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Like the growth of a tree, the history of the American West has occurred in cycles, eras, rings of expansion and evolution. One generation pushed westward for furs, the next for gold, followed by land-hungry pioneers, timber-hungry loggers .... They built layer upon layer.

The heartwood of a tree is a darker color than the sapwood because it has tasted the soil longer. As each ring of life is added the inner rings compress, giving the tree backbone of supple strength which allows it to bend in the wind and bow to heavy snow without breaking. To plot our future course, the emerging West must never lose sight of the past, and of the people who are our heartwood.

The book HEARTWOOD offers a fresh, honest look at the old-fashioned Westerner, the type of person who takes pride in home, family and all that it means to forge a life from the bounty of the land.

HEARTWOOD is an elegant and engaging blend of words, photographs and original art that is sure to strike a responsive chord in all of us who live in the rural West and those who wish they did. The true stories of the men and women featured in HEARTWOOD sre a slice of Americana that can be found nowhere else. This book is a treasure you will want to pass on to your children and grandchildren.

'We had a hot-blooded English stallion name of Desmond Day. Bred him to mustang mares and sold the cross for cavalry remounts.

'On the first day of May 1925, Desmond Day was in the corral. He come past me and that was it. Always figured he kicked off to the side, hit me, I never saw it coming....

'They sent me to blind school - to learn me to weave baskets. Said that way I could make a livin' since I couldn't buckaroo no more....

'I don't really give a damn about bein' blind all these years. Bothers the neighbors more than it bothers me. One time I was painting the house but every time the neighbors came by and saw me they would make me come down off the ladder. But I showed them. Finished painting at night, didn't make any difference to me....'