I love this land, this high desert of the intermountain west. I am a westerner, blood, bone and soul. I was born on a ranch along the Arkansas River where it crosses from Colorado into Kansas west of Dodge City and between the two branches of the Santa Fe Trail. My grandfather's grandfather settled in the area after the Civil War. When I was 12 my extended family, including all my grandparents, moved to the Columbia Basin. After two decades farm...