Running the trail to his roots

They were simply home — the horizon stretching endlessly in every direction.

"As a child, I was curious about the world beyond," he recalls. "But all I saw were mountains, one ridge after another, endless."

His childhood summers began with birdsong and cicadas. He would ride out on horseback, leave the family's horses to graze, and then head to school.

After class, he would herd the horses back home, and finish his homework by the dim glow of a kerosene lamp before going to bed.

"The ride home after school was always my favorite part of the day," he recalls.

He would guide his horse through pine, willow and peach groves, then across a large stretch of twisted-root grass, as it's called locally — a low, sprawling plant he loved, which spread across the hillside like a green carpet, its roots tangling and creeping stubbornly through the soil.