On road trips between Seattle and Spokane and other parts of eastern Washington I would cross this vast terrain of open space. I have traveled these roads often and would and never thought much about the lives of the people who lived there. I was just driving from point A to point B and found much of the drive to be rather boring. But one trip I began to see the landscape in a different way. I tried to see its beauty and understand the attraction of it to the folks who farmed this land. I tried to see how they had sculpted this land with hard work and in return how the land had sculpted their lives and their conservative attitudes. Maybe it because of the politics going on at the time that made me wonder about such things. I also began to realize why there are so many people in rural areas all over this country feel marginalized by the liberal, big city dwellers like me. It is easy to drive the interstate and completely overlook areas just as this. Or simple fly over. At least one trip, I stopped and looked around and tried to understand why one would truly love this landscape.
