Willa Cather's The Enchanted Bluff

 Dipping into a little Cather "mythology" because I'm soon heading to the crane migration and the epicenter of much of her work: Red Cloud.


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This tidbit is from the short story "The Enchanted Bluff":


This was our last watch fire of the year, and there were reasons why I should remember it better than any of the others. Next week the other boys were to file back to their old places in the Sandtown High School, but I was to go up to the Divide to teach my first country school in the Norwegian district. I was already homesick at the thought of quitting the boys with whom I had always played; of leaving the river, and going up into a windy plain that was all windmills and corn fields and big pastures; where there was nothing wilful or unmanageable in the landscape, no new islands, and no chance of unfamiliar birds—such as often followed the watercourses.

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