Here, the contest is not so much of
plant against plant as of plant against inanimate nature. The limiting
factor is not the neighbor but water; and I wonder if this is, perhaps,
one of the things which makes this country seem to enjoy a kind of
peace one does not find elsewhere. The struggle of living thing against
living thing can be distressing in a way that a mere battle with the
elements is not. If some great clump of cactus dies this summer it will
be because the cactus has grown beyond the capacity of its roots to
get water, not because one green fellow creature has bested it in some
limb-to-limb struggle. In my more familiar East the crowding of the
countryside seems almost to parallel the crowding of the cities. Out
here there is, even in nature, no congestion.
_Southwest_, by Laura Adams Armer (New York, 1935,
OP) came from long living and brooding in desert land. It
says something beautiful.
_Talking to the Moon_, by John Joseph Mathews (University
of Chicago Press, 1945) is set in the blackjack country
of eastern Oklahoma. This Oxford scholar of Osage blood
built his ranch house around a fireplace, flanked by shelves
of books.
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