Today, we celebrate the birthday of Wallace E. Stegner (February 18, 1909-April 13, 1993) one of the masters of prose (written with the sensitivity of the poet), conservationist, novelist, short story writer and professor of English.
He has been given the epithet "The Dean of Western Writers.
To his credit, I identify with his love of the west, unspoiled by human greed and rapaciousness--a west that is as large, pristine and unspoiled in its grandeur as the Sierra Nevada range in which I had the good fortune of living for nearly 10 years.
Here are some representative quotes:
"One cannot be pessimistic about the West. This is the native home of hope. When it fully learns that cooperation, not rugged individualism, is the quality that most characterizes and preserves it, then it will have achieved itself and outlived its origins. Then it has a chance to create a society to match its scenery."
— Wallace Stegner (The Sound of Mountain Water) "Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed....We simple need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in. "
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