Wild West

Beloved mythology of the US, the Wild West period is more fiction than truth. It's a story of conquest and survival, promise and disappointment, creation and destruction, and always clashes between differing cultures and species. As David Murdoch said, "No other nation has taken a time and place from its past and produced a construct of the imagination equal to America’s creation of the West."1

All of that is controversial and complex, continually researched, updated and disputed. But there is one perspective that all agree on: the west in its pristine and wild state was bountiful and beautiful. And happily there are parts of it that remain unchanged to this day.

As AtoZ Challenge draws to a close I'd like to share with you some pictures of that still "wild west". I have visited these sites but without a camera, so I rely on Getty Images and the professionals to capture them for you. They bring wonderful memories to life for me and probably for some of you. If you have not stood in these places perhaps you will be inspired to take "the trip of a lifetime".

Bryce Canyon

Monument Valley

Colorado in Spring Bloom

Great Sand Dunes of Colorado

Rocky Mountains and River in Montana

1 From Wikipedia:  Murdoch, David (2001). The American West: The Invention of a Myth. University of Nevada Press. p. vii.ISBN 978-0874173697. 

Utopia

An imaginary place where life is perfect. Each person's would be unique. What would yours look like?

Here's what the site of mine might look like:

More important, how would it feel? What would I do each day? Who would share my utopia with me? Each person would answer those questions differently.

Look the word up and you'll find descriptions of peaceful societies or communities governed by rules that treat all members fairly, often with communal living arrangements. This wistful notion has roots in the lost Garden of Eden and the Golden Age of Greek mythology, and is reinvented in every period when men dream of a different and better life. Sometimes in various countries they even try to create it.

Keep reading and learn of American "utopian communities" that failed. I have visited the remnants of several: a Shaker village in Massachusetts, the Amana colonies in Iowa, and New Harmony, Indiana. Most are now gone or museum sites, some on the National Historic Register.

But a new effort is under way. In August, 2013, the Huffington Post published an artricle describing nine "alternative modes of living" which are open to new members:  9 Utopias That Really Exist

They are located in several countries with six in continental US, one in Hawaii, a group of 25 "elevated structures" in Costa Rica, and the incredible modernistic city New Songdon in South Korea on Incheon Bay. It is built from scratch, like Dubai, and scheduled for completion in 2015! It's a "far cry" from any in the past, but Who Knows? Maybe this one will succeed:

Flickr: Nicolette_Mastangelo                  

Rainbow

Getty Images has 82 pages of rainbows so the choice was hard but very enjoyable.  

When I lived in Santa Fe there was one in the western sky each day around 5 pm above Los Alamos in the Jemez Mountains. Sometimes there was a pair. But if you want to read something poetical about the beauty of a rainbow you're in the wrong place. My nature is more scientific, so here you'll get as brief an explanation as possible.

A "rainbow" occurs when sunlight shines on and interacts with drops of water. The keys are that . . .

• Rain and sunshine must be in different parts of the sky, 
• The observer is between the rain and the sunshine, and 
• The angle of light hitting the raindrops is between 40 and 42 degrees. 

When those requirements are met each raindrop will be refracted to produce one color, slightly different from all the rest. Together those millions of raindrops produce a rainbow in its well-known cascading shades.  That's all there is to it.