The High Desert Museum ...

Hi, Kit Morgan here and today I want to do a little sharing. Years ago I attended a writer's conference called Women Write the West. Our own Robin Echols was at this particular conference and it was great getting to meet this very fine and talented lady! It was also great to get to visit The High Desert Museum located in Bend, Oregon.

When you write historical westerns and live in a place like Oregon, you sometimes forget how much wonderful history is right outside your front door. Philip Foster Farm, the last little rest stop along the Oregon Trail before the pioneers headed into Oregon City, is only 20 minutes from me. The actual end of the Oregon Trail only 30! But I had never visited Bend's High Desert Museum and have been meaning to share some of the wonderful things there for some time. So, here we go.

The High Desert Museum is a treasure trove of history! It's one thing to read a blog post about

historical things like the Oregon Trail and how life was lived back then, another to get a much better sense of it by seeing and touching things from back in the day. The reality of traveling thousands of miles in a covered wagon doesn't begin to permeate our senses until we see one of those covered wagons. Then you realize how good we've got it in our cushy, comfy, modern modes of travel. I have quite a research library and have all sorts of books on living in the old west. But to go to a museum and see how our lives are so dramatically different, well, it's sobering.

How many authors (myself included) write about our characters living in a one-room cabin such as in the picture above. The place gets mighty small real fast when you actually see one!

Yet everyday tools used for baking, cooking, the people's clothes they wore, their children's toys and games, all fascinate us. We love reading historical western romance because to us it was a simpler time. But also quite different.

So often I ask my readers what it is they love so much about western historical romance and there are varying answers, but among the top are reading about people doing things with their own two hands and under their own power. No electronics is another big answer. Satisfaction in simple things like the beauty of a sunset, a running horse, the landscape, the coziness of that simple one-room cabin you read about in so many books.

Another interesting answer I get is, "People didn't have so much stuff. You had what you needed and

didn't accumulate the way we do in our consumeristic society."

Not that folks didn't want things back then. A trip to the mercantile was a grand thing. But survival was the order of the day, not the latest gadget in the new Sears and Roebuck catalog. What a wonder it was when it came along! It was their Amazon back then !

So to wrap up, what sort of historical treasure troves are hiding in your area? Have you been to any lately? Are there some out there that you would like to see? The old west is fascinating, to be sure. If you have a chance, visit a museum or history center in your area. Better yet, there are whole towns (or remnants of some) that are living history centers. Columbia, California comes to mind. What a fun place that is! I even set a novella there. (Minnie, Cowboys & Debutantes).

Until next time, gang! Happy Reading and have a great time visiting some museums and other great places of history!

If you'd like to keep up to date with my books you can find them on my Amazon page here.

I'm the best-selling author of nearly 80 books of contemporary and historical romance and make my home in the Pacific Northwest in a little cabin in the woods. And no, it's not a one-room cabin! :) But I do live in a canyon on twenty acres with a creek running through it called Clear  Creek from which I named my fictional town. So for those of you who have read my books, the creek and the canyon are real!

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