Landscapes

It isn't just the grandeur of place that makes this little spot in Norway so overwhelming--our Rockies and Tetons are pretty magnificent--it's the knowledge that people have lived in this incredible terrain for centuries; that they have build farms on the side of mountains, and ships that crossed the oceans from the timber, and that they still travel BY SKIS in the winter, not for fun, but because it is the only way to get from one place to another...and in Ireland, the sense of the people's connection to the landscape is even stronger. The land is hard there; tiny squares of aerable land filled with rocks. They hauled seaweed up the hillsides to fertilize the land to grow the simplest crops...and you feel it in the place walking around. Even with your cellphone in your hand and your bottled water and your $120 shoes, you feel that work and that hardship and that will to survive. It is incredible. It is more than I can take in, really. My ancestors in the Midwest worked hard clearing land for crops and caring for livestock, but our fields are vast, and our earth rich and loamy.  Perhaps it is the relative ease of it that has allowed the US to be so negligent with its natural resources and its farms.