Creativity-Myth making and Telling Stories, the Western Tradition
What is it about the West that fires the imagination? For many, the West stands for independence , self-reliance , and individualism!
Modern westerners see themselves as part of a lineage that conquered a wilderness and transformed the land; they spring from a people who carved out their own destiny and remained beholden to no one...or do they?
But just what is a westerner and what is the West? Thanks to the movies and TV "cowboys and Indians" populate the West of popular culture-along with the vision of sharp-toed boots, corseted women, and feathered headdresses. Of course, trappers, and traders, military men, railroaders, schoolteachers, and many others also come to mind in stereotyping citizens of the nineteenth century west-but what of the twenty-first century? Is a westerner defined by occupation?
Or is a westerner someone who just does "western things," such as roping, riding and ranching? Are snowboarding, hiking, and driving crowded highways western things? Is a westerner simply somebody who looks to be of and from the region by virtue of the way he or she dresses? Do these ideas exclude from the ranks of westerners urban dwellers in Denver, El Paso or Missoula, who dress reflecting trends of fashions in the East?
The American West has always been represented as "new," a place of immense promise and growth: Native American emergence stories, European myths of a new Eden, settlers' and immigrants' belief in the dream of the new start in the golden land. "New" also includes the Okies fleeing the Dust Bowl in the 1930s for California, Kerouac's countercultural road, and the Sunbelt economies' vision of perpetual expansion and wealth. These combine with "New Age" philosophies and environmentalism's "last best place." Or new contemporary settlers escaping cities and reinventing themselves, and beginning lives in the hinterland...
What you'll find is that the West is as diverse as the people who live here. Sometimes subtle and vibrant colors, a wide-open sense of space and light, and often dramatic weather patterns offer people drawn here an idea of what the West is and offer them a chance to create a new identity and immerse themselves in a place steeped in an oft-misunderstood history.
The West is, and always has been, many different spaces-real and imagined-plural in every sense, but especially in the mix of cultures that constitute and define the region.
