To be an American is to move on, as if we could outrun change. To attach oneself to place is to surrender to it, and suffer with it.

But hope has an astonishing resilience and strength. Its very persistence in our hearts indicates that it is not a tonic for wishful thinkers but the ground on which realists stand.

In spite of the cost of living, it's still popular.

If we are lucky, we can give in and rest without feeling guilty. We can stop doing and concentrate on being.

The High Plains, the beginning of the desert West, often act as a crucible for those who inhabit them.

There seems to be so much more winter than we need this year.

We shortchange ourselves by regarding religious faith as a matter of intellectual assent. This is a modern aberration; the traditional Christian view is far more holistic, regarding faith as a whole-body experience. Sometimes it is, as W.H. Auden described it, 'a matter of choosing what is difficult all one's days as if it were easy.