I've been in every state but feel most at
home on the left side of the Mississippi. I've climbed all over the 17
western states, floated the Rogue, rode horseback on the Borderlands,
know how to pronounce the capital of South Dakota, visited Cabelas in
Nebraska, watched a rodeo in the Astrodome and the first World Series
game ever in Kansas City. I froze my butt off in Aberdeen, been to a 4th
of July rodeo in Prescott and the parade in Cayucos. I've never been to
the Egyptian Pyramids but I've been to the one in Las Vegas where I
also visited Paris and Venice, albeit with slot machines ringing.
I've
haggled with Indians selling their jewelry at Four Corners, been to the
castle in Castle Rock, slept out with the cowboys on the Bell, been to
the top of the Space Needle, unknowingly fed the bears in Yellowstone
and fished in the shadow of Half Dome. I've seen and felt the west's
haunting beauty in the Grand Canyon, Bryce and Zion and I know you can't
possibly understand my part of the world by just visiting Disneyland on
vacation.
This doesn't mean I don't
appreciate the East. I spent a week on the beautiful beach in Rehobeth,
traipsed all over Florida and visited my brother at West Point on the
Hudson. It may be a glittering generality but there are more symptoms of
civilization in the East, more tall buildings, toll roads and
government offices. The East is more about history while the West is
more about the landscape. The East is Arlington and Gettysburg, while
the West is the Little Bighorn.
...The East is architecture, history and all the wonderful monuments in DC.
There's more things to do in the East. The West is the oil patch,
cowboys and farmers. The East is more inside, the West more outside.
The East is brick, the West is adobe...The East has Cooperstown. The West has the Cowboy Hall of Fame.
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