This was an ancient landscape, shaped only by tectonic forces and by wind and rain and thundering herds of buffalo. It was virtually untouched by the hand of man, except for the pony trails and occasional villages of Native Americans, and it had endured thus for tens of thousands of years. Sarah’s generation was among the first European Americans to behold it and would also be among the last to see it in all its pristine glory, so rapid were the transformations that were coming.
