The Hundredth Meridianrnby Chilton Williamson, ]r.rnTwenty Years and CountingrnI have lived now in the West 20 years,rntwo years past the age of hahihty for militaryrnservice (if there were a WesternrnStates of America, and if they had a draft)rnand one year short of my political majorityrnand the suffrage. Although you canrnhave spent half a century living in a smallrntown in the rural West and still be consideredrnan outsider if you arrived therernfrom someplace else at the age of 20, therntruth is, if 20 years don’t make a Westerner,rnnothing will. What, then, is arnWesterner? According to my definition,rnhe is simply a person who cannot imaginernliving anywhere but the West, even ifrnhe should be compelled, for economicrnor other reasons, to do so.rn”Why go into the desert?” Ed Abbeyrnasked. “The Great American Desert isrnan awful place. . . . Even if you survive,rnwhich is not certain, you will have a miserablerntime. The desert is for movies andrnGod-intoxicated mystics, not for familyrnrecreation.” Why, for that matter, gorninto the West at all? The leached andrnruined towns, the sprawling, congested,rnmodernistic, mechanized, militarizedrncities, hideous to look at; the arid lands,rnhundreds of thousands of square miles ofrncactus, creosote, and sagebrush, overlookedrnby the “shining” mountains, inrnreality basHons of naked rock and ice surroundedrnby gloomy, inhospitable subarcHcrnforest inhabited by grizzly bears,rnmountain lions, and Sasquatches; thernclimate, roaring hot in the Southwestrnand cold enough to freeze molecular actionrnin the North; the human population,rndivided between people (the nativernWesterners) who don’t read books andrnothers (environmentalists, mostly) whornread the wrong ones; in the hinterland,rnthe lack of employment and of nubile,rnunmarried women; the neglect and contemptrnof tlie East, where Significant Peoplernlive, and the consequent near-impossibilit)’rnof finding place and prefermentrn(you can’t share a power lunch via yourrncomputer); isolation, separation, andrnloneliness, much as on the fronfier in pioneerrndays. . . . Every small Westernrntown I know of has people like me andrnmy friends in it, people who would bernobjectively happier—richer and morernpowerful, better connected, professionallyrnmore advanced, married and with arnfamily, even—had they chosen to settlernsomewhere else, or simply stayed putrnwhere they were raised, back East or onrnthe West Coast. All of these people —includingrnme—have no sensible or evenrnplausible reason for sticking it in thernWest, and yet we do stick it. We justrncan’t imagine living anywhere else.rnThere are times when it seems almostrnpossible. The close green hills of NewrnEngland, the open rolling parks of Virginia,rnthe rich Mississippi Delta borderedrnby piney hills on the east and to thernwest the tangled, snakey bottoms of therngreat river, the blue-green, level horizonrnof Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, wateryrnand pale like a painting in oils overthinnedrnby turpentine—a visit to any onernof these places and others is capable ofrncreating an illusion of choice in the heartrnof the dedicated Westerner, native orrntransplant. But it doesn’t last. Returningrnhome to pack his stuff, he looks at therncoimtry around him and decides he justrncan’t do it. He knew it hundreds of milesrnago, in fact, crossing the Missouri Riverrnat 33,000 feet or catching sight of ChimneyrnRock from Highway 92 southeast ofrnScottsbluflF, Nebraska. For goners like usrnthe West is a fever, a sickness we mustrnsuffer from in order to be fully alive.rnThat is to say, it is a form of dependency,rnan addiction made freely accessible tornthe American people only as the result ofrnan oversight attributable to scientific ignorancernon the part of the same primevalrnFDA that missed its chance to criminalizerncoffee and beef One whiff of pungentrnsagebrush or the astringent alkalirndust, a glimpse of distant mountains,rnsnow-covered, beyond the velvet plain orrna solitary, century-old cottonwood treerntrailing green foliage about its fluted grayrntrunk, a rustbound windmill with its pinwheelrnjammed standing above a batteredrnstock tank, or simply the endless borderrnof yellow clover, dancing on a steadyrnwind where the asphalt meets the gravelrnshoulder of the two-lane highway—andrnit’s over, the breakout thwarted oncernagain. The Westerner isn’t going anywhere,rnand he knows it. Except to throwrna saddle and pack on the Appaloosa andrnride into the mountains for the night. Orrntake the rifle from the gun rack in thernpickup and shoot a buck antelope at 300rnyards after stalking him for two hours onrnthe prairie. Or maybe just drive 70 or 80rnmiles round-trip to the nearest saloonrnwhere they have a sign tacked to thernbackbar saying HELEN WAITE ISrnOUR CREDIT MANAGER, IF YOUrnWANT CREDIT GO TO HELENrnWAITE and all the women are marriedrnto friends or relatives of yours. Not thatrnthat ever stopped anyone, necessarily.rnA postcard in my possession shows arnpickup truck photographed head on andrnfour individuals in the cab: the driver onrnthe left side of the truck, another youngrnman on the right, and, between them onrnthe seat, two large dogs. On the back ofrnthe card is the printed caption “Doubledatingrnin Montana” and two inscribedrnmessages, in different hands. The firstrnand briefer of these says, “Chilton—is itrnreally this bad?” The author is a friendrnand colleague in Michigan. The other,rnobviously written by a woman, I may notrnprint—no gentleman ever reads another’srnmail, much less publishes it—exceptrnfor the signature, “Jane & Ted.” Sincernmy Michigan firiend is an active environmentalistrn(in addition to being a wellknownrnadvocate of restricted immigration),rnI am able to make an informedrnguess at the identity of the undersignedrncouple, living part-time in Montana. Tornreply to his question, however, the answerrnis, “No —not quite.” But almost.rnThe American West is about isolation,rnand the contemplation of loneliness.rnThat is its fascination, and has been forrnseven or eight generations of the Americanrnpeople—not those who experiencedrnthe West only through books and newspapers,rnof course, but the ones who livedrnit, breathed it, and had their being in it.rnJANUARY 1999/49rnrnrn