I was a hunter and fisherman, and many a time I have slipped out into the woods and prairies at 4 a.m. and brought home plenty of game, or have gone in a canoe to the cove and brought back a good supply of fresh fish.

For my 9th birthday, my only wish was to eat like a farmer boy. I had devoured 'The Little House on the Prairie' book series and wanted to be like Almanzo Wilder, the protagonist of 'Farmer Boy,' one of the later installments in the 'Little House' series.

At the time of Lewis and Clark, setting the prairies on fire was a well-known signal that meant, 'Come down to the water.' It was an extravagant gesture, but we can't do less. If the landscape reveals one certainty, it is that the extravagant gesture is the very stuff of creation. After the extravagant gesture of creation in the first place, the universe has continued to deal exclusively in extravagances, flinging intricacies and colossi down aeons of emptiness, heaping profusions on profligacies with ever fresh vigor. The whole show has been on fire from the word go. I come down to the water to cool my eyes. But everywhere I look, I see fire: that which isn't flint is tinder, and the whole world sparks and flames.

My wife was delighted with the home I had given her amid the prairies of the far west.

It was always a fantasy of mine growing up - my favorite program was always 'Little House on the Prairie' - so I always wanted to wear those looks. When I was a child I wouldn't let my mom put me in anything but calico dresses and now... whaddaya know every day I'm in a calico dress basically so it's kind of funny.

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee One clover and a bee And revery. The revery alone will do If bees are few.