A common trope among many western nature writers, or writers in general, is to refer to the landscape as home. Not the house, the apartment, the building that contains, covers, and encapsulates us, keeping us safe from the blistering heat of summer, the numbing cold of winter, the unseen demons of night and the myriad vagaries of living in any community where the neighbor is but a lot, a block, or a wall away.
I subscribe to it myself. Home, for me, is not the 1400 square foot house that I've turned into a home by filling it with stuff and 40+ years of memories and feelings, but the lands that surround me, especially those that I repeatedly "have a drink and dinner with." Some are close, requiring less than an hour's drive to visit. Others take several hours to arrive at their door, and then rather require more than a day's stay.
I claim the entirety of the Colorado Plateau as home. There are thousands upon thousands of canyons and side-canyons, mountains and mesa tops, miles of rivers and streams, and vast acres of forests and badlands to explore. I have been to relatively few and will not visit most. There just is not time enough. Those that I do visit, I visit with some regularity, often enough to refer to them as friends. With over 40 years of exploration under my feet and tires I won't say I know it all well, but I will say that I know some places quite well. From the whole I feel I've been able to distill those specific places I like to listen to, have a conversation with.
Here are 60 of the 300 images from my blurb.com book "Color Me Home." You can view the book here.
