Have you ever driven through a blizzard in Wyoming?
Your field of vision doesn’t extend more than twenty feet. There are only the storm and the road, except for the occasional butte or buffalo. Silence descends on the glacier-carved valleys as ice and snow pile up and muffle all sound. The grizzlies seek shelter. You want to do the same.
The frontier is dangerous. It is majestic yet simple. It is imposing yet liberating. It is, in short, the most American thing there is.
And like those ancient glaciers that permanently reshaped the landscape of the West, Americans have been carving civilization into the stone since the Pilgrim fathers’ “errand into the wilderness.”
Still, the frontier has changed us much more than we will ever change it. Land shapes behavior. Western blizzards formed a people with distinct habits and customs; westerners couldn’t survive in such a land if they didn’t have a spirit of perseverance, toughness, and adaptability. The very unavoidability of nature gave people a healthy appreciation of mortality and chance. […]
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