I have found myself struggling with the dragon myth (what a surprise)it found its inspiration while examining a completely different subject, that being somewhat more ecological in nature and why some of the most vibrant myths came from places where reptiles had not been for a very very long time, and the large and fearsome beasts had taken different mythological (but similar to other cultures) places. The dragon was truly a wandering hybrid, and in many ways it nature split deep in the past at that cross roads in the middle east, along with certain fundamental views of the world and humans place in it and their relationship with nature. Now among the problems of sorting all this out, I found myself running into internal barriers like how you explore this without sounding like I'm culture bashing, or seeing all this only through 21st century eyes alone. How can I carry the context of all these various times and people in my head (the pre-Christian celt, roman both pre and post Christian, and the cultures that emerged after the fall of the empire through to medieval times, in the west and the blizzard of cultures in the east many of which had under laying unifying themes)and how do you distill this down. It a long walk from a small section in a book about wildlife and the state of bears in central Europe to examining the mythic and cultural payload of dragons in western culture, and with no one to bounce ideas off of a lonely task, its not like you can walk up to just anyone in south west Missouri and start talking about this (not to be unkind to Missouri this is not a topic you just start taking about with just about anyone any where, I dare you to try it) so I'm on a quest it would seem, not to slay a dragon but to understand him. Well they are a break from the myths surrounding the Northwest passage, but thats a story for another time.