Who Owns the West?Who owns the West? "All of us, of course", says William Kittredge, but this "simple answer... is sort of beside the point when we get down to considering questions of fairness. Stay joyous under the sun and moon, in the rain and out; that's another halfway answer". Kittredge gives us not easy answers but a sustained meditation on what it means to be a Westerner today. The three essays in Who Owns the West? compose both a celebration of the new West and an elegy for an old West that is fading. Noting that "our ideas of paradise originate in childhood", Kittredge describes, in "Heaven on Earth", growing up in the highland desert country of east Oregon, "an ancient horseback world that is mostly gone". Next, in "Lost Cowboys and Other Westerners", he gives us a series of portraits of inhabitants of the region. Finally, in "Departures", Kittredge turns his eye to the West today, the "new heartland nation" that is being born from the pain and the glory of the past and the struggles and anger of the present. |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
afternoon American West Annick Annick Smith Aspen badger beauty Berkeley Pit Blackfeet Blackfoot River boys buckaroo buffalo Butte called Chuck Kinder City Clark Fork River corral cowboys cowhand Creek deserts Dollarhide dream drift drinking drive drove dying father feel Flathead Lake gone grizzlies hell herd highway horses huge imagine Indian inhabit kill knew Lake land live look Louis L'Amour make-believe Meriwether Lewis miles miners Missoula Montana morning mountains movie mythology natural never night ourselves paradise ranch rancher Richard Hugo River road rockies front Sagehen salmon seems sense society southeastern Oregon spring Steens Mountain story talking taverns tell things thought Tim McCoy timber told Tom McGuane tourists town trying turned understand walk Warner Valley Western wilderness WILLIAM KITTREDGE woman wondered Wyoming yearn