By education and experience, I am a geologist, hydrologist, soil scientist. By inclination, a naturalist (I started college as a Biology major; an interest in paleontology started me down the road toward geology); as a matter of curiosity: a geographer, cartographer, historian. With respect to things I love: the visual arts (especially photography), music, and the wonderful palate that is the landscape of the American West…
About me
I was born at 39.8º N Latitude, 99.3º W Longitude, and at an elevation above sea level of 1946'. That part of western Kansas is at the transition zone between the Great Plains to the east and the High Plains to the west. It is also very close to the transition from the Midwest to the West. Another 50 miles or so to the west and the transition is complete. I could feel the West a goodly part of the time; the west wind bringing that aridity, clear air, and a different (and far more wonderful) nighttime sky than that present when the humid Gulf of Mexico air masses were present.
About me
The road distance to downtown Denver is 14 miles further than that to downtown Kansas City (316 compared to 302). It was never a contest. At every opportunity, I took the road west; eventually it stopped being a roundtrip. Most of my adult life has been lived west of the 100th Meridian, from the Desert Southwest to the Pacific Littoral of the Northwest. The Deep Chihuahuan to the Backbone of the Rockies, the Wyoming Steppe to the Great Sandbox of the Colorado Plateau, the aching desolation of the Great Basin Heart to the towering Sierra to the sublime Big Sur coast, the imposing Tetons to the snow-capped Cascades…
The wide West; Stegner said that for a "space" to become a "place", it must be named. I name them all; sometimes the names are my own…
