A Pyramid To Which Each Of Us Brings A Stone

Kate Wolf: Like a River (Live in Austin, TX)

If there is such a thing
as being conditioned
by climate and geography,
and I think there is,
it is the West
that has conditioned me.
It has the forms
and lights and colors
that I respond to
in nature and in art.
If there is
a western speech,
I speak it;
if there is a western
character or personality,
I am some variant of it;
if there is
a western culture
in the small-c,
anthropological sense,
I have not escaped it.
It has to have shaped me.
I may even have contributed to it in minor ways,
for culture is a pyramid to which each of us brings a stone.

--Wallace Stegner
The American West as Living Space

Kate Wolf: Across the Great Divide