![]() ![]() What Meloy does share with Thoreau is a need for wilderness. Like the writer and naturalist Ellen Meloy (1946-2004), a fifth-generation Californian who lived most of her adult life in Utah and Montana, I am a Westerner who lacks the romanticized, Manifest Destiny-informed view that Thoreau expressed in his 1862 essay “Walking”: “We go eastward to realize history and study the works of art and literature, retracing the steps of the race we go westward as into the future, with a spirit of enterprise and adventure.” ![]() Early in the 20th century, when an entire nation was moving west, his son felt the tug of these roots and moved east - all the way to Roswell, N.M., where my mother was born. What I know of one adventurous ancestor is that the ship he boarded in Scotland landed on the shores of Galveston, Texas - a lesser-known but also historical point of immigration - and made his way to Los Angeles. ![]() The members of my family who are not Cherokee did not come to the United States aboard the Mayflower, pass through Ellis or Angel Island, or cross either the Mexican or Canadian borders. Click here to read about “Post-40 Bloomers,” a monthly feature at The Millions. ![]()
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