Close Ties in Big Landscapes

BOOKS AND ESSAYS SPECIAL ISSUE

High Country ForN people whoews care about the West September 14, 2015 | $5 | Vol. 47 No. 16 | www.hcn.org 16 No. 47 | $5 Vol. 2015 14, September Close Ties in Big Landscapes Finding a bit of the Rockies The long road home for in Northern Mongolia one California tribe By Sarah Gilman By Ana Maria Spagna CONTENTS

High Country News ExEcutivE dirEctor/PublishEr Paul Larmer MANAGiNG Editor Brian Calvert sENior Editors Jonathan Thompson Jodi Peterson Art dirEctor Cindy Wehling oNliNE Editor Tay Wiles d.c. corrEsPoNdENt Elizabeth Shogren WritErs oN thE rANGE Editor Betsy Marston AssociAtE dEsiGNEr Brooke Warren coPy Editor Diane Sylvain coNtributiNG Editors Cally Carswell Craig Childs Sarah Gilman Judith Lewis Mernit Jeremy Miller Sierra Crane-Murdoch Michelle Nijhuis Horse tour guide Batdelger, above, demonstrates how to befriend reindeer in the Mongolian taiga. Right, three generations of Maidu, including elder corrEsPoNdENts Beverly Ogle, her daughter, Brenda Heard, and granddaughter, Yasmin Holbrook, display the traditional baskets woven with local willows by their Ben Goldfarb ancestor, Ce’éste (known as Nellie Thomas). SARAH GILMAN, LEFt, CouRtESy MAIDu SuMMIt CoNSoRtIuM Krista Langlois Kate Schimel Josh Zaffos EditoriAl FElloW BookS AND ESSAyS Sarah Tory Close Ties in Big Landscapes SPECIAL ISSuE iNtErNs Paige Blankenbuehler Gloria Dickie AssociAtE PublishEr FEATURES DEPARTMENTS Alexis Halbert dEvEloPMENt MANAGEr 10 By Sarah Gilman 3 HCN.ORG NEWS IN BRIEF Alyssa Pinkerton Claustrophilia 8 THE HCN COMMUNITY dEvEloPMENt AssistANt 24 The Exact Same Place By Ana Maria Spagna Christine List Research Fund, Dear Friends subscriPtioNs MArKEtEr JoAnn Kalenak INSIDE 14 SPECIAL SECTION: HOT OFF THE PRESS MARKETPLACE WEb dEvEloPEr Eric Strebel 4 Not on a rez: Finding a complete life in the urban West dAtAbAsE/it AdMiNistrAtor 28 MARKETPLACE Alan Wells Q&A with Erika T. Wurth. By Laura Pritchett coMMuNity ENGAGEMENt 4 The counterpoint of home Q&A with Mitchell S. Jackson. By Devon Fredericksen 36 HEARD AROUND THE WEST Gretchen King By Betsy Marston FiNANcE MANAGEr 6 The landscape of inspiration Bev Magennis, author and artist, Beckie Avera follows her whims in New Mexico. By Devon Fredericksen AccouNts rEcEivAblE Jan Hoffman 7 Agriculture and aesthetics go hand-in-glove circulAtioN MANAGEr By Page Lambert Tammy York Author Bryce Andrews pursues ranching and writing in Montana. circulAtioN systEMs AdMiN. Kathy Martinez BOOKS circulAtioN Doris Teel, Kati Johnson, 15 A baker’s dozen of self-published books Stephanie Kyle 23 By Jodi Peterson AdvErtisiNG dirEctor The fall reading list David J. Anderson 31 A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin. Reviewed by Jenny Shank GrANtWritEr Janet Reasoner 32 American Copper by Shann Ray. Reviewed by Melissa Mylchreest FouNdEr Tom Bell 33 Reviewed by Charles Finn On the cover Into the Valley by Ruth Galm. Tsaatan nomads in [email protected] 34 Satellites in the High Country: Searching for the Wild in the Age of Man a traditional felt [email protected] roundhouse, called a ger, [email protected] by Jason Mark and The New Wild: Why Invasive Species Will Be Nature’s Salvation [email protected] Reviewed by Emma Marris where these “people of the by Fred Pearce. reindeer” tend herds that boArd oF dirEctors provide food, clothing and John Belkin, Colo. 35 ESSAY transportation in northern Beth Conover, Colo. Mongolia. Jay Dean, Calif. By Michael Engelhard Bob Fulkerson, Nev. Notes from the road to bestsellerdom ARt woLFE / ARt woLFE StoCk Wayne Hare, Colo. Laura Helmuth, Md. John Heyneman, Wyo. Nicole Lampe, Ore. Marla Painter, N.M. High Country News (ISSN/0191/5657) is published bi-weekly, 22 times a year, by High Country News, 119 Grand Ave., Complete access Dan Stonington, Wash. is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) Printed on High independent media organization that covers the issues Paonia, Co 81428. Periodicals, postage paid at Paonia, Co, and other post offices. PoStMAStER: recycled to subscriber-only Rick Tallman, Colo. paper. Luis Torres, N.M. Country that define the American West. Its mission is to inform Send address changes to High Country News, Box 1090, Paonia, Co 81428. 800-905-1155. All content Andy Wiessner, Colo. and inspire people to act on behalf of the region’s rights to publication of articles in this issue are reserved. See hcn.org for submission guidelines. Florence Williams, D.C. News diverse natural and human communities. Subscriptions to HCN are $37 a year, $47 for institutions: 800-905-1155 | hcn.org

2 High Country News September 14, 2015 CONTENTS HCN.ORG NEWS iN bRi EF

Editor’s note The real work On a hot, dusty August Saturday a honors the source of its materials; it honors the place where few years ago, people from all over it is done; it honors the art by which it is done; it honors the the North Fork Valley convened at a thing that it makes and the user of the made thing.” country veterinarian’s office just outside This special issue of High Country News looks at what Paonia, Colorado (HCN’s hometown). we all can do as a community, when we let go of our We came with paintbrushes and paint, Western individualism. Despite our rugged reputation, we wheelbarrows, buckets, rakes and shovels, are often stronger together than standing alone. Rebuilding food and drink. About a dozen of us, ranging in age from 8 to a connection to a place can also build connections among 70-something, got to work scraping and repainting the shabby people, as Washington writer Ana Maria Spagna describes old building, cleaning up the grounds and repairing the roof. in “The Exact Same Place,” in which Mountain Maidu We did all this for Dr. Norman Vincent (known around Indians formed a broad coalition to reclaim a sacred valley town as “Doc V”) — the man who stitches up our injured in California’s Sierra Nevada from a utility company. In dogs and tends to our sick cats at any time of the day interviews with writers such as Erika T. Wurth, Mitchell S. Mushroom hunters or night, vaccinating them and cleaning their teeth, and Jackson and Bryce Andrews, we hear other perspectives on A colorful and diverse collection of workers spends charging just a fraction of what a big-city vet would. After transcending the limitations — and learning the lessons — months scouring forest floors for money-making we’d finished, Doc V’s place was transformed. And, in a way, of community. And in “Claustrophilia,” contributing editor fungi, as seen in this gallery. Here, Dao sorts burn so were we. Sarah Gilman finds that in the harsh, unpeopled spaces of morels in Carmacks in the Yukon Territory. He and his wife, Aloune, fled war-torn Laos in the 1970s That night, I looked up a half-remembered passage from Mongolia, as in the American West, closeness is more than Horse tour guide Batdelger, above, demonstrates how to befriend reindeer in the Mongolian taiga. Right, three generations of Maidu, including elder and now spend nine months of the year on the Beverly Ogle, her daughter, Brenda Heard, and granddaughter, Yasmin Holbrook, display the traditional baskets woven with local willows by their the writer and critic Wendell Berry: “And the real name of comfort: It can mean survival. (Especially if you haven’t road picking and buying mushrooms. ancestor, Ce’éste (known as Nellie Thomas). SARAH GILMAN, LEFT, COuRTESY MAIDu SuMMIT CONSORTIuM our connection to this everywhere different and differently brought a tent.) Olivier MatthOn hcne.ws/hunt-mushrooms named earth is ‘work.’ We are connected by work even to the Whether to get through one bitterly cold night, or to places where we don’t work, for all places are connected; it is thrive over a lifetime, we need each other more than we’re clear by now that we cannot exempt one place from our ruin willing to admit. Accepting that we are part of a community, the percent of California’s of another. The name of our proper connection to the earth is that we rely on each other — that can be where the real moisture8-27 deficit attributable to warm tempera- ‘good work,’ for good work involves much giving of honor. It “good work” is. —Jodi Peterson, senior editor tures caused by anthropogenic climate change. Cally Carswell hcne.ws/CAdrought-climate Contributors Michael Sarah Melissa Mylchreest writes Jenny Chemistry 101 on the Animas Engelhard Gilman has poetry and nonfiction in Shank’s novel lives in Cor- plenty of western Montana. When The Ringer While there are a variety of ways that mining dova, Alaska, awkward Dr. she’s not writing, she likes to won the can pollute watersheds, the most insidious where it’s Fleischman cook, make High Plains and persistent is acid mine drainage, a natural impossible to moments in functional Book Award phenomenon exacerbated by mining. Acid mine drive to any- her new city art, and and was a drainage was the root cause of the Gold King where with a bookstore. He is of Portland, spend as finalist for blowout, and it plagues tens of thousands of working on a book about po- Oregon, where she is an much time the Mountains & Plains abandoned mines across the West. It’s almost lar bears but will not consider HCN contributing editor and as possible Independent Booksellers impossible to fix, and it lasts forever. How it works: bringing a bear along on his freelance writer. She was the outside. Association’s award. Her before mining next promotion tour. magazine’s associate editor work has appeared in The Snowmelt and rain seep in Paonia, Colorado, for more Laura Atlantic, the Washington into natural cracks and Charles than six years. Paskus is an Post, the Guardian and fractures, eventually emerging as a freshwater Finn is the independent others. spring (usually). editor of Page Lambert’s writing is reporter and High Desert found inside sculptures at the radio producer Ana Maria Journal and Denver Art Museum, online at based in Albu- Spagna is the author of Huffington Post, and within querque, New the author Wild Delicate dozens of anthologies. She Mexico. She’s of two essay Seconds: 29 Wildlife Encoun- leads outdoor a former assistant editor of collections, ters. He lives in Federal Way, adventures High Country News. a memoir/ Washington, with his wife, and writes history, and Joyce Mphande-Finn. the blog, All Laura most recently, After mining Things Liter- Pritchett is the handy guidebook, 100 Mine tunnels intercept Devon Fredericksen is ary/All Things the author of Skills You’ll Need for the End groundwater and expose an editor at Girl Friday Natural. several books, of the World (As We Know it to pyrite and oxygen, setting up a chemical Productions, a book editorial most recently It). She lives in Stehekin, reaction that produces company. She Emma the novel Red Washington, with her wife, acid mine drainage. has been Marris is an Lightning Laurie Thompson. published in environmental (Counterpoint, Guernica, Yes! writer. 2015). More at www.laura- Magazine and She lives in pritchett.com. Indian Coun- Klamath Falls, try Today. Oregon.

Once water (H2O) meets up with oxygen (O2) and pyrite (FeS2), a chain of reactions occurs, one of the products being H SO , otherwise known Complete access HCN’s website hcn.org Follow us 2 4 to subscriber-only as sulfuric acid, or runoff that tends to have a content Digital edition hcne.ws/digi-4716 pH level between 2 (lemon juice) and 5 (black iPhone app hcne.ws/iphoneHCN coffee). JOnathan thOMpsOn hcne.ws/GoldKing-water iPad app hcne.ws/ipadHCN @highcountrynews www.hcn.org High Country News 3 Author coNvErsAtioNs

Not on a rez: finding a complete life in the urban West Q&A with Erika T. Wurth

by lAurA PritchEtt

Erika T. Wurth is Apache/Chickasaw/ High Country News How important has Cherokee and grew up near Denver, your heritage been in your life and Colorado. She now splits her time be- writing? tween Denver and Macomb, Illinois, where she teaches creative writing at Erika T. Wurth I was bused to school in Western Illinois University. Her debut an area with a cultural mix: Natives novel, Crazy Horse’s Girlfriend (Curb- of all tribes, Latinos, working-class side Splendor, 2014), is informed by whites — the common denominator be- her youthful experience — the commu- ing the mullet (which I did not have). I nity she both was drawn to and eager think that novels from Native perspec- to escape (reviewed in HCN, 5/25/15). tives of all kinds are necessary, but I It follows Margaritte, a drug-dealing wasn’t seeing mine. Over 70 percent of 16-year-old Native American floun- Native people live off reservations, in dering in a Colorado town haunted cities like Denver and the outlying ar- by poverty, unemployment and drug eas. Where were the novels about that? abuse. Margaritte’s examination of her I take great inspiration from where life — and those around her — is both I come from; I feel that you might as tender and fierce, whether she is con- well poetically render what you know sidering her cokehead boyfriend, her (and what you can imagine). Also, the good-hearted but troubled cousin, her larger Native writing world has been alcoholic father, or her own problem- incredibly supportive. Writers like Su- atic future. Wurth recently spoke with san Power, Eden Robinson and Sher- HCN about her characters, her com- win Bitsui have given me a wonderful munities and the future. CouRtESy ERIkA wuRtH peer group.

I had to go through that little bit of time The counterpoint of home in prison so I could come back and talk to these guys and connect with them. The av- Q&A with Mitchell S. Jackson erage person — they look at a prisoner as someone who’s violent or doesn’t have any by dEvoN FrEdEricKsEN feelings, or doesn’t have any loved ones. And that’s just not the case. They’re hu- Mitchell S. Jackson grew up in a ver- Mitchell S. Jackson By ignoring (Portland’s man beings and they’ve been put in situ- sion of Portland, Oregon, far from today’s reputation). Growing up in northeast ations or sometimes, they’re just making Portlandia, where white hipsters quibble Portland, it was predominantly African- bad decisions. It’s made me a more forgiv- about culinary ethics and artisanal ice American. So we were, I guess, insulated ing person than I would’ve been. cubes. For Jackson, growing up black from that. But now, I can see how some of in 1990s Portland meant figuring out the issues that were happening in north- HCN Your mother’s crack addiction began how to avoid letting his race and so- east Portland (might have been) because when you were 10, and you started deal- cioeconomic circumstances define his it was predominantly African-American, ing as a teenager. How did you not let future. His award-winning autobio- in that there weren’t enough resources these circumstances derail your life? graphical novel, The Residue Years, and people who cared about the commu- describes a mother and son who pur- nity for it to not be like that. Jackson Well, they did. (laughs) They did sue their dreams despite the con- in most of the ways they derailed my straints of race and class: Champ HCN Who were you hoping to reach with friends. Part of the reason I was able to get sells crack to escape poverty, while this novel? back on track is because I always valued his mother struggles to get clean. school. I had teachers who took interest in Jackson served 16 months in Jackson If you’re a writer — and especially me and told me I was bright. I also came prison at 25, for dealing crack, if you’re writing literary fiction or literary from a family who emphasized school. I re- earned an M.F.A. in creative nonfiction — your audience is white. But I ally never wanted to be a successful drug writing and now teaches at New always intended Residue to be for the peo- dealer, because I knew how much of my York University (The novel was ple from my community. That’s why I kept morality I would have to give up. reviewed in HCN, 3/17/14). a lot of the diction, because it really wasn’t Survival Math, a nonfiction for the highfalutin literary readership. HCN Portland is divided into four quad- account of his family, is forth- rants, and most of The Residue Years takes coming from Scribner. HCN What was it like to serve time, and place in the Northeast Quadrant, where then speak at prisons after your book you grew up. How have these neighbor- High Country News Portland has been came out? hoods changed? called the whitest city in America. How does your novel tie into this community? Jackson It feels almost like a calling — like Jackson When I came home when the book

4 High Country News September 14, 2015 HCN Communities can sometimes bind or of Natives, made us feel that we are not Wurth The feedback (for my new novel) is hurt an individual. How does Margaritte alone, and there has been real progress on that it’s unrelentingly dark, when most of experience her community’s limitations? issues — the mascot issue, rape on reser- my white male peers write dark subject vations by non-Natives, the trafficking of matter and are lauded for it. What’s ironic Wurth Margaritte is much “cooler” than I Native women. I think that Natives are is that so many publishing companies are was in high school — she has friends, sells beginning to feel collectively and increas- losing money, but they keep on publishing drugs, has sex — and I was essentially a ingly that our languages, our values, and the same thing over and over — either ste- loner. What we have in common is this: our political issues are something to fight reotypical subject matter about the strong desire to leave your community, for, and I see a strong sense of intellectual people of color or the same with the added burden of honestly know- and creative activity around these issues. white middle-class stuff. What ing that you deeply come from it and have people want is interesting and love for it. I did not want to write a book HCN How do you see your work as fitting dark and sophisticated litera- wherein the character “went back to the in the larger scope of work set in the con- ture, and the publishing world reservation and found herself.” I wanted a temporary West? Have urban life, teenage needs to stop risking nothing different narrative. I wanted to write about pregnancy and contemporary issues been and gaining nothing. someone who could stay and find a way to given their due? live authentically as a human being. HCN What’s next for you? Wurth I think that when people think HCN In a review, Sandra Cisneros notes about the West, they think about cowboys, Wurth I hope my agent sells that you “chronicle the poor with com- or, perhaps in the case of Colorado, of bik- my novel, which is about Na- passion and respect.” Readers automati- ing, hiking, skiing. Pregnancy and drugs tive American gangs. There’s cally root for Margaritte, but her future, and these kinds of issues have been talk- no other novel like it out frankly, seems pretty bleak. What are ed about, but not in a way that’s sensitive there. It’s literary and so- your thoughts on what the future holds and sophisticated and literary, at least not phisticated and human and for young people, particularly Native when it comes to people of color. Young dark. Where are the Philip Americans? people deserve more than black-and-white Roths of this generation? life lessons. I see the postmodernists, Wurth Social media is something that is and I see genre folks, but making the larger population aware of our HCN What are your hopes, in that regard? where are the people writ- greater issues. When most people think of What would you like contemporary liter- ing big novels about Amer- Native Americans, they think about ste- ature to look like, and what will be your ican life? There is a place reotypes. Social media has rallied a lot role in that? for it still.

was coming out, I attended a meeting with searching for a home that is out of reach. the mayor, the police chief and some local What do you see as home, and how has community leaders, and they passed out a that idea changed? sheet listing all the crimes in the area for the previous week. (In the past) if there Jackson I still consider Portland home. I was a shooting or a stabbing, it was, like, forget who said: “You can never go home 95 percent of the time in Northeast. So again.” I think in a certain sense that’s they passed out this sheet, and in north true, because the Portland that I knew is and northeast Portland there were no gone. But I still feel a real deep connection crimes. But out in “The Numbers” (far to the people there, and want to represent east Portland) — where they’d pushed all the Portland that’s gone. (At the Breadloaf the people who used to live in Northeast Writers’ Conference) the first story — there were two shootings, a stabbing, that we workshopped was by a guy a car theft, a robbery, and I was like, who lives in Portland now. And “Wow, they really just relocated his story is about a potbel- the problems.” And so it was lied pig, and he spoofs interesting to see that you can Whole Foods and rid- just take a problem area and ing your bike every- plant it somewhere else. where and growing organic HCN You seem to have a rever- weed, which I ence for Portland. understand is an element Jackson It shaped me. I spent of Portland, 25 years there, so I think the CHARLottE M. wALES but I just — I important parts of me were don’t under- built in Portland. The people stand that. If that I love — my primary, my there was no first loves — they’re in Port- Residue Years, land. I recognize the struggles there would be of the city, and I feel more deep- very little coun- ly connected to them than I do terpoint to that idea to the struggles of New York. of Portland. So now, I want to be the counter- HCN Your protagonists keep point of home.

www.hcn.org High Country News 5 Author ProFilEs

The landscape of inspiration Bev Magennis, author and artist, follows her whims in New Mexico

by lAurA PAsKus

ust a block off a busy intersection in try). But I know the reality.” wise possess. Alibi Creek, the first in the J Albuquerque’s North Valley, a tile-cov- Many people are tempted to create new series, is set for publication in March 2016. ered two-story house stands like a poem. lives for themselves in the West’s isolated “When you’re living in a place like Mosaic flowers spring from its base and towns and rural landscapes. But making that,” where eccentricity is tolerated, she pueblo-style rainclouds grace the front artwork, building a home, or even running says, but not liberalism, “you do get to a gable. a farm are not the same as belonging to a place beyond politics with your neighbors, For 11 years, Bev Magennis added one community. Those enchanting little towns because you need them. You need someone ceramic tile after another to her home, not aren’t always sustainable places to raise a to talk to.” intending from the start to cover the en- family or thrive emotionally — especially And that’s what the main character tire building. “I just get on a track,” she if you’re an outsider, and a mistrust of out- in Alibi Creek lacks. Lee Ann, who is nei- says today from her new home, which is siders and new ideas persists. Nearly a ther eccentric nor liberal, has no one to tile-less and about a mile away. “I love a decade passed, for example, before a local talk with as she grapples with an errant long-term project.” storeowner’s wife — passing change across brother (the “asshole” character Magennis In more than three decades as a visual the counter — almost made eye contact loves), a dying mother and a disappearing Name Bev Magennis artist, Magennis created life-sized figures with Magennis, a petite, warm woman who God. Plus controversy over the misuse of — even a “dome lady” large enough to was raised Jewish, grew up in Toronto, and federal money at the county commission Age 73 sleep a family for the night. (At one point, describes herself as a “hard-core feminist.” where she works, controversy of the sort Hometown she considered building a series of dome Magennis came to New Mexico in the that HCN readers will recognize. Albuquerque, New women and creating a sort of motel. Her mid-1970s as part of Roswell’s Artist-in- “People are so proud of — and they Mexico then-husband was less enthusiastic about Residence Program — it was the best year should be proud of — this great tradition Vocation Visual artist- the idea.) of her life, she says — and then taught art of ranching and surviving and endur- turned-novelist In 1993, she left Albuquerque for ruin Chama. She didn’t start writing until ance,” she says of her former neighbors. “I ral southwestern New Mexico. Catron she was in her 60s. After recovering from mean, those people endure.” But, she adds, She says “I feel that County is home to Mexican gray wolves, ovarian cancer, she decided to try her rural Westerners can become so locked I’ve been at the mercy of the nation’s first designated wilder- hand at fiction. into their traditions, they can’t see that my whims and dedicated ness area, generations of Anglo ranching Now, she’s no longer constructing giant the world has changed. to my whims, and I’ve families and a fair amount of social ten- works of art or tiling houses. Rather, she’s “It’s admirable, but sad at the same always had to kind of sion — sometimes boiling, sometimes just working on a series of books based loosely time.” Magennis mentions, for example, apologize about that.” awkward. And for 17 years, it was home to on life in Catron County. Although they’re the defiant swagger some people display Original first line Magennis, too. not classic mysteries, they do involve mur- when insisting they’ll never use comput- of her forthcoming “The land was so great, so quiet,” she ders and missing people and the sorts of ers. “That insistence might make them feel novel, Alibi Creek says. But a few years ago, she returned to things that happen in the rural West when strong. But it’s not actually a strength,” “walker was an asshole.” the city, which she appreciates for its emo- the law is loose and isolation wears away she says. “The more narrow you are, that though he’s no longer tional freedom. “I still long for (the coun- the good sense that people might other- locks you in.” the novel’s protagonist, she still favors his character: “I love his inane energy. I loved that I could go anywhere with him.” Immigrated to the U.S. from Toronto, Canada 1964 Recommended writing book Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft, Janet Burroway

Bev Magennis started decorating The Tile House in 1984 and finished 11 years later, using more than 130,000 pieces. CouRtESy ALBuquERquE JouRNAL

6 High Country News September 14, 2015 struggles soon erupt. “The choices made at Sun Ranch about living with wolves,” says Andrews, “boiled over onto the rest of the landscape. If one ranch has wolves, that policy impacts neighbors.” The Sun Ranch was a transformative experience, a proving ground that began shaping a three-pronged life as writer, rancher and conservationist. Afterward, Andrews continued working at the con- fluence of agriculture and conservation, managing multiple ranches in Montana, co-founding the Oxbow Cattle Company (a grass-fed beef ranch near Missoula) and consulting on land stewardship. When not on horseback, he wrote, and finally, in 2014, he sold his half of the grass-fed beef operation to concentrate more fully on writing and consulting. The co-existence of aesthetics and manual labor is a major theme in An- drews’ life. Figuring out how something works, whether a landscape or a novel, is a hands-on process. “Right now, I’m framing Name bryce andrews my first gable roof over a little wood-fired Age 32 pizza oven,” he says, “and writing a collection of linked short stories about drought, Hometown Seattle ranching, neighbors and the contempo- Vocation Writer, rancher rary West.” and conservationist. Drawn to places where people are “these three things have practicing agriculture in the context of an equal claim on my wilderness, he is fascinated by the delicate attention.” balance that lets people ranch and farm among wild creatures, in wild landscapes. Studied environmental He and his girlfriend recently spent a studies with a writing

Photo: Celia talbot tobin Celia talbot Photo: month in Costa Rica in the largest rem- emphasis at Whitman nant of old-growth coastal rainforest north College and the of the Amazon, working with scientists at University of Montana a remote research station at Osa Conser- Agriculture and aesthetics First published piece vation. The nonprofit group’s vision closely “living precariously with aligns with Andrews’ own: the desire to wolves and cattle,” High go hand-in-glove see communities thrive through increas- Country News, Writers on ing engagement with the natural world. the Range, aug. 6, 2007 Author Bryce Andrews pursues ranching and writing in Montana “The Osa Peninsula is as different from Montana as any place I could imag- Favorite nonfiction By Page LamBert ine, but it’s like you picked up the re- titles A Sand County source issues of Montana, and dropped Almanac by aldo t the age of 6, Bryce Andrews sat at journey from the “damp claustrophobia” them into a jungle. We talked about cattle leopold; bruce Chatwin’s A his family’s kitchen table in Seattle, of Seattle to the 20,000-acre Sun Ranch ranching, co-existing with jaguars, ba- The Songlines; Coming listening to rancher Pat Zentz talk in remote southwest Montana. “I had nana farming, oil palm farming, water Home to the Pleistocene about building sculptures and pulling practiced this departure many times,” he and subdivisions.” All undeveloped land, by Paul Shepard; loren spotted knapweed. Art and agriculture notes. “I was headed away from my youth.” he believes, is forgiving, resilient land. “A eiseley’s The Unexpected went together, the boy assumed. The The Madison Valley opens before him, rancher can make a decision that turns Universe; David next year, curators at the University of peaks rising like “glinting canine teeth,” out not to be the best, but if the ecosystem Quammen’s Monster of Washington’s art museum installed “The the Madison River drawing “a golden line is intact, the land will recover. Spring will God. Myth of the West,” an exhibit his father through the heart of the valley,” which come around. The Montana landscape, organized, while young Andrews stood is home to two small towns, Ennis and like Costa Rica’s, is infinitely complex wide-eyed before Albert Bierstadt’s paint- Cameron. Intrigued by the ranch owner’s and interesting. I want my writing to be ing Yellowstone Falls, then turned and mission to reconcile the needs of wildlife, a little bit like that, too.” practiced his quick draw facing Warhol’s livestock and the land, Andrews gives nar- Andrews also wants to move deeper Double Elvis. That same year, his family rative weight to all the members of this into the world of art and community, not visited the Zentz Ranch in Montana, in community, not just people and cattle, but to join the ranks of the new agrarians, but a pilgrimage that would become an an- wolves and grizzlies as well. “One of our to help inspire young people to be creative nual event. Sixteen years later, Andrews great failures,” he believes, “is that we do thinkers in the context of practical work. himself began living the myth of the West, not allow animals to be individuals. When “Perhaps someday,” he says, referring to when he became an assistant livestock gritty struggles play out on the landscape, an idea currently simmering on his back manager on a different ranch. it matters which wolves, which people, burner, “there’ll be a ranch-based appren- Andrews’ first book, his award-winning and which cattle.” ticeship program combining agriculture 2014 memoir, Badluck Way: A Year on the But not everyone in the community with a curriculum in ethics, aesthetics, Ragged Edge of the West, begins with his views wolves as individuals, and gritty science and writing.”

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8 High Country News September 14, 2015 DEAR FRIENDS

Skipped issue, and visitors Sellers at a Roadside Market, Estelle Stinchfield. HIStoRy CoLoRADo, PHoto By JAy DILoRENZo As summer slides into fall, with his daughter, who lives in we’re taking a two-week nearby Crested Butte. Dennis, THE DENVER ARTISTS GUILD: publishing break to savor the a longtime reader and frequent ITS FOUNDING MEMBERS; season, can some peaches and writer of letters to the HCN AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY Stan Cuba salsa, and watch for the first editor, formerly worked for the 224 pages, softcover: $39.95. changing aspen leaves. So we’re USGS, where he studied the university Press of Colorado, 2015. skipping an issue — we publish effects of acidic mine drainage 22 times a year — but fear not: on water quality in Colorado toward the end of the Roaring ’20s, 52 artists gathered The magazine will be back in during the 1970s. Though he in downtown Denver for the inaugural exhibition of the mid-October. In the meantime, eventually moved to Oregon, he Denver Artists Guild. Made up of painters, sculptors and visit hcn.org for fresh news and still returns to Colorado each photographers, the guild went on to become one of the opinion. fall to photograph the golden three longest-lasting fine arts organizations in Colorado. We always relish having aspen trees. The Denver Artists Guild celebrates the group’s history and visitors here at our western showcases its work in vivid color. Masterful pastels, dreamy Colorado headquarters. FREE SUBSCRIPTIONS watercolors and impressionistic oils provide a sense of the David and Pam Palmer came FOR COLLEGE STUDENTS Colorado arts community from the exciting days before through Paonia in mid-August, The HCNU Classroom Program the Great Depression until after world war II. of particular note are the oils of Robert A. Graham, who painted the hoping to beat the heat back at gives away free magazine sub- landscape around Golden, Colorado, and Rocky Mountain home in Gilbert, Arizona. Days scriptions to teachers in higher National Park in vibrant, loving detail. A companion exhibit earlier, on their way north, the education for their students. is being held at the Byers-Evans House Gallery in Denver Palmers watched the orange Thanks to grant funding, we are through Sept. 26. GloriA dicKiE plume of mining waste in the able to engage young readers in Animas River flow through the important issues facing the Farmington, New Mexico. American West with this pro- David, a geologist with El Paso gram. If you know an instructor Kenneth Fisher | kellogg, ID George & barbara Norek | Corvallis, oR Natural Gas, plans to check who might be interested, please terje Fokstuen | Berkeley, CA John olson | Aurora, Co U.S. Geological Survey stream send them to hcn.org/edu to Fred Frahm | Boise, ID linda Parham | Placitas, NM gauges when he returns home, sign up and find out more. risa Galant | Seattle, wA Josephine P. Parrish | Sedona, AZ he says, to determine whether John Gastineau | Portland, oR david reese | Glendale, AZ or not the EPA was telling the CORRECTION Ann German | Libby, Mt Karl reiche | Anchorage, Ak truth about the volume of the Alert reader Chuck Brushwood, of stephen Gerritson | Bothell, wA david Gray remington | Moscow, ID toxic spill, estimated at about 3 Omak, Washington, sent a note Maureen Gonzales | Chama, NM lee A. reynis | Alameda, NM million gallons. about our Aug. 17 story “Sea Paul Graczyk | Aurora, Co Anita richard | Auburn, wA On her way to nearby lions feast on Columbia salmon”: inez s. Graetzer | Rathdrum, ID Joyce richards | ogden, ut Black Canyon of the Gunnison “The shotgun you describe in ben Graves | Delta, Co William richardson | Aztec, NM National Park, Lynn Eby from your article is almost certainly a Al Gutowsky | Sacramento, CA Albuquerque stopped by for a Remington 870 marine mag- richard W. ridgway | Cody, wy Norma heinz | Denver, Co quick visit. She’s friends with num, not a “Remington .780.” chapman root | Hailey, ID Gloria & larry hill | Idaho Falls, ID former editorial intern Katie 870 is the model number (not Jon rosenfield | Berkeley, CA sanford hurlocker | Española, NM Mast (summer 2013), and when caliber or gauge) of one of Rem- Edward E. rothrock | Port St. Lucie, FL Michael W. hyer | Blacksburg, VA Lynn was looking for a “place to ington’s very popular and widely tony ruckel | Denver, Co Michael Jensen, Amigos bravos | lay her head” during her travels sold pump-action shotguns. I Albuquerque, NM lisa saltzburg | Mount Pleasant, SC through the West, the name of own an 870 myself that I use for Gina Johnson | Denver, Co Kelly schmoll | St. Albans, Vt our small town rang a bell. waterfowl, upland bird, and for- Kathryn J.M. Kemper | Seattle, wA Mark schneider | Battle Ground, wA From Portland, Oregon, est grouse hunting.” Thanks for bob Kiesling, sweetwater ranches | Helena, Mt dan sealy | Bethesda, MD came Dennis Wentz, who the close read, Chuck! Miles & Mary Kimber | Fort Garland, Co don sharaf | Victor, ID dropped by our office in late —Jodi Peterson for daniel Klein | Santa Fe, NM Mary sibley | Renton, wA August following a visit the staff Edward Knight | thornton, Co Gary sims | Evergreen, Co Paul Knoop Jr. | Laurelville, oH susan & lee smith | Parachute, Co bob Kohut | Ithaca, Ny hendrik snow | Mobile, AL Eduardo Krasilovsky | Santa Fe, NM lisa song | Somerville, MA Kathleen i. Kuehn | Highlands Ranch, Co Maya spies | Rock Springs, wy Kimbert E. larsen | Billings, Mt thomas swetnam | Jemez Springs, NM Marcella larsen | Aspen, Co Paul tate | Newport, oR clyde & lois laughlin | Seattle, wA Gary thompson | Columbus, Mt Margaret lecompte | Boulder, Co robin tierney | Half Moon Bay, CA Ann M. Magill | talent, oR helen E. traylor | Grand Junction, Co John & lynn Matte | Albuquerque, NM virgil tucker | Boulder, Co Mary Mccrea | twisp, wA John & Marion vance | woodland Park, Co steven Mcomber | Logan, ut Janice vander Molen | Herriman, ut dorothy Montgomery | tucson, AZ dale vodehnal | Denver, Co Patricia Moores | Jamison, PA Ann E. Wasgatt | Roseville, CA betty Morrow | Albuquerque, NM Philip & trudy Welty | Elbert, Co robert Naymik | Medford, oR dorothy & Andrew Werner | Santa Cruz, CA John K. Nelson | Englewood, Co bruce Wittchen | west Hartford, Ct shane Nicholas | Anthem, AZ douglas G. young | westminster, SC From left, visitors Dave Herz of Paonia, Michael “Muktuk” Arsulich of Joanne Nissen | Soledad, CA Steamboat Springs, Colorado, and Elliot Silberberg from Italy, came by, as did Lynn Eby. BRookE wARREN www.hcn.org High Country News 9 ClauS trophilia

can see a spark of tired panic in Jo’s eyes as they meet Now, though, watching these strangers touch each other as mine. Our narrow Purgon — a Russian-made UAZ van casually as friends, I feel differently. Beyond the smeared win- that resembles a jacked-up VW bus — is bursting with dows stretches one of the most sparsely populated landscapes people. The rigid seats, which face each other like those in the world. There are no fences, and little interrupts the in a diner booth, are crammed with butts, and our knees gentle roll of the steppe besides patches of dark trees and con- interlock like a human zipper. In the back, where baggage gregations of plump sheep, yaks and horses. Felt roundhouses FEATURE And andI boxes of supplies serve as yet more seats, two weathered called gers — the traditional homes of pastoral nomads — ap- old men hunch below the ceiling. In the front passenger seat, a pear now and then like white buttons stitched haphazardly phoTogRAphs By woman settles on the lap of the standby driver. onto rumpled green fabric. Sean has told us about the nomads’ sARAh gilmAn And yet here we are, picking up another passenger. She generosity, how they will offer even unexpected visitors salted looks like she weighs maybe 100 pounds soaking wet, but yak-milk tea, food, a bed. And I’ve read of the blizzards and where will she fit? There’s a slim gap between Jo and her subzero cold that pummel people here each winter. Maybe, I neighbor; the newcomer clambers over and wedges in sideways. think, in all this beautiful, brutal vastness, a tiny enclosure Finally, finally, after six hours of waiting, the driver decides that brings the world to a human scale is to be shared, not that we’re full. He grinds into gear and we chug free of Murun, defended. How else would anyone survive in such a place? Mongolia — capital of the country’s northernmost province — toward the remote village of Tsagaan Nuur, near the Russian When I left for the three-Week summer trIp to mongolIa, border. my friend Rob — who had been in the Peace Corps there with After 30 minutes of paved road, we veer abruptly onto a dirt Sean — joked that I’d love it, since I basically already lived in two-track winding into the hills. Jo’s husband, Sean, who fin- Mongolia. He was referring to Paonia, Colorado, a town of 1,500 ished a Peace Corps assignment here in 2007, grins knowingly on the rural Western Slope of the Rockies, where I had spent at Jo and me. “Jiiinkheeene,” he comments wryly, drawing out the past six years. While Jo and other friends I grew up with the Mongolian word. Jinkhene translates roughly as authentic, in Boulder, Colorado, moved on to New York or L.A., Boston or old-school. But it can best be defined by what follows. or Seattle, I had edged downward in town size and upward in The Purgon bounces and shudders: The passengers brace acres of open space, from Walla Walla, Washington, to a series arms against seats and each other’s knees, occasionally knock- of small mountain towns back in our home state. ing heads. The Purgon grows steadily chillier: The passengers I was chasing a feeling I had one summer during college, produce a laptop and memory stick and put together a com- when Jo and I took a day trip to Rocky Mountain National pilation of Mongolian power ballads that the driver plays on Park. We pulled off the road above treeline and sprinted to an repeat for the next 12 hours. The Purgon bogs in the mud: The overlook, racing a thunderstorm. Staring across the tundra- passengers tumble out and push, sprinting in all directions velveted swaybacks of retreating peaks, I knew with uncharac- when it lurches free at high speed. Through it all, everyone teristic certainty that I wanted to settle in their midst. When smiles, everyone laughs. There’s something almost tender about a permanent job opened in Paonia a few years later, I saw my the ease with which strangers drowse on each others’ shoulders chance at last. through the night. Shepherd slumps against meaty policeman; I imagined my new life would resemble the 1990s TV show meaty policeman slumps against Sean; Sean, wincing, flattens Northern Exposure, about the quirky fictional town of Cicely, his 6-foot-4-inch frame against the Purgon wall and my feet, Alaska. Maybe I was Maggie, the hot-yet-rough-around-the- which I had propped up to keep my knees from cramping. edges bush pilot, self-sufficient to a fault. True to my fantasy, The Mongolians are better at this than us. I spent my free time exploring desert buttes, wandering solo A tourist ger complex in the In my early 20s, I was in a similar situation on a Grey- through aspen groves and canyons with a heavy pack, picking western Mongolian hound bus between Kansas City and Denver. When the sleep- my way up to the Continental Divide to peer into glacier-hewn province of ing teenage girl next to me began drooling on my shoulder, I drainages. Once, I looked up from washing dishes to see a moose Arkhangai. felt not tenderness but silent, half-homicidal rage. wander past my kitchen window, smack in the middle of town,

10 High Country News September 14, 2015 ClauS trophilia just like in the show’s opening credits. She was loose-jointed and aunt in the eastern taiga. But first, he has to wrap up the day Beyond the gangly in that way moose have, and I followed her down the al- with his sheep. An hour passes, then two. His children prac- ley, ducking out of sight when her head swiveled my way. tice their English on us and demonstrate how to bottle-feed a smeared Unlike my fantasy, though, I was desperately lonely. I spindly-legged foal. We ask Batdelger’s wife how we will make worked late and came home to an empty house. The isolation the long horseback ride to the Dukha camp before dark, and windows of my cat, locked indoors to keep her from murdering birds, she gently ribs us about our impatience — tourists! — then seemed a bleak metaphor for my own life. “Give it a year,” pours more tea. stretches one my parents said helpfully, when, curled in a ball on the porch The horses that Batdelger finally rounds up are tiny and swing, I called them one night. “Maybe it will get better.” strong-headed, and Sean, atop a chestnut stallion, resembles of the most Better, I repeated to myself, hiking alone to the high- a top-heavy centaur with a small and rebellious set of horse est point on the rim of the Black Canyon southwest of town. parts. My horse isn’t much more accommodating. For his clum- sparsely Storms brewed over the piñon-studded horizon, unreachable siness, I name him Mr. Umbles, after the symptoms of hypo- across the canyon’s steep maw and its faint roar of whitewater. thermia you learn in wilderness medicine — mumbles, fumbles, populated Who was I kidding? I wasn’t Northern Exposure’s Maggie. I tumbles. In revenge, Mr. Umbles drops suddenly to his front was the show’s Dr. Fleischman — a citified know-it-all, bum- knees in a marsh, nearly pitching me headfirst into the mosqui- landscapes bling through a working-class community and a landscape he to-clouded shrubbery. I call him “Utaa” after that — “smoke” in didn’t understand. As thunder rumbled closer, I hurried toward Mongolian, for his dappled gray coloring — hoping this show of in the world. lower ground. There was a crack, an explosion of stars, and I respect will dampen his urge to kill me. found myself sprawled in the trail, blinking stupidly up at a fat Sometime around 9 p.m., Batdelger points out a low, door- ... Little juniper branch. Lightning? No. With my head bent in thought, less building where we can rest for the night. Sean asks in I had run straight into a tree. I gingerly touched my scalp; my Mongolian if there’s shelter farther on. Batdelger says yes. We interrupts fingers came back smeared with blood. still feel good, and so continue up a valley shaggy with high the gentle Anthropologists say Euro-Americans like me tend to expect grass and willow. Black stands of conifer climb its slopes to the more personal space than people from many other cultures. But noses and knuckles of mountaintops, which peek down like roll of the far from crowded cities, lost in western Colorado’s wild jumble of poorly concealed spies. The low sun paints Jo’s face gold as she mountains and mesas, I’d begun to want less personal space, not turns in the saddle to smile at me. steppe besides more. I wanted someone to share it with me. We dismount on a spit where two streams meet. I glance around — there’s a well-used fire ring, but no structures. Before patches of It’s veIled, WhIte-lIt daWn when Jo, Sean and I spill blinking I left the States, I complained to Sean that I was having trouble from the Purgon in Tsagaan Nuur, where our hostess, Ulzii, finding room in my pack for camping equipment. He told me I dark trees and greets us at her compound of tourist gers. Some other Peace could leave that gear behind: We would be staying with families Corps contacts told us she could arrange for us to travel even in their homes. But that is not how things will work tonight. congregations farther north, into some of Mongolia’s remotest country. We “Does he know we don’t have sleeping bags?” I ask Sean. Sean have our hearts set on the taiga, where an ethnically distinct turns to Batdelger, and they speak briefly. Sean turns back to of plump sheep, people called the Dukha, also known as the Tsaatan, make us. “This is it,” he says. their living herding reindeer and, increasingly, accommodat- Batdelger looks exasperated. Had he known we were so yaks and ing visitors like us. We wander blearily around Tsagaan Nuur’s poorly provisioned, he could have brought a tent, he explains scatter of buildings, buying food for the week from rickety log calmly. Or pots to cook our dehydrated food. But somehow those horses. cabin groceries, securing the last of our permits from a military details got lost in Ulzii’s negotiations, or in the gap between outpost. It takes a few hours and another cross-country Purgon Sean’s days as a fluent speaker and the considerable amount of ride for Ulzii to find the guide she has in mind. Mongolian words that have come back to him since his return. He’s a wiry fellow named Batdelger, with steep cheekbones We settle down for a poor meal around a handful of blazing shaded under a ballcap. Ulzii says we’ll be able to stay with his twigs. The bread we bought turns out to be rancid, but with

www.hcn.org High Country News 11 The Dukha enough Nutella on it, you almost can’t tell. We pass around were the shoulders I could sleep on, the knees I could brace peas, spooning directly from the can. I collect our plastic bottles against. And I would not have chosen different ones. village, when and fill them in the stream, then pull out our SteriPEN to pu- The curly-haired clerk at the hardware store, a man in his rify the water. It feels awfully light. I test the button. Nothing. 60s, let me split his firewood, more for the company than out of we finally Then I check the … I smile meekly at my friends. “No batter- necessity. He made me lasagna in return, told me trails where I ies,” I say, holding up the empty chamber. could see more moose, and showed me how to use a chainsaw so arrive, is like As the last light fades, Batdelger stalks off with his short I could help him buck rounds from blown-down aspens on the saddle pad to find a place to sleep. We collect our own pads in mesa north of town. I fell in love with the rogue kisser from the something tense silence, then poke through the trees until we settle on a bar — a talented carpenter who was as broken-hearted as he lumpy but soft deposit of needles. Even wrapped in every piece was dear. He took me swimming in the river, tattooed one of my from a dream. of clothing we have, it is a cold and miserable night. Jo is the drawings on his skin, invited me to hard-drinking parties with smallest, so we sandwich her in the middle. She attaches to my local kids who opened their doors to me as if I weren’t an out- The lichen back like a hungry lamprey, and Sean to hers. When we turn sider. One day, he showed up unannounced at my office, covered over, we do so in unison, unwilling to give up each others’ heat. head to toe in concrete dust, and gave me a flower he’d twisted grows spongy My feet grow numb, and I flex my stiff hands. I imagine Utaa, out of baling wire on his break. hobbled in the meadow below, laughing. Who’s Mr. Umbles now, There was the friend who hadn’t learned to read until he and ankle he would say in Mongolian. was a teenager, and yet could make his own biodiesel and fix anything, who never charged you what his labor was worth and deep. Canvas hoW do We come to belong anyWhere? One answer is that always had wine and chocolate in his truck in case you wanted teepees called we find each other. to watch a movie. The former large-animal vet who tenderly In stressful alpine environments, plants grow and repro- handled your pets and never charged enough, either. The urts spread duce better near other plants. Some animals, when threatened volunteers who ran the ambulance service, ferrying wheezing by predators, clump together in larger groups. Humans are old ladies 30 miles down the two-lane highway to the nearest across the among the most spectacularly social species on the planet, per- hospital. The friends who hunted and shared their bounty. The haps in part because the more cooperative among our ancestors single moms who watched each others’ kids. The head of the lo- basin, and were more likely to thrive in a difficult and dangerous world. cal environmental group who seemed to take on everyone else’s Life is “not just a struggle for survival,” as mathematician and wounds — including mine, when my carpenter’s broken heart reindeer the biologist Martin Nowak recently put it. “It is also, one might broke my own. say, a snuggle for survival.” There was darkness in that bright place, too — alcoholism, color of snow And in Paonia, I began to piece together a sort of tribe — drugs, deep political divides, crippling poverty, unacknowledged at work, at pickup ultimate Frisbee games. A new roommate racism. People died or were terribly injured in drunk-driving and earth quickly became a dear friend. An intern waded with me to an accidents. During one quarrel, a man threatened his inebriated islanded bridge in the town’s flooded river to see the stars. A friend with a shotgun, accidentally firing it into his belly. An meander past man asked me to dance at a bar, kept ahold of me the whole ugly divorce ended in a violent murder on the train tracks, just night, then surprised me with a kiss when I moved to leave. blocks from my house. errant satellite My folks were right: These small accumulations of welcome The night before that happened, the not-yet-murderer had can and do happen wherever we land, if given time. But with bought drinks for some of my friends at the local brewery — a dishes ... time, I also learned how different they can feel in a small town. tiny former church that filled to standing-room-only on cold In that ocean of open country, Paonia came to seem a sort of winter nights. It was a macabre twist on Paonia’s stewpot close- life raft — sharpening and clarifying the connections I had, ness: With so few places to gather, everyone went to the same and forging new ones I would never have had otherwise. The places, the same potlucks, the same Thursday-night dance par- passengers aboard were who they were; I could not silo in only ties and concerts in the park. with people my age, my interests, my background. I still wan- It was not that these things were good, though they often dered in the hills, but my sense of hopeless drift stopped. These were. It was that we craved their energy, craved other people:

12 High Country News September 14, 2015 The emptiness around us pushed us into each other’s arms. Once there, I discovered just how many different kinds of people I could love — both for their weaknesses and their strengths. eventually, the lIght returns, first blue, then the same hon- eyed hue that lit Jo’s face the previous evening, turning each glossy willow leaf into a candle flame. Sean creaks up from our row of saddle pads and starts a new campfire at the edge of the forest. I follow its smoke down the hill past where Batdelger tends the horses, and fill the same plastic bottles from the same stream. We smile and nod our heads in greeting, and he follows me back to the others. There is the same rancid bread and Nutella, the same dried fruit and nuts. But things have shifted somehow. Today, we have the empty pea can, and I fill it with water and place it in the coals to boil, then brew black tea in my thermos. As the sun climbs, we pass it from hand to hand, each cradling it for a moment to warm our fingers, our faces. Then a long sip, and on to the next person. Outside our tiny circle of warmth, the taiga spreads away, gorgeous and aloof; inside, the long night’s chill melts from our bones. The Dukha village, when we finally arrive, is like something from a dream. The lichen grows spongy and ankle deep. Canvas teepees called urts spread across the basin, and reindeer the color of snow and earth meander past errant satellite dishes, their tendons clicking over their anklebones like those of their caribou cousins. When it rains, people watch Korean soap operas. When it doesn’t, the kids stand in a circle outside listening to “Moves Like Jagger” and other pop music while punt- ing a volleyball, or ride out on reindeer to herd the rest of the reindeer back to camp. The women milk the animals multiple times a day, using pails of the thick, white liquid for cheese and tea. They roll out their own noodles, make bread in the coals of their fires. The men throw guns on their backs and ride off for days. Their resourcefulness, their practical use of both tradition and tech, is both utterly foreign and strangely familiar. Punsal, Batdelger’s wizened aunt, cackles over our shyness, our wide-eyed appraisal of the place, and, with the three of us sharing her extra bed, her own joking speculation about which of us women is the real wife. We carry water and cook for her, and she chain-smokes cigarettes rolled on pages torn from a book that Sean surmises is a Mongolian play. My birthday falls in that week, and after Jo and I have returned from a hike, Punsal taps me on the shoulder with a wide, toothless grin, and produces a bouquet of tiny orange poppies from behind her back. She ges- tures at the paperback I’m reading, then helps me spread each bloom between its pages with her shaking, deeply lined hands. A couple of days later, Batdelger collects our horses at dawn to avoid another frigid campout. As we begin to ascend the steep pass that marks the beginning of our journey in reverse, I’m startled to find myself weeping. The taiga mountains, roll- ing away in broken waves toward Russia, bear a heartbreaking resemblance to the peaks that first called me into Colorado’s rural backwaters. This trip marks the end of my time there: In my last years in Paonia, I had realized that I was still on my way someplace else, though I wasn’t sure where. Once home in the U.S., I will try life in a big city, in a different state. The choice feels right, but the knowledge of what I will lose has suddenly cut through me like a knife. Late that evening, as we pile into the Land Rover that will take us back to Murun, we are mostly quiet. Too exhausted and saddle-sore to contend with another night in an overfull van, we’ve paid the drivers enough to ensure that we have it to ourselves. Jo and Sean take one bench seat, I take another, and we toast each other with Tiger Beer, a weak, American- style lager that seems to fit this final surrender to our weak, Euro-American constitutions. I use mine to wash down a Dramamine tablet, and we retreat into our separate cubbies and ourselves. As I float in a druggy stupor, I smile through the rear window at the long line of peaks, which cradle the sunset sky in their jagged fingers. But something still isn’t right, and at Clockwise from top left: Reindeer relax in the Dukha camp, deep in the taiga near a petrol stop, we fix it. It takes only a few minutes to fold the Mongolia’s northern border; Punsal collects milk for the day’s tea; Dukha children offer a back seats flat. Then, we curl up beside each other with Jo in wood chip that bears striking resemblance to a cracker; Jo and Sean visit the neighbors for the middle, and go to sleep at last. bread and talk.

www.hcn.org High Country News 13 Hot off tHe press

14 High Country News September 14, 2015 A baker’s dozen of self-published books The rise of self-publishing and digital publishing has allowed many not always well-written or well-edited, and we lack the staffing to go fine but otherwise unknown writers to get their voices out into the through all the volumes we receive. world. It’s extremely difficult for new authors to break into any of the But here are some titles that have come out over the past year big publishing houses or even the independent presses. And it’s hard that we think our readers might enjoy. Book descriptions are supplied to get new books reviewed: At HCN, for example, we seldom review by their authors, Amazon.com and publishersweekly.com. We’ve also self-published books. Though some of them are excellent, they’re listed places where you can buy these books.

Spider Woman’s Loom, Lorie Adair, Foreverland The Ballad of Desiree, Susan Carr. Jiggles, Rolf, and the Remarkable Finale to Press. Foreverlandpress.com; Amazon.com Amazon.com; BN.com; Ingram Frank Stone’s Career, Wendell Duffield,

iUniverse. Amazon.com; bookstore.iUniverse.com Set on the vast and starkly beautiful Navajo In the early 1970s, Desiree, a 22-year-old free spir- Reservation in the aftermath of Indian agents ex- it, travels the logging roads of Idaho and Wash- As aging atheist and semi-retired geologist Frank ploiting the land and sending children to faraway ington, where she meets a Gypsy man named Stone becomes depressed over the possibility that boarding schools for assimilation, Spider Woman’s Ruby and Big Paul Skinny, an L.A. songwriter who his exciting career of studying volcanoes is rapidly Loom is narrated by Noni Lee, an old Navajo weav- discovers Desiree’s beautiful singing voice. From coming to an end, the opportunity to pursue one er whose instinct for survival and fierce resistance the mysteries of a Native American smoke lodge last project unexpectedly enters his university drives away even those she loves most. When to the idylls of a mountain homestead to the office. The bearer of this welcome news is Richard her estranged niece Shi’yazhi returns, Noni Lee bohemian lights of a burgeoning Seattle music Stewart, the university’s seismologist and a is forced to face memories of her own innocence scene, the novel takes readers through a turbulent staunch Mormon. In spite of their fundamentally and beauty as well as the haunting traumas that decade that changed everything. opposed views of the roles of science versus faith stripped them away. Weaving a traditional rug, in life’s journey, the two professors join forces to Noni Lee reconstructs a history and sense of fam- correctly forecast and then monitor an eruption ily for herself and Shi’yazhi — the legacy of Spider that feeds lava into the Grand Canyon, and there- Woman, whose gifts of creation and resiliency are by dams the Colorado River. a rite passed mother to child. Please see Self-published books, page 19

www.hcn.org High Country News 15 Hot off tHe press

A book full of dangerous ideas! “Slow down and pay attention.” “ Take responsibility for your own life.” “Quit hurrying and wor- rying and concentrate on living and being.” Montana writer Sandy Compton has an eye for natural detail, a love for wild country and a passion for social and environmental justice. This very personal collection of essays on such topics and others was written over a period of two decades.

Blue Creek NEW from Blue Creek Press Press order online at www.bluecreekpress.com Blue Creek Press specializes in personal on-demand book publishing. Write to books at bluecreekpress.com

16 High Country News September 14, 2015 www.hcn.org High Country News 17 18 High Country News September 14, 2015 Self-published books continued from page 15 Evel Knievel Jumps the Snake River Canyon ... and Other Stories Close to Home, Kelly Into the Roaring Fork, Jeff Howe, Cameron & Jones, Ninth Avenue Press. Amazon.com; BN.com

Greys Publishing. Amazon.com; When 10-year-old Pick Patterson finds himself www.jeffhowebooks.com stuck with bossy Grandma Grace and unemployed, They set out for Aspen in 1985 — a one-year easygoing Uncle Buddy in Twin Falls, he thinks post-graduation detour to play in the Rockies prior he’s in for a boring summer in a hick town in the to entering the “real world.” They wouldn’t need middle of the Idaho desert. But when Evel Knievel much, just ordinary jobs with a ski pass attached, a announces he’ll jump the Snake River Canyon just one-bedroom apartment, and each other. But tempt- north of town, everything changes. ed by the decadent side of this iconic resort town, Alex Cavanaugh enters into an illicit agreement Los Alamos: A Whistleblower’s Diary, with a new acquaintance and finds himself on a re- Chuck Montano, Desert Tortoise Publishing. mote forest trail, where the crime he is committing The New Indians, Joe Jessup, iUniverse. Amazon.com; BN.com; pales in comparison to the one his path will cross. Amazon.com; BN.com www.losalamosdiary.com In places like Big Scratch, Montana, where A shocking account of foul play, theft and The Vendetta of Felipe Espinosa, Adam James everything environmental is seen as a threat to abuse at our nation’s premier nuclear Jones, Five Star Publications. Amazon.com; jobs and prosperity, land developers and oil and R&D installation, uncovering a retalia- adamjamesjones.wordpress.com/book mining companies chop up big ranches, leaving tory culture where those who dare to 1863. Civil War rages in the East. An unclaimed behind a mountain of contamination that causes question pay with their careers and, wealth of natural resources beckon prospectors to environmental groups to lock down public land. potentially, their lives. This is a story the West. Far from and between it all, a gunman As hard lines are drawn in the sand, Sierra Club about military-industrial dominance, stalks the territories on a divine mission to kill demonstrators are beaten and a girl is missing and distortions of reality. It is a first-of- American settlers. He would elude governors after a peaceful protest on national forest land. In its-kind exposé, venturing past LANL’s and armies, bounty hunters and posses, until this gripping contemporary Western tale, two sides armed guards and security fences to chronicle his demise at the climax of a fierce high country clash in opposition over a changing landscape as persistent, often successful efforts to prevent manhunt. By then, Felipe Espinosa had claimed an aging cowboy attempts to find the place his hidden truths from coming to surface in the wake more than 30 lives to quietly become one of the grandfather once called the middle ground. of headline-grabbing events. nation’s first serial killers and foreign terrorists. Please see Self-published books, page 21

www.hcn.org High Country News 19 Hot off tHe press

20 High Country News September 14, 2015 Self-published books continued from page 19 Your Smallest Bones: Stories, Sean Taylor. Seventh Tangent. Amazon.com; BN.com The Rule of Equity, Jonathan Neville, Of these 12 stories, seven have been previously CreateSpace Publishing. Amazon.com; BN.com; published, and two received Pushcart Prize Jonathaneneville.com nominations. Taylor sets his tales mostly in San After centuries of genocide, relocation and Francisco, often among 20-somethings struggling neglect, Native Americans watch as the govern- to make it as they navigate relationships, work, ment that oppressed them faces financial ruin, and life’s alarums and excursions. Intelligent, environmental catastrophe, and imminent social subtle, minimalist stories by a promising young collapse. Hyrum Cobb, a brilliant Native American writer (from Kirkus Reviews). lawyer who heads the Bureau of Indian Affairs, devises a plan to reclaim America for his people — and for the benefit of all Americans. The Illegal and the Refugee: An American Love Story, Ian Tremblay. Amazon.com; Apple Smokey Bear is checked out by a vet. USFS Ring of Fire, Tanyo Ravicz, Denali Press. iBooks; BN.com Amazon.com; www.tanyo.net/Ring_of_Fire.html A tale of tragedy and triumph Smokey Bear: The Cub Who Left His Paw- Master hunting guide Hank Waters, a former that highlights the difficulties prints on History, Karen Signell. Amazon.com; Navy pilot, runs a wilderness lodge on the Alaska and the hardships of Latino BN.com Peninsula. The opportunity of his career comes immigration to the United when Prince Tariq, the Crown Prince of Rahman, How does an intelligent wild bear manage life States. With roots set deep arrives in Alaska to hunt brown bear. Waters in captivity? This is the first novel about the real in Mexico and Cuba, it is a has always been ambivalent about guiding his bear cub who survived a forest fire high in the story about letting go of the wealthy clients to hunt the bears that he loves, New Mexican mountains to become the living past, the resilience of the and his fears are not groundless. Can Hank representative of his namesake, Smokey Bear. Au- human spirit in the face Waters and his staff maintain order among men thentic photographs and apt quotations enhance of adversity and of deep, accustomed to having their way in the world? this heartwarming and bittersweet story, written unconditional love. How far should Waters go to accommodate his for adults but with appeal for all ages. guests in exchange for the money he will earn?

www.hcn.org High Country News 21 22 High Country News September 14, 2015 neW BooKs

The fall reading list Summer is the time for outdoor pursuits — hiking, camping, biking, a starlet’s abandoned mansion in L.A.’s Laurel Canyon. Seeking lusher gardening, tubing, traveling. The long days and warm sunshine don’t landscapes, the pair head east, risking attack by patrolling authorities, encourage much reading beyond your standard beachside thrillers. For roving desperadoes, and the unrelenting sun.” As a contrast to that all- months now, serious novels, nonfiction, even magazines have been piling up too-imaginable apocalypse, I’m also eager to check out William Finnegan’s in teetering stacks around my house, and there’s a fearsome backlog on my memoir, Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life. It’s an adventure story, an Kindle. intellectual autobiography, and a social history — “the kind of book that Now that the nights are getting cooler and longer, I’m finally thinking makes you squirm in your seat on the subway, gaze out the window at work, about settling down to read. I have to slim down my piles before they and Google Map the quickest route to the beach,” says the Paris Review collapse in a massive book-a-lanche and bury the dog. Daily. And several HCN contributors have produced terrific new works, A few of the new titles I’m excited about include Gold Fame Citrus by including Mary Emerick, Kurt Caswell, Samuel Western, Todd Wilkinson award-winning Nevada author Claire Vaye Watkins (featured in a Q&A and Laura Pritchett. in our 2012 books/essays issue): “Set in an increasingly plausible-seeming Below is a list of some of the most interesting titles published between future in which drought has transformed Southern California into a June and next winter, organized by author’s last name. If a book is already howling wasteland … two refugees of the water wars (are) holed up in available, no publication month is noted. Jodi peterson

FICTION Gold Fame Citrus, Claire Vaye Watkins, Riverhead Sustainable Water: Challenges and Solutions from The Japanese Lover, Isabel Allende, Atria, November Canyons, Samuel Western, Fithian Press California, Allison Lassiter (ed.), University of California Press Vintage, David Baker, Simon & Schuster The Longest Night, Andria Williams, Random House, January Girl in the Woods: A Memoir, Aspen Matis, William Morrow Vagabond Song: Neo-Haibun from the Peregrine Journals, Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist, Sunil Yapa, Little, Living off the Pacific Ocean Floor: Stories of a Commercial by Marc Beaudin, Elk River Books Brown/Boudreaux, January Fisherman, George Moskovita, Oregon State University Press, October Studies in the Hereafter, Sean Bernard, Red Hen Press How the World Moves: The Odyssey of an American Indian How Winter Began, Joy Castro, University of Nebraska Press, NONFICTION, MEMOIR, BIOGRAPHY Family, Peter Nabokov, Viking, September October Eve’s Hollywood, Eve Babitz, NYRB Classics The Origin Myth of Acoma Pueblo, Edward Proctor Hunt, And West is West, Ron Childress, Algonquin Press, October Devoted to Nature: The Religious Roots of American Peter Nabokov (ed.), Viking, September Did You Ever Have a Family, Bill Clegg, Gallery/Scout Press Environmentalism, Evan Berry, University of California Press Beyond the War on Invasive Species: A Permaculture The Last September, Nina de Gramont, Algonquin Howl: Of Woman and Wolf, Susan Imhoff Bird, Torrey House Approach to Ecosystem Restoration, Tao Orion, Chelsea Undermajordomo Minor, Patrick DeWitt, Ecco Press, October Green Last Bus to Wisdom, Ivan Doig, Riverhead Gold Fever: One Man’s Adventures on the Trail of the Gold The Rocky Mountain National Park Reader, James H. Pickering, University of Utah Press Geography of Water, Mary Emerick, University of Alaska Press, Rush, Steve Boggan, OneWorld Publications November The Oregon Trail: A New American Journey, Rinker Buck, Ladies of the Canyons: A League of Extraordinary Women Simon & Schuster and Their Adventures in the American Southwest, The Girl Who Wrote in Silk, Kelli Estes, Sourcebooks Landmark Lesley Poling-Kempes, University of Arizona Press Getting to Grey Owl: Journeys on Four Continents, Kurt A Collapse of Horses: A Collection of Stories, Brian Evenson, Dirt: A Love Story, Barbara Richardson (ed.), ForeEdge Coffee House Press, February Caswell, Trinity University Press Alaska’s Skyboys: Cowboy Pilots and the Myth of the The Girl from the Garden, Parnaz Foroutan, Harper Collins Grizzly West: A Failed Attempt to Reintroduce Grizzly Bears in the Mountain West, Michael J. Dax, University of Last Frontier, Katherine Johnson Ringsmuth, University of Half an Inch of Water: Stories, Percival Everett, Graywolf Press Nebraska Press Washington Press, October Dark Reservations: A Mystery, John Fortunato, St. Martin’s Loving Nature, Fearing the State: Environmentalism and Almost Anywhere: Road Trip Ruminations on Love, Nature, Press, October Antigovernment Politics before Reagan, Brian Allen Drake, National Parks and Nonsense, Krista Schlyer, Skyhorse Mountain Rampage, Scott Graham, Torrey House Press University of Washington Press Publishing, October Buffalo Trail: A Novel of the American West, Jeff Guinn, G.P. Of Wilderness and Wolves, Paul C. Errington, University of Crossing the Plains with Bruno, Annick Smith, Trinity Putnam’s Sons, October Iowa Press, November University Press, November Not on Fire, but Burning, Greg Hrbek, Melville House The Haunting of the Mexican Border: A Woman’s Journey, Last Chance Byway: The History of Nine Mile Canyon, Kathryn Ferguson, University of New Mexico Press Jerry D. Spangler and Donna Kemp Spangler, University of Utah Dryland, Sara Jaffe, Tin House Press Press, October Love in the Anthropocene, Dale Jamieson and Bonnie Nadzam, Ponderosa: People, Fire, and the West’s Most Iconic Tree, Carl E. Fiedler and Stephen F. Arno, Mountain Press Custer’s Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America, OR Books T.J. Stiles, Knopf, October Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life, William Finnegan, Penguin Press The Last Pilot, Benjamin Johncock, Picador Ways to the West: How Getting Out of Our Cars Is The Story of My Teeth, Valeria Luiselli, Coffee House Press Rediscovering National Parks in the Spirit of John Muir, Reclaiming America’s Frontier, Tim Sullivan, Utah State Michael Frome, University of Utah Press Red Lightning, Laura Pritchett, Counterpoint University Press The Color of Night: Race, Railroaders, and Murder in the Letters to My Grandchildren, David Suzuki, Greystone Still Life Las Vegas, James Sie, St. Martin’s Press Wartime West, Max G. Geier, Oregon State University Press, Western Weird (Manifest West Series), Mark Todd (ed.), November The Coyote’s Bicycle: The Untold Story of 7,000 Bicycles Western Press Books and the Rise of a Borderland Empire, Kimball Taylor, Tin The Great Divide, Stephen Grace, photographs by Jim Havey, House Press, February Dragonfish, Vu Tran, W.W. Norton Two Dot Books Mountains and Marshes: Exploring the Bay Area’s Natural All the Stars in the Heavens, Adriana Trigiani, Harper Collins, Nature’s Housekeeper: An Eco-Comedy, Michael Gurnow, History, David Rains Wallace, Counterpoint Press, December October Blue River Press Grizzlies of Pilgrim Creek: An Intimate Portrait of 399, Maud’s Line, Margaret Verble, Houghton Mifflin Good Water, Kevin Holdsworth, University Press of Colorado, The Most Famous Bear of Greater Yellowstone, Todd The Dying Grass: A Novel of the Nez Perce War, February Wilkinson, photos by Thomas D. Mangelsen, Mangelsen, William T. Vollmann, Viking I Can Give You Anything But Love, Gary Indiana, Rizzoli Ex Libris October

www.hcn.org High Country News 23 Essay | By ana Maria spagna

The Exact Same Place

olding chairs clattered, and conversations echoed off high ceilings. Several young men, heavyset with braids and ball caps and baggy jeans, held squirming kids while a F group of women set up drums in a circle. A potluck table It’s a funny held salad and store-bought sheet cakes, and a crockpot full of venison stew sat atop a counter crowded with small-sized word, Dixie cups — the kind that hold mouthwash at the dentist or grape juice in some church communion ceremonies — filled reclamation, with what looked like pudding. We were high in the Northern Sierra, in the shadow of Mount Lassen, and the California sun, with a even in November, shone yellow through picture windows. Out- side, kids clambered on boulders, adults smoked a courteous definition distance from the door, and dogs lounged in the shade. Ken Hol- brook approached, wearing a crisp white shirt, gray jeans and a red tie, the only tie in the room. He greeted me, as he’d greeted ripe with everyone, with a firm handshake and a wide boyish grin, and said he had a good story to tell. contradiction: The last time I’d seen Ken, he’d been balancing barefoot across a log over Yellow Creek with his two young kids in tow. to take back, A healing ceremony for land damaged by logging in Humbug Valley, a 4,500-foot-elevation valley sacred to the Mountain to make right, Maidu, had just concluded. Ken tossed an expensive camera over one shoulder, then reconsidered. He placed the camera and and to make his car keys in the duff beneath a ponderosa pine, and set off to lead the way. The log was weathered gray, the creek shallow, useful. the kids wildly exuberant. They crossed with ease and turned around to return as the sun glowed gauzy on a ridge-top fringe of conifers, the few still standing. Now, six months later, Ken held a passel of responsi- ards. But PG&E did not consider the Mountain Maidu poten- bilities. As the new executive director of the Maidu Summit tial stewards. Like other outsiders, company representatives Consortium, one of the last remaining speakers of the Maidu dismissed the Maidu as a loose band, a tribe without a central language, and the youngest son of elder, author and activist government and — until now — without a land base. Beverly Ogle, he was in charge of wrangling this lively crowd. The Maidu were undeterred. They formed a nonprofit con- Which by the looks of it would be no easy task. sortium, weaseled their way into meetings and recruited allies. The news, after all, was still new. After more than a decade They tackled on-the-ground projects –– building cedar fences of trying, the Mountain Maidu, a small and federally unrecog- to protect gravesites and designing an interpretive kiosk, all nized tribe, had reclaimed title to Humbug Valley from Pacific as directed by a PG&E-appointed committee, in order to prove Gas & Electric Company. It had been a long saga: A judge in their ability to be good stewards on land they’d already tended the early aughts, in the wake of the Enron scandal, ordered the for centuries. There were problems: A wildfire gave PG&E an utility to relinquish thousands of acres to conservation stew- excuse to clear-cut sacred sites and glean a little more profit before getting out. Most recently, they’d suffered the too-early Adapted and excerpted from Reclaimers, University of Washington Press. death of Farrell Cunningham, one of their most charismatic

24 High Country News September 14, 2015 Caption. Credit

leaders. When consortium members and friends and family met bordered on deception — grass seed pressure-sprayed atop Yellow Creek as it in Oakland to await the final decision, no one knew for sure flattened former mountaintops to mitigate mining, for example, winds through the what would happen. Now, less than a week later, with Tasman or new wetlands created in vacant lots to justify development newly reclaimed Koyom, as the Maidu call Humbug Valley, already under snow, elsewhere — other stories were inspirational and very nearly Humbug Valley, they’d gathered to celebrate in this brand-new community triumphant. The best of them seemed to be a kind of re-reclaim- California. BUd tUrner Photo center in Chester, the nearest town. I’d driven 800 miles to join ing –– re-taking what had once been taken. Making right what CoUrtesy FeAther them, but my journey had been even longer. had gone wrong. Re-defining what useful might mean. The river LAnd trUst Mountain Maidu’s reclamation story –– the one we were here A couple of yeArs eArlier, I set out to find stories of people to commemorate –– was one of the very best. reclaiming nature. It’s a funny word, reclamation, with a defini- I couldn’t imagine how Ken Holbrook’s story could be any tion ripe with contradiction: to take back, to make right, and better than that. But I was eager to hear it. to make useful. The connotation is both moral and pragmatic, He’d recently traveled to Salamanca, Spain, he explained, to and sometimes the results are disastrous, but reclaiming seems give a presentation on Maidu reclamation efforts. He described to be an irrepressible human instinct. While some examples their plans to use traditional ecological knowledge — practi-

www.hcn.org High Country News 25 cal knowledge passed down over generations — to manage the way. Or in this case, an old and better way. If there’s a hint of land as an example not only to other indigenous people, but to Sisyphus to it — when the hell will we get it right? — there’s land managers everywhere. Would-be reclaimers should seek hopefulness, too. alliances, he urged, partnerships with other organizations, as These days, I’ve found that reclaiming is more often than the Maidu had. When the deal was finalized, the Maidu Sum- not a communal effort led largely by women and character- mit Consortium would hold fee title to Humbug Valley, but two ized by stubborn endurance and inclusiveness. For 35 years, partners — Feather River Land Trust and California Depart- 89-year-old Phyllis Clausen of Friends of the White Salmon ment of Fish and Wildlife — would jointly hold a conservation River worked to bring down the aging and inefficient Condit easement. The Land Trust would help determine how much de- Dam with help from American Rivers, the Yakama Nation and velopment might be appropriate — campground improvements, eventually PacifiCorp, the power company itself. Timbisha “I had this for instance — then monitor that development. The California Shoshone elder Pauline Esteves, who can remember when the Department of Fish and Wildlife would manage the fishery, National Park Service first moved into Death Valley, led her great urge the pesky non-native brown trout and the wildlife, including tribe to reclaim their homeland with help from as far away as endangered and potentially endangered species like the willow Europe and as close, at times, as the park superintendent’s to return flycatcher and Sierra red fox. Even PG&E would remain a part- office. ner, in the financial sense: The company had agreed to provide Then there’s Beverly Ogle. Her two books brim with adapt- to Humbug funding for long-term planning and for two full-time staff posi- able characters who defy stereotypes. Her great-grandfather, a tions, including Ken Holbrook’s. Still, the Maidu would own the gold-mining Maidu teetotaler, fathered more than 20 children Valley, to tell land, and as owners they planned to hold ceremonies there, to via two wives, including Beverly’s great-grandmother, a Pit use traditional ecological knowledge to tend the vegetation — River Atugewsi woman whom he bought as a child at a slave our relatives, to plant, nurture, prune and harvest — as their ancestors did, auction. Beverly’s mother played the violin and was shunned and to share these practices with visitors. at her Indian school for having a white father; she later worked “But here’s the thing,” Ken said, leaning close. “When I for a time as a Forest Service fire lookout. Beverly’s uncles the forest, spoke in Salamanca, I stood in the exact same place where trapped otter, mink, ermine, beavers, bobcats, coyotes and foxes, Queen Isabella commissioned Christopher Columbus to come some into the 1980s. Her extended family includes loggers, the birds, the to the New World.” He paused and grinned. miners and power company employees, along with victims of “The exact same place,” he said. those same companies, and activists, like herself, who fought animals, the against them. reclAmAtion, in the old dAys, almost always was the story Early in our very first conversation, she described forming grass, that of one great man — Floyd Dominy, say, or Gifford Pinchot, or the Maidu Summit Consortium. There was a time, she said, John Muir — with a sweeping agenda. Even if their accom- when different factions within the tribe fought one another. they belong plishments, in hindsight, seem dubious, they sincerely believed “We had to be all pulling in the right direction,” she said, in what they were doing. And there lies the rub. The definition sitting in her warm kitchen while rain poured down the to us, and the of what constitutes “making right” is shifty. Taking back water windowpanes. “Like the old saying goes: ‘You take two twigs, that would be wasted running to the sea? Protecting forests you can bust them, but you put a bunch together, it’s harder to healing can from fires? Deeming land “untrammeled,” when it had been bust.’ ” tended by indigenous people for centuries? Even Columbus Even after the Maidu were allowed to enter the land discus- b e g i n .” must have had a righteous motive; it’s too cynical to believe it sions with PG&E, most of the focus remained on other places, was all greed, and unrealistic to imagine he could’ve known more developed and developable, around the nearby reservoir, —Beverly ogle, the havoc he’d wreak. On the flipside, much could go wrong for Lake Almanor. The Maidu were interested in these lands, too, Mountain Maidu the Mountain Maidu: Partnerships can sour, development can of course. They’d like to build a cultural center, a museum or elder, on hearing the news that the over-reach, and inviting more visitors to Humbug Valley — gallery, somewhere near a tourist mecca. But it’s Humbug humbug valley would Farrell Cunningham had envisioned a future “Maidu National Valley, with its miraculously undeveloped meadows, a mostly be returned Park” — well, that’s a can of worms. Still, still, it’s our human still-healthy forest, and a naturally carbonated spring bubbling to her people instinct, and our human responsibility, to try to turn things up among moss-covered boulders, that means the most. You around. Reclaiming isn’t preserving or restoring, can tell by the way Beverly drops her voice, the way her tone but attempting to stand again in the exact changes from outrage to excitement. same place, to try a new and better “In the four years I worked as campground host out in

Mountain Maidu baskets, woven by Ce’éste in the traditional way using willows gathered from the Humbug Valley. At left, Ce’éste, also known as Nellie Thomas, child on her back, with baskets in the Humbug Valley c. 1896 and below, with her husband, Syntonum (Fred Thomas), and another of his wives, Betsy, and their children. CoUrtesy MAidU sUMMit ConsortiUM

26 High Country News September 14, 2015 Humbug Valley, we’d have gatherings, bear dances, potlucks. It was great. It was so good for our Maidu people.” Our Maidu people. Never singular; never without the pos- sessive.

young would-be reclAimers often want to know how to make a difference. What to say? Love one place. Go to meetings. Make some food. Never turn down an ally. Never give up. Here’s the truth: You alone, you can’t do much. You with a bunch of friends, you can do one hell of a lot. Look around that room in Chester: You’ll see a Bay Area lawyer who worked pro bono for years, forest supervisors and seasonal firefighters, an archaeologist in a wheelchair, a logger with earrings, traditional clapper-stick singers in derby hats, all of them part of the whole — even the lone writer from a distant state, assiduously taking notes in the back of the room. This, too, I want to say: Allow yourself to be sucked into the fold.

when i heArd thAt the mAidu had reclaimed Tasman Koyom, I did not wait for an invitation. I hopped in the car, landed in Red Bluff at nightfall and set up camp by the Sacramento River with two sleeping bags, a wool cap and mittens for reading by headlamp. But I couldn’t sleep. I got up and walked in the light of the gibbous moon among live oaks, thinking this might be it, the last trip, the end of my journey. The next morning I visited Beverly Ogle at home, brought her a bag of apples I’d picked with my mother in late fall. She sat beside her woodstove with her children and grandchildren coming and going, and she beamed. Like Martin Luther King Jr., she said, she had a dream. “Only difference is, I lived to see it come true,” she said. sentient even, adds a new twist to the whole concept of commu- At a healing Now, at the community hall, the mood was like a sports nity, one that’s at the heart of books like Robin Wall Kimmer- ceremony held by team award banquet or a Fourth of July picnic, the gravitas er’s Braiding Sweetgrass and M. Kat Anderson’s Tending the the Maidu Summit understated, almost nonexistent. I filled a bowl with venison Wild. Anderson argues for nurturing a “kincentric” relationship in Humbug Valley, stew and picked up one of the Dixie cups and sat near the back with nature, where plants and animals are seen as brothers Beverly Ogle, Mountain Maidu of the room beside an elderberry flute maker, whom I’d met at and sisters. (Wallace Stegner said essentially the same thing 50 elder and activist, the healing ceremony, and his family. While I waited for the years ago, when he argued for the need to preserve wild places is adorned with stew to cool, I tasted the contents of the Dixie cup. It turned out so humans remember that we are “brother to the animals, part wormwood leaves to be acorn paste, a traditional Maidu staple that tastes exactly of the natural world and competent to belong to it.”) When I before a sacred as you’d imagine: thick, earthy, nutty, slightly bland, filling, but talked with Kat Anderson, she reminded me repeatedly, insis- bearskin. Both not precisely satisfying. I choked it down with water. Consider- tently, that the ideas were never hers. The cumulative wisdom have medicinal and ing the work that went into making it, wasting it seemed out of belongs to generations of Native people gathering on the land spiritual properties. the question. Besides, it felt like communion. I looked around in a twofold sense: coming together, hanging out, and gathering JAne BrAxton LittLe the room at the oddball assembly. I’d long since stopped trying what they need. It might seem like a modest vision, but it’s one to figure out who was Maidu and who was not. I remembered with staying power. And when it materializes, like today, it feels what Farrell Cunningham had said when we’d last gathered in huge. Humbug Valley: We’re all Maidu today. At the end of the speeches, Brenda Heard-Duncan, Beverly Ogle’s daughter, made a surprise announcement. It was a sur- when the formAlities begAn, the first speakers were mem- prise to Beverly, at least; her kids had told me the day before. bers of the Maidu Summit Consortium, people who endured Beverly was receiving a special lifetime achievement award years of negotiations and interminable meetings to get to this from the Indigenous Communities of Northern California. With point. Their eyes sparkled as they described what this victory it came a handcrafted bow. Brenda, who presented the bow, Mountain Maidu baskets, woven by Ce’éste in the traditional way using willows gathered from the meant. announced proudly that Beverly Ogle was the first woman ever Humbug Valley. At left, Ce’éste, also known as “This is what I dreamed of as a child,” Ken Holbrook began. to receive this award. But, Brenda explained, there were no ar- Nellie Thomas, child on her back, with baskets in He recalled camping in the valley, fishing in the creek, drinking rows to go with it. The ceremonial arrows will come later, next the Humbug Valley c. 1896 and below, with her from the carbonated springs, and I pictured him crossing Yel- spring, when the snow melts and the Maidu return to Humbug husband, Syntonum (Fred Thomas), and another of low Creek with his own kids. Valley. his wives, Betsy, and their children. Lorena Gorbet, another stalwart, unassuming leader, stood As tables were cleared, I moved around the room saying CoUrtesy MAidU sUMMit ConsortiUM in a loose sleeveless summer dress at her place in the drum goodbye. I stopped to see Beverly last. She sat with the bow in circle. “I never thought I’d see this day,” she said. her lap, gazing out at the room from a table strewn with empty One woman, impeccably dressed, with the poise of a no- acorn paste cups and half-eaten slices of cake. I waited my turn nonsense substitute teacher or perhaps a U.S. senator, was the behind other well-wishers, then sat beside her to congratulate only speaker to show any hint of anger. She stood, trembling, and thank her: for her friendship, her inspiration, for welcom- and approached the microphone. ing me into the fold. “I never thought I’d live to see Indians given anything by “Now the real work begins,” she said. “And you’ll be back.” It the dominant culture,” she said. was not a question. The applause was long. I walked out into fading winter sun with my notes and an When at last Beverly Ogle rose, she described the moment empty Tupperware container and drove until dark, from fire- she heard the news. scarred forest to wide dry basin, past small lakes — natural “I had this great urge to return to Humbug Valley, to tell or dammed, it was impossible to tell — and small towns with our relatives, the forest, the birds, the animals, the grass, that boarded-up storefronts and tidy clapboard houses with porch they belong to us, and the healing can begin.” lights on. I’d thought this trip would be the end, but now I Our relatives. This connection with what’s nonhuman, non- knew the truth: The work of reclaiming never ends.

www.hcn.org High Country News 27 MARKETPLACE

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S/he will Advertising Policy: Natural botanical farm-to-skin products, lav- because it helps pay the costs of publishing roundtable.org/6thconference2015.html. partner with the State Director and Chapter a high-quality, full-color magazine, where Leadership to steer transformative nature ender products and gifts. www.coloradoaromatics.com. topics are well-researched and reported eMPLOYMeNt conservation solutions aimed at the highest in an in-depth manner. The percentage of priority challenges in the state and region. S/ the magazine’s income that is derived from Workinfarming.com — Where job seek- he will focus internally to operationalize the enjoy a healthier lifestyle! Experience advertising is modest, and the number of ers and farmers connect. Facebook, Twitter, vision by facilitating development of high lev- the LIVING ENERGY of Premium Grade–A advertising pages will not exceed one-third LinkedIn, Google+. el strategy, empowering leadership and staff, Essential Oils. 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Freedom ranger chickens/ Details: http://seeds.ojaidigital.net. ticipates actively with the Board and the Ex- ence. S/he must have successful experience black broilers, bantam silkies, French guin- ecutive Director in strategic planning. S/he at the senior level, reimaging, integrating eas, khaki campbell/white muscovy ducks. CONfereNCes ANd eveNts will report to RMBL’s Executive Director and and overseeing large complex initiatives of 717-336-4878. Oct. 7-10, 2015, sHift festival, work closely with RMBL’s Board of Trustees strategic significance, aligning and enabling www.freedomrangerhatchery.com. Jackson, Wyo. An in-depth exploration of as well as RMBL’s Informal Science Education cross-functional teams, serving as a catalyst outdoor access, responsible recreation, con- team. 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www.hcn.org High Country News 29 MARKETPLACE

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30 High Country News September 14, 2015 BOOKS

Hidden gems: the short fiction of Lucia Berlin

ucia Berlin was a Western writer short story “Silence.” “I gradually became creative writing teacher at the University L of rare brilliance. When she died in a part of the Haddad family,” the narrator of Colorado. Marina del Rey, California, in 2004, her says. “I believe that if this had not hap- Berlin’s stories often feature a first- fans were ardent, but few in number, pened I would have grown up to be not person protagonist based on herself, perhaps because she wrote short stories just neurotic, alcoholic, and insecure, but frequently named Lucia, a woman who is and published her six collections with seriously disturbed. Wacko.” perpetually seeking community and finds small presses. Her final three books After World War II, Berlin’s family it in unexpected places. At a Catholic appeared under the imprint of Black moved to Santiago, Chile, where her school Berlin attended, the other children Sparrow Press, a California publisher father oversaw mines and the family’s shunned her because of her awkwardness known for featuring legendary outsiders fortunes soared. The teenage Berlin lived and the back brace she wore for severe like Charles Bukowski and John Fante. like a debutante, attending balls; her scoliosis. She found acceptance among Berlin’s work is at least the equal of first cigarette was lit by Prince Aly Khan, the nuns in the kitchen during recess. In theirs. the third husband of Rita Hayworth. “Stars and Saints,” the narrator helps the a Manual for Cleaning Berlin’s admirers have long worked She often uses this period of her life as a nuns remove dead mice from traps and to keep her writing in front of readers, moving contrast to grittier moments. The in return is allowed to linger with them. Women and now, Farrar, Straus and Giroux has prince appears briefly in the bittersweet “And the nuns were so pleased they Lucia Berlin published a posthumous selection of her “Angel’s Laundromat,” a story about a didn’t say anything about me being in the 432 pages, work, A Manual for Cleaning Women, striking Jicarilla Apache the narrator kitchen, except one of them did whisper hardcover: $26. that demonstrates her mastery of the meets at a down-and-out Albuquerque ‘Protestant’ to another one.” Farrar, Straus and Giroux, short story form. Berlin’s stories, many Laundromat, where they recognize the As Berlin’s protagonists grow up, they 2015. of them semi-autobiographical, create indelible portraits of 20th century Western communities, generally seen from the bottom up, through the eyes of people on the margins — neglected children in mining camps, alcoholics on the streets of Oakland, and Mexican im- migrant patients at subsidized medical clinics. Describing the subjects of Berlin’s stories can make her sound like a con- noisseur of misery — but in fact, beauty, grace and humor are the resonant notes in her work, no matter how many minor chords she plays to achieve them. Take, for example, this scene from “Emergency Room Notebook 1977,” in which the narrator sits on a bus with a blind man whose wife has just died. “He was very funny, describing his new, messy roommate at the Hilltop House for the Blind. I couldn’t imagine how he could know his roommate was messy, but then I could and told him my Marx Brothers idea of two blind roommates — shaving cream on the spaghetti, slipping on spilled stuffaroni, etc. We laughed and were silent, holding hands … from Pleasant Val- ley to Alcatraz Avenue. He cried, softly. My tears were for my own loneliness, my own blindness.” Born in Alaska in 1936, Berlin grew up in mining camps in Idaho, Montana and Washington. Much like a character in one of her own stories, she spent her signs of alcoholism in each other and plunge into romances, experience heart- Lucia Berlin in childhood “moving too often to make a simply abide with one another while break, job loss, alcoholism and mother- Albuquerque, friend.” While Berlin’s father served in their laundry churns. hood, and find themselves tossed into New Mexico, World War II, she lived with her grand- Berlin began studying at the Uni- new communities. The narrator in “An- in 1963. Prince father, a respected but alcoholic dentist versity of New Mexico in 1955, where gel’s Laundromat” says wryly, “Anybody Aly Khan, the in El Paso. Berlin’s mother was also an she married a sculptor and had two sons says he knows just how someone else third husband of Rita Hayworth, alcoholic — a heartless woman, whose before her husband left her. She mar- feels is a fool,” but Berlin lived so many lit Berlin’s first memory haunts her daughter’s stories. ried and divorced two more times, had different lives that she could evoke the cigarette when she Berlin spent her life searching for and at two more sons with her third husband, authentic feelings of a tremendous range lived in Chile. times creating communities that would and raised her four boys while working of people. Her insights mark her not as a Buddy BerLin/Literary give her the love and acceptance she a variety of jobs, frequently teaching or fool, but as a seer, a singular observer of eState oF Lucia BerLin LP lacked at home. At one point, she lived working in hospitals or medical offices. the human experience who deserves to be near a Syrian family in El Paso. They be- In 1994, Berlin moved to Boulder, where read for generations to come. came the inspiration for the family in her she became a beloved and influential By Jenny ShanK

www.hcn.org High Country News 31 BOOKS

Sometimes, the best new books don’t The human cost seem that new after all. Perhaps a storyline, or the cadence of the language, of Westward or the cast of characters feels slightly familiar — not because it’s derivative, but expansion because it’s a seamless part of a long and laudable tradition. Spokane-based writer Shann Ray’s first full-length novel, American Copper, is one such book. Rather than diminish or be diminished by any of the similar voices that have come before — in particular Cormac Mc- Carthy and A.B. Guthrie — Ray’s prose proves a deft and distinctive addition american Copper to the iconic literature of the American Shann ray West. 302 pages, At its heart, American Copper is a softcover: $16. classic story of Westward expansion. unbridled Books, Set in Montana at the turn of the 20th november. century, it contains all of the conventional dichotomies: Cowboys versus Indians, progress versus tradition, nature versus industry, man versus woman. Ray weaves together the lives of the three protagonists — the smart, beautiful daughter of a copper baron, a giant, lonesome bar-fighter, and a Cheyenne rodeo star — with a meandering sense of inevitability; like the deep current in a river, we can feel the story moving steadily along, but we can’t see far enough around the bends Five acre GeoGraPhic

Thank you, artists and HIGH COUNTRY NEWS bidders, for making our second art auction a great success! Because of generous contributions and bidding, we raised just over $11,000 for the AUCTION Research Fund.

HCN’S 2015 ART AUCTION CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS: Lisa Autio Thomas Gifford Jodi Peterson Eric BakerartSarah Gilman Patricia Priebe-Swanson Jerry Cagle Marlin Greene Jim Rosenau Isa Catto Gary Hall George Sells Gloria Charles Kathryn Hannay Red Smith Brian Cobble Starr Teri Havens Mark Cooney Theo Stroomer Susie Kaldis Lowe William Cross JT Thomas Jane Culp Chris Kannen Richard Van Reyper Ben Eastman Rosada Martin Brooke Warren Michael Ehlers Holly McClelland Suze Woolf Shane Ernest JoAnn Moon Rick Young Richard Fox Randy Osga Wren Zimmerman

32 High Country News September 14, 2015 The implications of emptiness and eddies to guess where it will end. On the surface, California author Ruth feel dirtied by the present, inflicted with Ray is a poet at heart and a profes- Galm’s debut novel Into the Valley is a nameless unease and an urgent desire sor of reconciliation and forgiveness a sidelong, Didion-esque glance into a to escape: “She wanted only to get away, studies by trade, and the influence of 30-something woman’s unaccountable to start over, to undo something that both is clearly apparent in this novel. unraveling. Beneath the surface, it is seemed to bind her. She wanted only to He writes with grace, not just in his skillfully whispered social commentary. find a calm quiet place to breathe.” language but in his careful and percep- Caught between the counterculture Into the Valley is highly visual, tive handling of history, race, gender of late 1960s San Francisco and her suspenseful and appropriately grim, set and culture as well. In many ways, this mother’s conservative past, B. (as the in a landscape where spent sunflowers is the story of the West’s often unheard main character calls herself) is inflicted look “like a mass of defeated people.” or overlooked voices. His prose is delib- with a strange malaise, one she calls Even if B. is traveling with no destina- erate and measured, at times vaguely “the carsickness,” which can only be tion, Galm’s prose knows exactly where archaic. Each moment is distilled, lyri- soothed by cashing counterfeit checks. In it’s going. Crisp and clear, it touches cal and rich with insight: “(He) contem- desperation, B. drives aimlessly through down lightly, like a small stone bound- Into the Valley plated his will to live, where it came the Central Valley, hoping that “its bare- ing down a scree slope. “No part of the ruth Galm from and who shepherds the living and ness would reveal something, provide an crocus came inside her, touched her in 264 pages, the dead. Winter set in like the teeth of answer she had failed to acquire.” any way.” Showy, but without extrane- hardcover: $25. a badger. His life seemed to walk away The premise of Into the Valley does ous scenes or details, Into the Valley is a Soho Press, 2015. from him.” more than provide a pleasing nostalgia. solid, muscular piece of writing. In the hands of a less adept story- (Ask yourself, when was the last time In the end, Galm brings us back to teller, this could just be another tale of you wrote a physical check?) Galm’s B. the ’60s to show us how dystopian our horses and violence, ruthless industri- finds comfort in bank lobbies, “the right present age is. The novel succeeds not alists and rodeos, wide-open spaces and angles of the teller windows, the teller’s by being a flashback to “the good old lawless towns and damsels in distress. movements like a soothing port de bras.” days,” but by being a hard-eyed look But Ray brings to his writing a sensi- These precise, clean moments give her into the mirror of today: the impersonal bility and sensitivity that elevates the a “cool expansive feeling” and are set nature of technology, our estrangement story just enough; it’s still a Western, against the repeated mention of dirty from the natural world, and the psychic yes, but it’s a Western with a brain. fingernails and unwashed hair — the consequences these things produce, even physical manifestations of B.’s mental if we don’t realize it. By MelISSa MylChreeSt deterioration. Galm, without ever directly saying so, is asking us if we, too, don’t By CharleS FInn

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www.hcn.org High Country News 33 BOOKS Brooke Warren Brooke Wilderness redefined and defended You’re hiking alone along a steep switch- Mark carves out a fine distinction mystery in the world. back trail in Washington’s Olympic between inadvertent influence caused by Both base their arguments for non- Mountains, when suddenly you turn a factors like climate change and inten- intervention in part on the notion that corner and see a massive mountain goat, tional control. He offers a heartfelt ode as the world changes, it is nature — not its black eyes trained upon you. A few to the continued importance of nonin- human beings — that will figure out how years ago, a goat attacked and killed tervention in wilderness areas, even if to adapt. By killing non-natives, plant- a man in this very park, and, at the doing so leads to unrecognizably changed ing disease-resistant trees or shooting thought, a trickle of sweat wends its way landscapes. We should resist the temp- invasive barred owls to save spotted ones, from your hairline to your collar. The goat tation to help, he says, no matter the they say, we may inadvertently prevent is still looking at you. Then you remem- consequences. “The pika may perish,” the species-level evolution and ecosys- ber that mountain goats aren’t native to he writes. “The Arctic fox might slip into tem-level re-sorting that help create more these mountains, meaning that both it the great void of extinction. Places we’ve resilient natural landscapes. and you are relative newcomers here. But known and loved … may become unrec- Pearce uses science to bolster his does that — should that — knowledge do ognizable to us.” case, picking apart the surprisingly thin Satellites in the hhighigh anything to diminish the wildness of this British journalist Fred Pearce takes evidence that non-natives cause last- Country: Searching for encounter? a surprisingly similar stance in The New ing harm, except in a few cases (like the the Wild in the age Congress has the power to designate Wild, although rather than despairing at brown tree snake, which has destroyed of Man wilderness areas, but every wilder- the resulting changes, he sees them as most of Guam’s native birds). Mark’s Jason Mark ness lover has his or her own definition exciting. We live, he believes, during a arguments have a more ethical, spiritual 256 pages, of “wild.” A few purists would see the dynamic time in our planet’s history. He and emotional flavor. Wilderness and hardcover: $28. non-native goat as a deal-breaker, but delights in tweaking the noses of those wildness, he declares, are very good for increasingly, many people define wilder- who despise so-called “invasive species.” the human soul. He says little about non- island Press, 2015. ness regardless of whether a particular For him, that doesn’t restore wildness natives, but notes that he considers those landscape is “pristine,” or occupied by but rather reduces it in a futile attempt introduced Olympic mountain goats to native or non-native species. Instead, to freeze nature in time. His “new wild” be indisputably wild, in part because as they see wilderness simply as places is a mash-up of natives and exotics that fierce, “feral” beasts, they are capable of that humans aren’t currently managing, vigorously adapt to climate change, pol- killing us. whether it’s a remote mountain range or lution and incoming species without our The two writers’ arguments for letting just an overlooked patch of pine trees by assistance. Conservationists should em- nature take care of itself are compelling the railroad tracks. And this is true both brace such landscapes, from abandoned and make interesting back-to-back read- of passionate, old-style wilderness lovers industrial sites covered in plants that ing. But there’s one aspect of both books and of pragmatic, technophile greenies, thrive on metallic soils to second-growth that will alienate many readers: Both as clearly evidenced by two new books. tropical rainforest. We should be, he authors accept extinction as inevitable, Ecologists have known for gen- argues, “supporting the new, rather than to a certain extent. And many environ- erations that no place, no matter how always spending time and money in a mentalists will find it hard to accept that remote, is absolutely free of human doomed attempt to preserve the old.” an abstract notion of resilient wildness thethe newnew Wild: Why fingerprints. We tend to notice the Both Pearce, the technology-loving is more important than, say, the survival Invasive Species Will Be obvious signs: the traces of an old road, pragmatic environmentalist, and Mark, of the Arctic fox. As Mark says, hewing or perhaps — as Earth Island Journal the traditional wilderness lover, agree: to a policy of nonintervention as ecosys- nature’s Salvation editor Jason Mark describes in his new Even in a world of overwhelming human tems change and species wink out “will Fred Pearce book, Satellites in the High Country — a influence, we shouldn’t intrude on every require an emotional fortitude to which 272 pages, bright blue cooler washed up on a beach landscape with our well-intentioned we are unaccustomed, an almost Bud- hardcover: $32. in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. sprays and shovels, poisoning weeds and dhist sort of nonattachment.” We should Beacon Press, 2015. But increasingly, our warming climate is relocating species. Both writers argue rather restrict our emotional engagement changing ecosystems that humans have for keeping some places uncontrolled, to immediate and instinctive experiences never visited. Either we accept a certain unmanaged — wild, in perhaps the in the wilderness itself, whether that be amount of human influence, or we’ll run simplest sense of the word — as an arena awe, reverence, or — in the case of com- out of wilderness altogether. “Forget for undirected evolution, as a traditional ing face-to-face a mountain goat — naked untouched,” Mark writes. “What matters conservation practice, and as a good way fear. now is whether a place is uncontrolled.” to practice humility and retain essential By eMMa MarrIS

34 High Country News September 14, 2015 eSSay | By MIChael engelhard Notes from the road to bestsellerdom e pulled up at the Eagle River Nature Center north tried to remedy that, I looked like a sunglassed Mafioso. With of Anchorage — a large but cozy log cabin on grounds each frigid gust from the sliding doors, the poster of my book’s sparkling with snow — happy to have escaped the cover swiveled on its stand, causing the printed grizzly to scan Wcity’s traffic. Inside, a dozen scruffy bird-lovers waited to hear the room as if in search of prey. The store did not allow raptors, me read from an anthology of wildlife stories I’d just had pub- and I felt lonely without a feathered companion. lished. I’d chosen to share one contributor’s essay about “Gan- At our next-to-last stop, a bookstore-cum-café, the manager dalf the Grey,” an injured great gray owl from a raptor reha- expected a signing, not a reading. There were no extra chairs, bilitation center, who visited classrooms as an education bird. and I found myself separated from the birds and their handlers A handler with a different owl perched on her fist stood next to by a shelf full of gewgaws. In a last-ditch bid for attention, I re- me as I unboxed signed copies of the book. “When do we get to arranged some books on a shelf, placing my brainchild between touch the owl?” a kid piped up when I opened the floor for ques- two local bestsellers, hoping to profit by proximity. tions after the reading. But the bird was not in a petting mood. After two hours of signing, or rather non-signing, I had sold Halfway through the presentation, it had noticed a stuffed eagle five books total — four of them to the bird handlers. with fully spread wings, mounted below the cabin ceiling. It had Descending into Fairbanks, red-eyed from driving all night gone into a frenzy, diving off the handler’s leather glove, flap- through a blizzard, I reviewed the trip in my mind. Sales had ping wildly upside down on its leash. The handler finally put the been slim, our earnings almost devoured by the cost of gas. Yet I bird back in its cage. hoped that our stories would touch someone’s life, somewhere. I later heard from a friend who used my own essay from the book to teach nature writing to students in China, and I touring authors are encouraged to play wondered what they made of mountain goats stranded at sea Indian flutes, tap-dance, juggle their books level — how did these creatures quicken in their imaginations? Strangely, my words had traveled farther than I did, spiraling blindfolded, or at least behave unexpectedly, ever outward, released from my care like bold salvaged birds. even outrageously. Owls from the I had planned this book tour like a field marshal plans a mili- Alaska WildBird tary campaign. A four-day Book Blitz South would target eight Rehabilitation Center accompanied locations in the Anchorage and Mat-Su area; the nature center Engelhard on his book was our last stop before heading back home to Fairbanks. Fliers tour. Sean hoyer had been printed and hung, emails and press kits distributed, and the events listed in newspapers and online. My girlfriend, the book’s designer, acted as liaison, trip photographer, finance offi- cer, driver, quartermaster and motivational coach rolled into one. Long ago, I realized that words alone rarely draw crowds any more, unless you’re a politician. Touring authors are encouraged to play Indian flutes, tap-dance, juggle their books blindfolded, or at least behave unexpectedly, even outrageously. Teaming up with falcons and owls from the rehab center was supposed to benefit everybody involved; we could all use the publicity. When we first rolled into Anchorage, thousands of animal lovers thronged the streets. Alas, they were there to see dogs, not us: I had forgotten that the Book Blitz weekend coincided with the Iditarod, the world’s most prestigious sled dog race. Still, I hoped that a trickledown from the human surge would reach some bookstores. The luncheon at a posh hotel seemed like an auspicious beginning. The audience of gray-haired, well-dressed journal- ists looked as if they could tell coq au vin from bouillabaisse. My choice of reading — an essay rejected by Gourmet, about a friend who feeds his family on roadkill — elicited gasps, eye- rolls and even chuckles, but probably did not help with selling the book. Our next stop, the museum, was being renovated, and foot traffic through the bare lobby, behind the owl’s back, made the bird nervous and incontinent. At the artsy café, with my voice beginning to sound like a raven’s, I struggled to be heard over the hissing espresso machine and coffee grinder. The Barnes & Noble manager gave me a prime spot at a table facing the entrance, where I could make eye contact with customers as they entered. Light from the low-angle sun made me squint, though, so I resembled a shortsighted bookworm more than a sharp-eyed wilderness guide and auteur. When I

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heard arOUnd the WeSt | By BetSy MarStOn

ariZona covering 438 square miles, known as Don’t get the big head, Big Ditch: Some the Okanogan Complex, were burning recent visitors have complained on Yelp near the town of Omak, Washington, and TripAdvisor that the Grand Canyon as August ended, and more than 1,000 is really not all that grand. The Arizona firefighters were on fire lines, with crews Star compiled some of the more jaundiced coming to help from as far as Australia online reviews, including this one from and New Zealand. And “only 100 miles Jorbi P. of Somerville, Massachusetts, is under control,” reports the U.S. edition who jeered, “Whoopity do, Grand Can- of the U.K. Guardian newspaper. Yet yon. You were caused by erosion. You an unlikely concrete dome just outside don’t have the coasters or dippin’ dots. of Omak, which was turned into living Jeesh, can you say over-rated?” Barry quarters 15 years ago, lived up to its G. of Seattle said the same in fewer reputation as fireproof, surviving a fire words: “Ehh. I’ve seen better.” Paul B., surge with flames more than 12 feet high. location unknown, complained that he’d Homeowner John Belles said he hosed been “dragged here by the missus when everything down that he could, including I should have been playing golf. It’s just himself. Once the flames got to within a hole in the ground.” A woman from At- 50 yards, however, “there was nothing lanta, Georgia, who goes by Iamtravelin- I could do.” So he shut himself in the pam, had a different beef, based on her dome and waited. It got incredibly hot desire never to leave her car: “They’ve neW MeXico Ride ’em, deerboy! in there, he said, and the fire destroyed built so many buildings that they’ve sto- curtiS thoMSon and MoLLy MaGnuSon the electrical junction box, but the dome len all the beautiful views from the road.” — and its owner — survived unscathed. Shane H. of Oakland, California, noting Meanwhile, thousands of people have the discernment of “yelpers,” lowered his terra Parks and Resorts, one person wrote, “Our been forced out of their homes, and the rating of the canyon from one and a half to just visit was wonderful but we never saw any bears. smoke is so thick that drivers have to use their one star after judging it “more like Mediocre Please train your bears to be where guests can headlights during the day. Matt Reidy, a former Canyon.” But Boston resident Frenchie takes see them. This was an expensive trip to not get Forest Service ranger now working as a fire the cake for being blasé: “(Grand Canyon) is to see bears.” incident commander, recounted how he found about as disappointing as my trip to the Taj a young couple still in their house on Salmon Mahal and Great Wall of China.” John Wesley aLaSka Creek Road. They had no clue that flames were Powell, who led the first recorded trip down the If only those disappointed Yellowstone tourists advancing toward them, hidden by a ridge. Colorado River in 1869, had a slightly different had traveled to Haines, Alaska, on the Chilkoot When Reidy told them to run, “they picked up view, though some people today would likely River, they might have seen “a man who donned their belongings, just what they could hold, knock him for seeming to gush: “The elements a fairly realistic bear costume,” reports The threw it in their car and they left. … Within that unite to make the Grand Canyon the most Associated Press. It was not clear what the minutes the house was engulfed.” Reidy said he sublime spectacle in nature are multifarious and ursine imitator hoped to accomplish by run- was amazed at the intensity and height of the exceedingly diverse. You cannot see the Grand ning around, and jumping up and down, though home-devouring flames, which were whipped Canyon in one view, as if it were a changeless he did get within three feet or so of a sow and up by winds of over 35 miles per hour. As for his spectacle from which a curtain might be lifted, bear cubs that were gorging on salmon. Before own family in Omak, Reidy said that this sum- but to see it, you have to toil from month to anyone could detain him, the man drove off, still mer’s fires have forced them to evacuate three month through its labyrinths.” wearing his big bear head. Unexplained as well times. was the comment by Alaska Trooper Megan the WeSt Peters: “This is not the first time we’ve encoun- WEB EXTRA For more from heard around the West, see Yet again, the natural world came up short, much tered a man in a bear suit.” hcn.org. to the disappointment of tourists to Yellowstone tips and photos of Western oddities are appreciated and National Park, reports the Missoulian. Com- the WeSt often shared in this column. Write [email protected] or tag menting on a visitor survey provided by Xan- The numbers are staggering: Five major wildfires photos #heardaroundthewest on instagram.

High The abiding lesson I have learned from swimming Country is simple: As the rivers, lakes and oceans go — News “ For people who care about the West. so do we. We are the water. High Country News covers the important issues and Matthew L. Moseley, in his essay, “Swimming through Canyonlands – a first,” stories that are unique to the American West with a from Writers on the” Range, hcn.org/wotr magazine, a weekly column service, books and a website, hcn.org. For editorial comments or questions, write High Country News, P.O. Box 1090, Paonia, CO 81428 or [email protected], or call 970-527-4898.

36 High Country News September 14, 2015