the mountains are marching in place. The grasses take on the fading yellows of the sun, and cows with their sumptuous eyes litter the fields as if they had grown there. We have driven for hours through bluing shadows, as if the continent itself leaned west and we had no choice but to follow the old rutsthe wagons and horses, the iron snort of a locomotive. We are the pioneers of our own histories, drawn to the horizon as if it waited just for us the way the young are drawn to the future, the old to the past. Linda Pastan from Traveling Light, 2011