This story has emerged over the course of the past four years, during which time I've sought to deliberately and directly engage this landscape. It is the product of countless hours spent walking country roads, leafing through dusty manuscripts in the University archives, talking to and working with farmers, and, occasionally, arousing the suspicion of the local sheriff. In the process, I've made an effort to compare what has been written with what is being said; and what has not been written with what is not being said. It is my intention to complicate the stories we tell about ourselves. While simplicity can be a virtue, it can also be a vice. And in this case, it is one that I resist. This story is complex because the histories it evokes are dense and thorny. My sense of this place - of place in general - is fluid and unfinished, complex and open. I am suspicious of efforts, including my own, to fix it with an essential and static identity. The telling of the story today is but another piece in its continual unfolding....