Remington (1861-1909) is one of the most talented chroniclers of the American West. Yet he grew up and is buried in my hometown, about 20 miles from the river, part of a region known as the North Country. Perhaps you’ve seen his bronze sculptures. They portray a physical world of adventure and danger. Indians, cavalry and cowboys are his subjects. His most famous sculpture is “The Bronco Buster.”

Remington also was a gifted painter. My home region is a place of rivers, fields and forests. His work from there can be somber. Moody grays and darkly pigmented scenes capture the cloudy climate and long winters, which in his day were longer and colder than today’s climate-changed abbreviated winters. His Western paintings, in contrast, capture the American West’s searing sunlight, drawing on an ochre palate — the dusty summertime colors of deserts, high plains and high deserts. You can feel the heat and aridity emanating from these paintings.

He’s a major figure. Paintings and sculptures are found nationally: the Smithsonian, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyoming, and in the Utah Museum of Fine Arts.

While I was in my hometown for my mother’s 91st birthday, my high school held a multiyear class reunion. With a 100-plus person graduating class, it’s not a bad idea to combine years. There were seven from my class. Everyone had to wear a name tag, lest we be mistaken for one of our parents circa 1984! Ecclesiastes reads: “I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.” Forty years after high school graduation, the romance and myth-making of our youth generally has faded to a more tempered reality. Yet humans persist in their need to romanticize, and what better place to do so than a reunion!

Remington translated reality into myth. He witnessed some of the last confrontations between the U.S. Cavalry and native tribes such as the Apache. He sketched and painted the “Buffalo Soldiers”– African Americans serving in the Cavalry in Arizona. Yet his art romanticized the West: “Eastern people have formed their conceptions of what the Far Western life is like, more from what they have seen in Mr. Remington’s pictures than from any other source, and if they went to the West or to Mexico they would expect to see men and places looking exactly as Mr. Remington has drawn them.” He’s noted for transforming the “working cowboy into a cultural hero.”

Place, said the geographer Yi-Fu Tuan, can be thought of as “a center of meaning constructed by experience.” People’s home region is home because the landscape is full of stories. The local hamburger stand is special because it’s where you met your high school sweetheart. The visitor likely sees nothing more than a scruffy parking lot and a picnic table. But to you, that place lives on in memory. In some ways that’s what high school reunions are about! Keeping a shared remembered romanticized past alive.

You could say Remington did the same. He ventured West to sketch and gather material. But he had a cabin on the St. Lawrence River where he returned to paint every summer. Did the North Country provide the space for him to create the romanticized American West? Did the greenery and the abundant water in the St. Lawrence amplify his sense of its scarcity in the West, which was reflected in his paintings? These in turn shaped a regional and national sense of place and identity.

Maybe we all need a mythic landscape. Perhaps that romanticized place connects us as much as the “real” places we live. My sense of hometown place partially lives in the present, but much is in the past. The stories morph over time, much like a fisher’s tale of the one that got away gets embellished with every telling.

This summer, it could be interesting to think about a place that you feel a strong connection to, and ponder what created that connection. Was it painting, sculpture or photography? A story? These mediums shape our sense of belonging and give us the feeling that we are at home, for better or worse.

Just don’t forget the name tag.

Hal Crimmel is a Brady Presidential Distinguished Professor of English who served for nine years as chair of the English department at Weber State University. This commentary is provided through a partnership with Weber State. The views expressed by the author do not necessarily represent the institutional values or positions of the university.