natural world is at the heart of the Western experience and explains much about the West and the optimistic, open spirit that lies at its core...more