I’m a writer in Canyon, Texas, and I’ve been asked to talk a little about this month’s Radio Readers Book Club Read, A Strong West Wind by Gail Caldwell. Gail’s story is a familiar one to me. In fact, my story mirrors hers in many ways. Both Gail and I grew up feeling isolated on the High Plains, and escaped into books. We both left the Panhandle for Austin, where we both rebelled, discovered politics, and sowed our wild oats. And both of us eventually ended up in cities on the East Coast, working in book-related fields—Gail as a book reviewer for the Boston Globe and myself as an editorial assistant at a publishing company.
What I find remarkable is not the coincidence of our paths, but rather the predictability of them. Artists, writers, and musicians in the Texas panhandle are familiar with the narrative. We’ve all known plenty of dreamy-eyed bohemians who have set off for Austin, guitar or drawing portfolio in hand. Often, we never hear from them again. And all too frequently we see them months later, scuttling back up onto the Caprock, looking forlorn and bedraggled, having traded in their dreams for the safeties of home. It reminds me of a lyric by my friend Ryan Culwell: “If you leave you won’t come home. When you come draggin across the plains, I hope I recognize your face.” Ryan, too, is a man with a deep love for the panhandle. But he lives in Nashville.
The perspective is different for those of us who leave, the Panhandle becomes the landscape of our souls, of our dreams. Standing out at the tip of the pier at Coney Island in Brooklyn on a chilly fall evening, regarding the great emptiness of the Atlantic, I found myself yearning for the limitless expanse of home. The poet and theologian Christian Wiman, a Panhandle native, knew what I meant when he referred to the South Plains as “the country of my very own heart.” Yet he, like Gail Caldwell, chose to make his home in Boston.
For so many writers and artists, the only way to write about the High Plains is to leave it. The fact is, there’s a schism between the myth of this place and its reality. In our hearts, this is a land of soaring spirits, of indomitable creativity, of grit and singularity and rugged individualism. It’s the place where the horizon seems so far away that only the most intrepid of souls would endeavor to reach it. This is the mythical land that those of us who leave carry around with us. It’s the country of our very own hearts.
But, as Ryan says, if you leave you won’t come home—even when you do. When you return, you’ve changed. And so has this place you’ve dreamed of. Upon your return, the surreal hugeness of your memories can't match the day-to-day reality. While you were away, you forgot that all too frequently in the panhandle, it’s not uniqueness that is celebrated. More often, it’s uniformity. So, you get back on that airplane and fly back to Austin or Boston or New York, where you lie awake at night dreaming of this sublime, open country.
I confess. Now that I live on the High Plains again, I dream at night of Madison Square and Grand Central Terminal, of SoHo and the Battery and Columbus Circle. And that’s why, when I have a free hour, I leave Canyon and drive out into the open land. I do it to recall why I love this place. To remind myself of all this beautiful emptiness.
So, as you read A Strong West Wind, ask yourself this question: Is it possible to live inside this place and truly see it? Do you have to leave this place to get a true perspective on what the High Plains means? Or can it grow inside you while you, yourself, are living inside this place?
