I was born in the West in 

:w
about as far west as you can get in a small Beach town south of Los Angeles California which I am very grateful for growing up near the beach spared me a lot of pain that people I know who did not grow up near the beach because no matter what happened in life for me there was always the ocean there was always surfing later body surfing so I sent it to turn to that where a lot of people turn to alcohol and drugs and things like that anyway growing up California I had a notion of the West I'm not sure I ever thought of myself as a Westerner in fact aside from the ocean and and the beach I really thoroughly dislike the Los Angeles Basin I have disliked it since so it's about 10:00 and I just like it to this day good waves bad place well bad place maybe that's not fair because I live by the ocean when I would go on trips as a kid we did occasionally travel we didn't go to the ocean we went out to Utah to Arizona where I had family Nevada or else I have family we went camping we went into the desert we went into the West we went to the mountains Sierra Nevada. And that forms my impression of what the West Was what the West is back then I would have said what the West is it was the desert it was the mountains it was you know the vast expanses of nothingness that are out there but it most definitely ended at the Rocky Mount once you went over the Rockies you were in the east and that's how I looked at it all my life until 2018. We were driving out of the Great Lakes headed across South Dakota to get our residency there so we can register our cars and get driver's license and we drive across Minnesota and slowly the trees faded out and then You Came Upon a lot of farming and then all of a sudden you were in the what I recognized as the West what I could feel as the West there were horses there were cattle they were Badlands they were you know there was Desert it was grass it was openness it looked a lot like northern Utah Southern Idaho and some other places that I've been and I realized that the West Coast pass the Rocky Mountains and I kind of be I became fascinated with this area and I started looking into you know who it who would explored it would written about it cuz that's what I tend to do when I get interested in something I read about it and I you know I mean the Utah I've read pretty much everywhere you know very Lopez will forever color the way I see Alaska if I do and you know Kirchner for for the desert Southwest down by Tucson and all these people and I thought where are the writers that wrote about that wrote about the Dakotas that wrote about Eastern Colorado why why does no one write about this area and of course you do have Lewis and Clark's journals they pass through the region and they had a few things to say and two lesser extent Isabella bird had some things to say about Eastern Colorado in particular I've read some of her journals you know Cabeza de Vaca is South in New Mexico that can throw in earlier but there was no one really writing about Sarah and I finally found Willa Cather who Trilogy of books about this area that I think you know they're fictional but having been out here and having having now actually found other nonfictional sources they seem to be a fantastic portrayal of the Dakota's and eventually this I I came across Jonathan Raven British writer who wrote a book called Badlands and I started to dig into that book a bit more I've read a couple times now and I never understood the West the place I'm from the way he did and I and I think I can go into from here Segway to the idea of the misled the misleading of the governments the desert that they were the rainfall