"We come and go, but the land is always here. And the people who love it and understand it are the people who own it - for a little while." So the primary character of Willa Cather's classic short novel (just over 100 pages) Alexandra describes her love for the rolling prairie country of Nebraska called 'the Divide' to her lifetime best friend Carl.
In this semi-autobiographical story of good and hard life on the late 19th and early 20th century prairie Ms. Cather paints pictures of life so easy to see every time I picked it up that I felt as though I were on the farm, visiting her friends, experiencing the wind blown beauty of her land that moment.
And as she said, only her land for 'a little while'. In the time before her parents broke the sod American Indians rode and walked 'her' land seeking the buffalo, and each other. In the time since she wrote it in 1913 'her' land has had other owners, and perhaps now is under a large corporations plow.
But this small book brought to life, for me, one segment of time, on a seemingly endless prairie; one which beckons to Mona and I as we prepare to travel the rest of our lives together.
-Ken
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