Books Are Solitudes In Which We Meet.

Eduardo Galeano Notes That America Was Conquered, But Not Discovered, That The Men Who Arrived With A Religion To Impose And Dreams Of Gold Never Really Knew Where They Were, And That This Discovery Is Still Taking Place In Our Time.

Globally, As The Nation-state Becomes Increasingly Less Meaningful - A Provider Of Positive Goods And More And More Just An Army And Some Domestic Enforcement - People Are Withdrawing To Shape And Support More Localised Forms Of Organisation And Power. To The Extent That It's Part Of That Civilised And Localising World, The Same Is True Of The U.s.

A Lone Peak Of High Point Is A Natural Focal Point In The Landscape, Something By Which Both Travelers And Local Orient Themselves. In The Continuum Of Landscape, Mountains Are Discontinuity -- Culminating In High Points, Natural Barriers, Unearthly Earth.

When I Think About, Say, 1995, Or Whever The Last Moment Was Before Most Of Us Were On The Internet And Had Mobile Phones, It Seems Like A Hundred Years Ago. ... Time Passed In Fairly Large Units, Or At Least Not In Milliseconds And Constant Updates. A Few Hours Wasn't Such A Long Time To Go Between Moments Of Contact With Your Work, Your People Or Your Trivia.

At A Certain Fork In The Road Of Automatization, Europeans Chose To Have More Time, And They Work Far Less Than We Do And Get Much Longer Vacations. We Chose To Have More Stuff, The Stuff Sold To Us Through Those Beckoning Adjectives-bigger, Better, Faster: Jet Skis, Extra Cars, Second Homes, Motor Homes, Towering Slab Tvs, If Not The Time To Enjoy Them Or To Enjoy Less Commodified Pleasures.