Musing on landscape Dean writes:

“Beyond the grade, south, spread the vista of the open prairie of grass and small grain cultivations. It was was my first recollection of the world beyond. The world beyond the bedroom where I was born, the last child to be born at home. It's as though I lay in my crib, stared out at the browning grass of October; later the greening grass of Spring… A sense of direction comes in layers of time and perspective with a perception of mystery and image collected from parental conversations growing out of the mists of baby dreams, unfathomable sources, un-founded, flecked with secret thoughts not translatable to spoken or written phrase. South, then, was my first beyond-place. Where the wind drifted in my face, more gently, with warming, moist zephyrs. A dark green ridge with a clump of wildly grown elms, huddling for sustenance. Beyond. Way beyond, a town with grain elevators and a railroad that met a junction, beyond and beyond, west to the river's edge and a small city… The streets fell to the river and there was grandeur in the six story hotels and the cafes and bars where the cowhands once tied their horses to the rail over the wooden water troughs. South. How the world curved and unveiled the splendors of the great lands that fed the rivers. The wheels rolled against the earth. The people held to their songs and legends, coveted and in turn cursed. Why was south my first perceived direction? Why not east? To the town where the people lived we knew. My grandmother. The aunts. The uncles. The cousins. Was it that I was born in the south bedroom? That I looked out of the south window, from my crib? Would I always look to the south?”