I hold stories in the weft and weave of sturdy canvas threads. Stories from your grandfather and his step-father, from your father and mother, stories from your own lips. Also, from others, family by blood and shared experience. Stories you might tell your children if you could only tease them out, separate the details from the laden fabric of history and receding memory.

I hold also the fading stains of antelope blood, the scent of stew meat simmered long over propane stoves, the light of spring, summer, and fall suns, the dusky smoke and glow of campfires. I have stood in gale force winds, sudden rains, and heavy snows. When I grew weary and thin, an oiled tarp and new canvas stitched me strong again. New layers laid down atop the old, obscuring some of what was, metamorphosis a necessity of perpetuity.

What you have seen, so have I, the generations of Wyoming kin shaped by sage and sky. I know the hills of Old Carbon and Hanna and of the Red Desert. Raise me up still in that country, straighten the splintery ridgepole, string the guy wires taut, set me to catch the wind and hold to earth.