Many years ago, there was a trail of covered wagons passing through prairie as far as the eye can see. Now it’s littered with fast food joints and truck stops, but there was a time before such things (believe it or not).

People and their animals would take turns walking alongside the wagons. Spare the horses. I’m sure more than one boy tried to imitate the swagger of the cowhands (who were probably faking it just as hard anyway). Big iron on the hip, a lip full of chaw, and not a single clue as to what he was about to witness.

These new arrivals will see things completely alien to them. The noble bison. The face of the American West. A mountain of muscle, but with a kind of serene grace to its movement. Gentle eyes with the capacity for an unstoppable level of ferocity. The perfect symbol for the land’s pristine beauty and rugged savagery.

The Comanche will be seen atop horses brought by the Spanish hundreds of years ago. The men will have flat noses and darkened, leathery faces from years in the saddle. They kill the bison, but with a gratefulness about it. The bison shelters their friends, feeds their children, and clothes them on a cold winter night. But the buffalo are dwindling and with it the Comanche. There are less and less every year. The Empire of the Summer Moon is waning.

The white wagons drifting across the prairie must have looked like sails over a glassy ocean. Hernan Cortes’ ships probably looked similar as they approached Aztec shores.

The settlers will venture on. Some will stop, content with where they’ve arrived or simply incapable of continuing. Some will watch that high grass slowly reveal a wall of earth. Up will rise the Rockies, bigger than any deity they could possibly conceive of. And beyond that? Red rock and high desert. And beyond that? A gentle rise until it gives way to glittering ocean down below.