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

We can't give our children the future, strive though we may to make it secure. But we can give them the present.

Maybe the desert wisdom of the Dakotas can teach us to love anyway, to love what is dying, in the face of death, and not pretend that things are other than they are. The irony and wonder of all of this is that it is the desert's grimness, its stillness and isolation, that brings us back to love.

They are fruit and transport: ripening melons, prairie schooners journeying under full sail.

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.

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

It's all so beautiful . . . the spring . . . and books and music and fires. . . . Why aren't they enough?