This is me riding shotgun through what was once called The Great American Desert, though it’s really a steppe, the eastern slope of southern Colorado. Much of my childhood was spent in this country, though I have not lived there since my freshman year of high school.
Sage, cactus, and grasses are a threadbare cover to the land I grew up on. The mountains are a grand presence in the west, impressed upon me to the point that any time I encounter mountains, no matter how they are actually oriented, the lizard part of my brain automatically labels the direction of those mountains “West.”
I still have family there, so I still go back. I’m glad that I do, because I love Colorado. I love its clear night skies and summer thunderstorms. I love being in the mountains south of Florence, where my Mother spent part of her childhood, in a dirt floor cabin, going to school in a one-room schoolhouse. My very favorite wildflower in the world grows in meadows around where my mother grew up. It’s called Indian blanket, and its ragged beauty is extravagant.
My roots in the Arkansas Valley run deep. My grandparents are buried there in the Fowler Cemetery.
My brother and mother live there now. Though I haven’t lived there in decades, no place on Earth better deserves the appelation, “home.”
Broadcast From the Brain Radio 
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