Personification is a type of magical thinking; it speaks of what cannot be as though it were.

It’s not often that I am impressed enough with the writer of a mini-series on Amazon Prime that I repeatedly pause the DVR to transcribe a remarkably well-written passage…

Meet Elsa Dutton. Walk her journey with her…

“When I looked out over this land, I only saw the freedom it promised. I knew nothing of the horror that hides in freedom’s shadow.”
– Elsa Dutton in “1883” episode 2.
(Land “promises” freedom as though it has consciousness, Horror “hides” as though it has consciousness. Personification is a powerful portal that helps people move into a new place of possibilities in their mind. Personification is a type of magical thinking.)

“I looked to my right and saw my father somehow riding vertically toward the earth. Beyond him, cowboys and cattle pushed toward us, dust following them like a cloud or shadow. The light was soft and pale and pink, like God decided to light this day with candles. And the whole of Texas spread out before me. It was the most magnificent thing I had ever seen.”
– Elsa Dutton in “1883” episode 2

“Looking back, there were two journeys. One was filled with danger and death and despair. The other, adventure and wonder. I was on the latter, and I loved it. I didn’t know enough to know they would collide. I didn’t know enough to know how cruel and uncaring this world can be. The world doesn’t care if you die. It won’t listen to your screams. If you bleed on the ground, the ground will drink it. It doesn’t care that you’re cut. I told myself, when I meet God, it will be the first thing I ask him, ‘Why make a world of such wonder and fill it with monsters? Why make flowers, and then snakes to hide beneath them?  What purpose does the tornado serve?” And then it hit me: He didn’t make it for us.'”
– Elsa Dutton in “1883” episode 3 
(I disagree with her theology, but the passage is still well-written. – RHW)

“I think cities have weakened us as a species. Mistakes have no consequences, there. Step into the road without looking and the carriage merely stops or slows. The only consequence, an angry driver. But here, there can be no mistakes. Because here doesn’t care. The river doesn’t care if you can swim, the snake doesn’t care how much you love your children, and the wolf doesn’t care about your dreams. If you fail to beat the current, you will drown. If you get too close, you will be bitten. If you are too weak, you will be eaten.”
– Elsa Dutton in “1883.” The opening of episode 5

“What an odd thing, attraction. It consumes you. It’s stronger than hunger, or fear, or anything I’ve ever felt. I feel it everywhere, my hands, my stomach, my toes.”
– Elsa Dutton

“I’d love to see the world through your eyes.
But one day you’ll see through mine, though.
And it breaks my heart.”
– Margaret Dutton to her 18-year-old daughter, Elsa, in “1883.” episode 5

“People think, because it’s where rain comes from, clouds are filled with water. But how can that be? How can water float above us, then fall, as though gravity only applies to the sky when the sky lets it? That would mean the sky thinks and clouds are alive and they decide to let it to rain. But how do they decide where to rain, and when? Why do clouds choose to flood one place and deny another, until the earth cracks and the field becomes desert? Maybe there’s no such thing as gravity. Maybe everything scientists have discovered is a lie, and the wind is the world laughing at us.”
– Elsa Dutton in “1883.” episode 7

“This was our third day here, the longest we’d stayed in one place since the journey started. One trait all animals share, people included, no matter where we are, or where we wish to be, if we’re there longer than a day, we try to make home of it. But the plains are not for homebuilding. Not enough resources. No shelter. The plains are for the vagabonds, wanderers, and cowboys. Their home is the saddle. The sky is their roof. The ground is their bed. What they lack in material comfort is regained in the knowledge that they are always home. To them, the journey is the destination. Should they find gold at the end of the rainbow, they would leave it there and seek another, choosing freedom over the burden of the pot. I haven’t thought once of Oregon, no dreams of the ocean or snow-covered mountains. I only dream of the journey. That is all. No gold for me. Just the rainbow.”
– 18-year-old Elsa Dutton in “1883” episode 7

“I looked at my father, looked past his smile, saw he was worried, saw something deeper, as if he were already in mourning, as if I were already gone. I felt different, too, felt as though my soul had been dislodged from whatever cavern in our chest the soul is connected to. It felt loose, disconnected. I looked out at the sagebrush. The colors looked different, sharper. Looked up at the sky, the clouds seemed to race above us, as if new rules applied to time and space above me. I looked back at my father, and I studied his eyes, looked deep into them. That’s when I knew I was going to die.”
– 18-year-old Elsa Dutton in “1883” episode 9

“There are no weekends on a ranch. The routine of Wednesday is the routine of Saturday, and the chores of Tuesday are still chores on Sunday. Though the banker and bookkeeper may be tethered to a calendar, ranchers are bound only to the seasons, and note the milestones of their lives by saying, ‘We were married in the spring,’ or ’She was born in the fall.’ Or perhaps on the hottest day in the driest summer ever to plague Montana, ‘My husband returned to me.’”
– Elsa Dutton, the protagonist of “1883” as the omniscient narrator in the sequel “1923.”