Carson McCloud

Howdy.

Five generations of McClouds have lived in either Texas or Oklahoma. My own kids are the sixth although they've had a few more stops. We've called Wyoming, Texas, Arizona, Nevada, Idaho, Kansas, and briefly New Mexico home. Where we haven't lived we've certainly traveled through.

I love the West and have since I picked up my first Louis L'amour novel. I couldn't have been more than ten or twelve at the time. My father had them all, each stored spine out on a shelf in our living room. These were not books that sat only to be admired. He and later I read and reread and reread them again until the poor spines had that fine webwork of white cracks down them. I suspect many of your own copies look the same. L'amour wrote about places he'd seen and traveled through. He was a unique man, a drifter through his early years, and I can't help but think that he was traveling around collecting images of people and scenery and the feel of it all. For better or worse in my own way I've done the same.

I think what I love most about the West is the sweeping emptiness of it all. The huge expanse of blue sky, the warm sunsets, the towering peaks jagged and snowy, the little valleys of green chasing after a narrow ribbon of blue. The names too have their beauty. Shoshone falls, Manitou Springs, Cedar City, the Ruby Mountains. The people too have their names, particularly those in this time period. Billy the Kid, Wild Bill Hickok, Buffalo Bill, Kit Carson, Calamity Jane, the Earps, the Clantons, the James gang. We remember their names because of the mark they left on the West and in our imaginations. Their stories have risen into legend because of what they accomplished. We walk in their footsteps, travel their paths, look upon the mountains and canyons just as they once did.