\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 62\u00a0 bar falls 29.66\u00a0 0mph N dew-point 55\u00a0 Beltane, night<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 First Quarter of the Flower Moon<\/p>\n
Started Gettysburg tonight to get me in the mood for the southern trip.\u00a0 Even though I’ve canceled my Gettysburg trip for this time, I can’t head into the south without thinking of the Civil War and trying to visit a few battlefields or other historic sites along the way.\u00a0 Even as I write the word historic, I think back to something I wrote not long ago about how young our country is.<\/p>\n
Think of Stonehenge, a temple from the paleolithic, over 5,000 years ago.\u00a0 There are probably citizens of the United Kingdom whose ancestors were there, helped position the stones.\u00a0 Imagine Turkey and Iraq, nations where civilization has had a foot-hold for thousands of years.\u00a0 Egypt.\u00a0 China and its 6,000 years of history, much of it recorded.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Here, where most of us are boat people, only a few of the\u00a0First Nations survive.\u00a0 They can trace their ancestry on this land back several thousand years, but none of us with roots in Europe or Africa or Asia (at least the most recent immigrations) can see deeper into the past than Plymouth Rock or Roanoke.\u00a0 Our history here spans no more than 400 years and as a country we are only 240 some years old.<\/p>\n
The Hudson River School painters, in particular Thomas Cole, believed that the American equivalent of ruins were the natural wonders.\u00a0The frontier in his day. \u00a0The mountains.\u00a0 The Great Lakes.\u00a0 The mighty rivers.\u00a0 The forests that stretched over millions of square miles.\u00a0 Now we can add the Grand Canyon, the buttes and mesas of Utah, the homes of the Anasazi.\u00a0 Yellowstone.\u00a0 Yosemite.\u00a0 The Boundary Waters.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It is still true. Still true that the land itself is our vantage point to consider\u00a0history and pre-history.\u00a0 Still true that the sight of the Rocky Mountains or Lake Superior or the Mississippi or the Smoky Mountains or the Everglades can move us to tears and anchor us here, anchor us here as firmly as the Bastille, the Tower of London, the temples of Angkor or the Great Wall of China.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 62\u00a0 bar falls 29.66\u00a0 0mph N dew-point 55\u00a0 Beltane, night \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 First Quarter of the Flower Moon Started Gettysburg tonight to get me in the mood for the southern trip.\u00a0 Even though I’ve canceled my Gettysburg trip for this time, I can’t head into the south without thinking of the Civil War and trying … Continue reading The Land is Our Vantage Point<\/span>