Reimagining Landscapes Through Barry Lopez's

THE EFFECTS OF LITERATURE AS A GUIDEBOOK:

REIMAGINING LANDSCAPES THROUGH BARRY LOPEZ’S DESERT NOTES

Samuel T. Gabriels

A Thesis Presented to

The Faculty of Humboldt State University

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree

Master of Arts in English: Literary and Cultural Studies

Committee Membership

Dr. Mary Ann Creadon, Committee Chair

Dr. Corey Lewis, Committee Member

Dr. Janet Winston, Graduate Coordinator

December 2015

ABSTRACT

THE EFFECTS OF LITERATURE AS A GUIDEBOOK: REIMAGINING LANDSCAPES THROUGH BARRY LOPEZ’S DESERT NOTES

Samuel T. Gabriels

In “The American Geographies,” Barry Lopez characterizes the Western world’s exploitation of the environment as due to its superficial "knowledge of the real dimensions of the land it occupies." In my thesis, I analyze how Lopez utilizes unique narrative forms and multiperspectival approaches to offer his audience a space to reverse this predicament. By tracking his use of these literary devices, I illustrate how Lopez brings the landscape to the foreground as both his story's reality and a metaphor for the reader's landscape to guide them towards refamiliarizing themselves with each.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT ...... 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS ...... 3 FOREWORD ...... 4 INTRODUCTION ...... 6 THE SEMINAL YEARS ...... 11 POWER OF STORY ...... 24 THE GREAT AMERICAN DESERT AS WILDERNESS...... 35 The Great American Desert Myth ...... 37 The Garden Myth ...... 40 DESERT NOTES: A GUIDEBOOK ...... 49 Charles Darwin’s Epigraph ...... 57 “Introduction”...... 59 “Desert Notes”...... 64 “The Hot Spring” ...... 70 “The Raven” ...... 75 “Twilight”...... 83 “Perimeter” ...... 93 “The Blue Mound People” ...... 105 “Conversation” ...... 110 “The School” ...... 115

“The Wind” ...... 120 “Coyote and Rattlesnake” ...... 127 “Directions” ...... 138 CONCLUSION: THE EFFECTS OF LITERATURE AS A GUIDEBOOK ...... 147 REFERENCES ...... 152

FOREWORD

Barry Lopez’s writings were introduced to me when I was very young, at a time when I could not have imagined the effect they would have on me. When I was only

fourteen, my father handed me his dusty hardcover copy of Desert Notes: Reflections in

the Eye of a Raven, a thin collection of short stories accompanied by several

monochromatic photos. Quickly flipping through the pages, only pausing shortly to

glance at the pictures, I, the stubborn son that I was, tossed the book aside and refused to

give it any more of a chance. Several years later, however, quietly and without telling my

father that I was taking his copy, I began to read the collection of short stories.

Having grown up in the Adirondack Mountains of New York, the concept of the

desert was an exotically desolate place for me; I would never have contemplated going to a land where there were no looming pines, a promise of snow, or an abundance of water.

But, that second time when I picked up the book, something captured my imagination. To

start, it was the color photo on the front cover: a lone wooden rocking chair with its shadow stretched out beside it, waiting to be filled so that one could sit at the edge of the expansive aridness and look across to the hills that place a finality on the seemingly infinite.

It was this picture, and possibly the sense of defiance this book represented,

which had me open it. Reading the stories rather hastily, I finished the eighty-nine pages

in a day, only to begin reading the stories once again, this time more deliberately. It was

the metaphors and the inordinate amount of detail that Lopez provides about

encountering the landscape of the desert that captured me. His poetic verse delivered a

profound experience of what I had assumed to be an unapproachable landscape. It was

then that my attitude towards the desert stood transformed. Still a land of desolation, it

had promise, it had meaning, and it contained a life of its own.

That very same year, I was blessed enough to travel and hike through the vast

expanses of the deserts that make up the Southwest. Camping under the stars, hiking

through dunes, red rocks, and expansive dry lakebeds, I became acquainted with the

diversity of the desert. Reminiscing, I now see that Lopez’s prose inspired me to reassess

my conception of the desert landscape in which I was traveling. His writing style

revealed how a story could have me reimagine my conception of a landscape. Following

these revelations, I came to cultivate a harmonious relationship with landscapes and

yearned wherever I went to revere the intricate mysteries that each landscape had to offer.

INTRODUCTION

“When human beings lose their connection to nature, to heaven and earth, then they do not know how to nurture their environment or how to rule their world—which is saying the same thing. From that perspective, healing our society goes hand in hand with healing our personal, elemental connection with the phenomenal world” (Trungpa 101). I begin with these spiritual words from the Buddhist, Chogyam Trungpa, not only to offer a relevant thought that addresses the environmental crisis that is a plight of our planet today, but also to introduce a key concept of this paper. Marc Bekoff, a trained biologist and ecologist, reiterates this spiritual idea when he states that “as we unwild [become defamiliarized with the phenomenal world], we lose compassion and empathy for other beings and for nature as a whole” (35). Both of these thoughts are recapped within the book The Environmental Imagination when Lawrence Buell contends that today’s

“environmental crisis involves a crisis of the imagination the amelioration of which depends on finding better ways of imagining nature and humanity’s relation to it” (2).

Furthermore, it is Barry Lopez’s similar conviction that “the more superficial a society’s knowledge of the real dimension of the land it occupies, the more vulnerable the land is to exploitation, manipulation for short-term gain” (“The American Geographies” 62).

This concept illustrates the inspiration for Barry Lopez’s writings and validates his pursuit to refamiliarize his audience with a landscape.

Within his essay “Landscape and Narrative,” Lopez personally articulates the

potential for a story to address and reverse society’s estrangement from the phenomenal

world. As he does this, he simultaneously depicts the key function of the majority of his

writing: “[i]nherent in story is the power to reorder a state of psychological confusion

through contact with the pervasive truth of those relationships we call ‘the land’”

(Crossing Open Ground 68). With this paper, I wish to explore the manner by which

Barry Lopez’s collection of short stories, Desert Notes, came to have such an effect on

me as a reader. At the same time, I investigate the means by which Lopeze uses both a

blend of narrative forms and multiperspectival approach in his stories, both of which

allow him to create a space where his readers may reimagine themselves back to a

harmonious reengagement and enchantment with the phenomenal world. Thus attaining a

comparable outlook on landscapes to the one that was cultivated in Lopez at an early age.

While Lopez draws details directly from the desert landscape, his stories transcend the

physical setting and create a space where the reader can begin to refamiliarize themselves

with their own surrounding landscapes.

Before I begin, however, I wish first to define my usage of the word landscape.

While the Oxford Dictionary defines the word as “all visible features of an area of countryside or land,” I find this definition limiting and wish to expand it. In her essay

“Landscape, History, and the Pueblo Imagination” Leslie Marmon Silko begins to touch upon the limiting aspects of the definition of landscape:

So long as human consciousness remains within the hills, canyons, cliffs,

and the plants, clouds, and sky, the term landscape, as it has entered the

English language, is misleading. ‘A portion of territory the eye can

comprehend in a single view’ does not correctly describe the relationship

between the human being and his or her surroundings. (Silko 84)

I agree with Silko and I am inclined to be inclusive of all features of an area of land that

through a relationship with their surroundings, one can perceive. With this in mind, I

wish for my use of the term landscape to encompass those features discerned through

what psychologists define as one’s exteroceptive and interoceptive senses, along with

those features that may be recognized on a spiritual level. By this definition,

exteroceptive senses include the traditional five senses: sight, hearing, touch, smell, and

taste. In addition to the five basic senses, I wish to include thermoception (temperature

difference), magnetoception (direction), nociception (pain), equilibrioception (balance),

and proprioception (a sense of the position and movement of the parts of one’s body) as

well. Interoceptive senses are senses that perceive sensations in all internal organs; an

example of this would be how one might perceive the level of elevation they are at

through a shortness of breath.

Alongside these features that can be discerned through the exteroceptive and

interoceptive senses, I would like to suggest the inclusion of those facets of land that one might perceive on a spiritual level. Although an abstract concept, the idea of spiritual

perception is drawn from the school of bioregionalism. Jim Dodge expanded on the then

limited definition of a bioregion in 1981, arguing that “a central element of

bioregionalism—and one that distinguishes it from similar politics of place—is the

importance given to natural systems, both as the source of physical nutrition and as the

body of metaphors from which our spirits draw sustenance" (Dodge 341). These

characteristics of the land, which Dodge refers to as providing our spirits with sustenance, are what I wish to include in my expansion of the Oxford Dictionary’s definition of the word landscape. Furthermore, I wish for the term landscape not only to be bound to the idea of the countryside or pastoral land but to also include land that has been managed or altered by mankind. To distinguish between specific landscapes, I will refer to them either as managed landscapes, unmanaged landscapes, or by the definitive

type of landscape. Once we recognize landscape not just as a visually perceived entity, it

gains intrinsic value and viability worth our stewardship: “New languages have the power

to create a new reality” (Lakoff 145). In the same fashion that I encourage an inherent

reverence for landscapes through the use of an all-inclusive definition, Lopez guides his

audience towards the recognition of each sensorial and spiritual characteristic throughout

his collection of short stories. This is accomplished through both Lopez’s use of the

narrator as well as by constructing a union between his readers’ interior landscapes with

the stories’ exterior landscape. Both of these methods will be further developed later in

this paper.

The first section of this paper has three parts that will provide background to my

analysis of the work, Desert Notes. I first introduce several aspects of Barry Lopez’s life

that led him to cultivate his deep connection to the land, a connection that has influenced

his writing style for nearly four decades and inspires him to write in a manner that assists

his readers in refamiliarizing themselves with the phenomenal world. In the second part, I

investigate Lopez’s philosophical undercurrents, which illustrate his faith in the power of

story to enact such a change in his audience. Thirdly, I proceed with the exploration of

the literary history of the American desert, so as to affirm how Lopez, by metaphorically

addressing the most symbolically unapproachable American landscape, can provide a

space where his readers may reimagine their connection to their own surrounding

landscape. In the second major part of this paper, I analyze Lopez’s experimentation with

narrative forms and multiperspectival approaches for creating a guidebook for his readers to follow, so that they may begin to refamiliarize themselves with the phenomenal world and begin to reverse humanity’s blind exploitation of the natural world.

THE SEMINAL YEARS

Barry Holstun Brennan was born in a small hospital on January 6, 1945, to John

Brennan and Mary Holstun in Port Chester, New York where he lived until he was three.

Although Barry Lopez remembers very little of this part of his life, there are a few

distinct memories. John Tallmadge, an essayist and biographer, relays a conversation he

had with Lopez, stating that “some of Lopez’s earliest landscape memories involve

wading into Long Island Sound as a three-year-old, drawn by the light and space out on the water” (Newell 69). This very fascination with detail and light remains in Lopez’s work to this day, able to be seen in both his prose and photography. His family continued to live in New York, until the birth of their second son, Dennis Patrick Brennan. After the birth, the family moved to Reseda, California, a small suburb just north of Los Angeles in the San Fernando Valley.

The family lived in the suburbs until, unfortunately, four years later John Brennan

left California, abandoned his family, and moved to Miami, Florida. Following this event

Mary Holstun was forced to move to more affordable housing and balance numerous

jobs, all while raising her boys. Working as a home economics teacher in several junior

high schools in the San Fernando Valley and at Pierce Junior College in Woodland Hills,

as well as working at home as a dressmaker for several private clients, she somehow

found time to take her two sons on vacation trips to the Mojave Desert, Tijuana, and

regularly to Zuma, Pismo, and other southern California beaches.

In addition to their numerous vacations, the brothers spent a portion of a summer

at a camp on Big Bear Lake in the California Sierras and a part of another at the Grand

Canyon, staying with a young park ranger and his wife. These formative experiences

would act as a catalyst for Barry Holstun Brennan’s development of a sense of wonderment and allegiance to his natural surroundings: “I grew up in rural Southern

California with an intense exposure to the natural world, to light and wind and ocean and desert landscapes. The experience welled up in me in a way that was profoundly emotional. It was fundamental to the shaping of my psyche” (Newell 32). He exemplifies the impact of these experiences in an interview with Kenneth Margolis as he speaks of his childhood trip to the Grand Canyon:

I first felt what we could call “a state of awe,” moments of

recognizing a metaphysical dimension in landscapes, when I was

six or seven years old…being awestruck about everything that was

around me, the richness—the smells, the tackiness of ponderosa

sap, the tenacity of wildflowers, those little ear tufts on the Kaibab

squirrels—the spatial depth. The first mountain lion I saw was in

the Grand Canyon, and it was an incident that went to the floor of

my heart. If, in your words, social issues and the conservation of

the natural world are a kind of subtext in what I am doing, then I

would call those things the subtext of my life. (Margolis 3)

While these experiences clearly had influence over Lopez’s relationship with the natural

landscape, he also attributes his time in nature as directly impacting his stylistic choices

in his early fictions. He explains this influence as a “fictive impulse,” and a “particular kind of heightened realism which is rooted in my childhood in California” (Newell 24).

Although a highly revelatory and inspirational time in his life, it would come to an unexpected end with the second marriage of his mother.

In the year 1955, Mary Holstun married Adrian Bernard Lopez, a businessman

from Manhattan, who vacationed in Southern California. The next year Adrian Lopez adopted her two boys, and the Lopez family moved from Reseda, California back to New

York, this time to live in Adrian Lopez’s penthouse apartment in the Murray Hill section of Manhattan. Both boys attended Loyola, a private Manhattan-based Jesuit school for boys. During his time in school, Barry Lopez became interested in the intellectual culture that New York City offered so readily, which led him away from his ventures into nature.

Lopez began reading profusely, visiting museums, and attending debutante balls instead

(Newell 70). Reflecting back, Lopez has commented that his time in New York was an

important component of his life, explaining that it was “a very good education, with an

exposure in the States and Europe to a lot of art and architecture, to history and languages

and theater” (Newell 33). He explains that his time growing up in New York City and

California still has great influence over him: “It’s those two elements that so often come

together in my work. I believe the environment, the landscape itself, the color and shape

and line around you, affects you emotionally. It creates context for human drama” (33).

After a year of living in Manhattan and living in the city environment, the Lopez family

began renting vacation homes up and down the New York and New Jersey coast, only to

buy a second beachfront house in the town of Bay Head, New Jersey in 1963. Mary

Lopez continued to nurture her boy’s fascination with the natural environment through

these vacations to the coast and the time she spent with them at their beachfront house.

This instilled fascination would later come to inspire Lopez to impart to his readers a

similar sense of wonderment and connection, so as to reverse their prevailing

estrangement from and objectification of nature.

After Barry’s graduation from high school in 1962, the Lopez brothers and a few

other students from Loyola trekked across Europe for eight weeks. Traveling by public

transportation everywhere, Lopez found himself soaking up the various cultures and

learning all that he could from his travels, including from the beautiful European

landscapes. When they got back, Lopez promptly continued his Roman Catholic

upbringing by enrolling at the University of Notre Dame in the fall. In his first semester,

Lopez declared a major in aeronautical engineering, only to switch to communication arts the next semester. Due to his indecisiveness, in the summer between his freshman and

sophomore years, Lopez had to make up work at New York University, taking courses in

history and English.

Having lost part of his summer to classes, and having recently obtained his driver's license, Lopez began to shift away from his involvement in the university setting.

Falling out of the habit of daily Mass and of playing organized sports, as well as going against school regulations, he and his roommate would sneak off campus to take road trips instead. Every weekend they would take trips, traveling to West Virginia, northern

Minnesota, the southern tip of Mississippi, and as far west as Missouri. These trips sparked Lopez’s creativity, and it was during this time that he began to dabble in writing short stories, working as a technician and actor in the theater program, and fine tuning his photography skills.

The next summer, the Lopez brothers took a six thousand mile road trip across the

United States and Canada, during which they visited old friends in Reseda, California,

and worked as ranch hands in Wyoming. While working there Lopez fell for the

Wyoming countryside and the hard work that came with working on a ranch, so much so

that the very next June he drove back out to Wyoming to work as a horse wrangler until

he returned to Notre Dame for his senior year. These two summers in Wyoming would

inspire his writings. Lopez comments on the influence the summers had over his stories

in an interview: “those two summers I spent wrangling horses in Wyoming. It is part of

the foundation for Crow and Weasel, it’s in ‘Stolen Horses.’ These narratives are the

reifications of what I imagined when I was nineteen or twenty, working on that dude

ranch” (Tydeman 92). These experiences would both influence his writings later on and

inspire him to write environmentally political short stories as early as his senior year in university.

But many of these short stories were kept hidden by Lopez until his final year in

school, when his roommate, an editor of the Roman Catholic weekly magazine Ave

Maria, took a short story off of Lopez’s desk and showed it to his managing editor, Jim

Andrews. Amazed by Lopez’s theme and writing style, Andrews published the short

story. Entitled “The Gift,” it is a two-page story that explores humanity’s exploitation of the natural world for selfish gain (Warner 157). Such a theme functions as an undercurrent in many of his later works.

Shortly after his first publication, Lopez graduated cum laude from Notre Dame

and subsequently traveled through Spain and England with his parents throughout the

month of June. A trip that functioned similarly to Lopez’s other travels, all led to the

cultivation of his inherent enchantment with the phenomenal world. Upon returning to

the states, Lopez would quickly make the trip out to Helena, Montana from New York

City to be part of a summer stock theater. Once the theater had closed down for the

summer, Lopez drove back to New York City to work, visiting colleges for the New

American Library on behalf of their Signet and Mentor lines of paperbacks, selling them

to professors in the Northwest (Tydeman 6). During these continual travels, Lopez found

himself in Kentucky visiting Gethsemani, the Trappist monastery where Thomas Merton had lived. While there, Lopez deeply considered maintaining his involvement with the church by joining the monastic community to pursue a life similar to Merton’s.

After careful consideration, he decided not to join. Instead, he left inspired to seek out a quasi-monastic lifestyle: “I remember standing next to my car before I departed, looking at the monastery, the way it’s laid out, and thinking that whatever I was going to do would look like this, but it would be more invisible, not so institutionalized”

(Tydeman 93). Deciding to become a teacher, he sought to act as an “instrument of grace,” impacting his students in a positive manner. It would be this decision that would greatly influence his lifestyle and resurface as a theme within his writings in the form of what the literary scholar Mike Newell describes as a “Desert Father tradition (i.e., St.

Anthony, St. Paul and St. Jerome)” (Newell 82). Mark Tredinnick discloses further effects of this philosophy in his book The Land’s Wild Music: “He [Lopez] is concerned with the sacred, with finding the face of God in the world, with discovering how to lead a life that is in some sense exemplary, with learning how to shape a just and beautiful society” (Tredinnick 66). This mission of Lopez’s can be seen carrying through into his works, and illustrates his attempt to have his readers reimagine their relationships with the phenomenal world. Driving away from the monastery, seeking to make a better society, Lopez made an even larger more personal decision.

Instead of returning to New York City, Lopez found himself driving to St. Louis,

Missouri to propose to Sandra Jean Landers, a theater major that he had met in a theater

class during his senior year at the neighboring college Saint Mary’s in South Bend. Seven

months later, they were married in Medford Lakes, New Jersey, a marriage that would last nearly thirty years (Newell 70). Shortly after their marriage, Lopez quit his job with the New American Library to work for his stepfather as a magazine editor in Manhattan.

The job lasted only for a short time, though, due to an increasingly tense relationship with his stepfather. Shortly after Lopez resigned from the firm, the couple moved back to

South Bend so that Sandra could finish her theater degree, and Barry could pursue the

two job offers he had gotten at Notre Dame: one as an editor for a literary magazine and

the other as an announcer on the university radio. Renting a small house in Mishawaka,

Indiana, Barry was quickly disappointed to find that both job offers had fallen through.

With his hand forced, Lopez decided to put his photography and writing on hold and sign

on for shift work at the local steel mill.

An unanticipated opportunity came to Lopez, in June 1967; he was offered a full

fellowship from Notre Dame’s Graduate Department of Education, along with a living

stipend. Honored, Lopez immediately removed his name from the steel mill’s hire list

and began his pursuit of a master of arts in teaching degree with an emphasis in English.

After a short while in the program, Lopez left and found himself a year later moving with

Sandra to Eugene, Oregon to enroll in the MFA creative writing program at the

University of Oregon. Once again, though, Lopez quickly realized that the program was

not for him after a single term; he explains it as being “too much of a sense of the writer,

and not nearly enough sense of the reader” (Marx 2). Shortly after this, he enrolled in the

university’s School of Journalism, so as to better his rhetoric.

It was here that he had a chance meeting with Barre Toelken, an English professor

who taught American folklore and Native American studies at the University. Toelken exposed Lopez to a deeper understanding of Native American culture, one that was aligned with his newly blossoming philosophy on the importance of landscape. Lopez was drawn to Toelken’s focus on the two subjects. Much American folklore depicts language and landscape as inseparable, due to the stories’ conceptions from the associated landscape, and the aboriginal tribes that he studied refused to separate humanity from the phenomenal world and acknowledged the divinity of both.

Lopez’s deep belief that landscape and language are inseparable developed strongly during his time studying alongside Toelken. This notion is affirmed in his book

Arctic Dreams as he challenges the postmodern conception that language is a cultural artifact, a tool that is used to bring order and meaning to landscape and all substances of life.

I think there are possibly two things wrong with this thought. First,

the landscape is not inert; and it is precisely because it is alive that

it eventually contradicts the imposition of a reality that does not

derive from it. Second, language is not something man imposes on

the land. It evolves in his conversation with the land…A long-lived

inquiry produces a discriminating language. The very order of

language, the ecology of its sounds and thoughts, derives from the

mind’s intercourse with the landscape. (Arctic Dreams 277-78)

Professed nearly twenty years after Lopez’s time at the University of Oregon, this idea

depicts the impact of his studies while also illustrating its overall influence on his writing

style. As I will show later, it is his choice to focus on conjoining language and landscape

in his work Desert Notes that allows it to have such an effect on the reader. For now,

however, I wish to explore other writers who argue against postmodernism and exemplify

the unity of language and landscape.

In their literary response to postmodernism’s deconstruction of nature editors

Gary Lease and Michael Soulé condemn the same institution that Barry Lopez attacked

earlier, as “just as destructive to nature as bulldozers and chain saws” (Soulé xvi).

Holmes Rolston III expands on the destructiveness of the postmodernist outlook on the

world in his paper, “Nature For Real: Is Nature A Social Construct?,” when he states that

“[t]he problem is that the postmoderns see so much language-lens that they can no longer see nature” (Chappell 47). Lopez addresses this very issue when he alludes to society’s superficial knowledge of the real dimension of land, which leads to the land’s exploitation (“The American Geographies” 62).

Postmodernists believe that the world is strictly a construction, a concept that

Rolston reminds his readers of in his essay:

Nevertheless, these constructs of the mind enable us to detect what

is not in the human mind. We must not confuse what we see with

how we see it, even though how we see does shape what we can

see. There are no doubt many things going on in the wilderness

that we yet fail to see, because we do not have the constructs with

which to see them. That does not mean, however, that there is no

wilderness there, nor that these things are not going on. (Rolston

47)

Rolston’s conception of the interaction between language and landscape suggests that

language is a construction from a landscape. Languages are thought to be constructed

from landscapes due to humanity’s inability to conceptualize wilderness until a

categorization of an assigned language occurs; thus, language is strictly constructed from

our perception of landscape. Lopez captures this very concept in the previously quoted

lines: “the very order of language, the ecology of its sounds and thoughts, derives from

the mind’s intercourse with the landscape” (Arctic Dreams 278). Both, Lopez and

Rolston depict how, at the very instant language is constructed from the landscape, the two entities become one. This is due to how language is cultivated through our interactions with the landscape and is therefore conjoined.

Lopez utilizes this concept in his writings to illustrate the importance of his

readers’ relationships to the landscape while also making what Rolston defines as

wilderness’ ongoing presence without our constructions, apparent to them. From a long-

lived inquiry with landscape, as exemplified earlier in this chapter, Lopez produces a

discriminating language that depicts the inseparability of language and landscape, as well

creating a space for his readers to begin to refamiliarize themselves with the phenomenal

world. If he had not left the university setting and moved to Western Oregon, this feat

could have been stunted.

As Sandra, Barry’s wife, was finishing her master’s degree in library sciences at

the University of Oregon, Lopez withdrew from the Journalism program to pursue a life

of writing and photography full time. Together they moved forty miles east of Eugene into a house on the upper McKenzie River, where Barry still lives and does the majority of his writing. Completely able to focus on his writing and inspired by his studies of

Native American cultures, Lopez began to recollect and order the series of Native

American trickster stories that he had compiled and rewrote under the guidance of Barre

Toelken during his time at the University of Oregon. Still in touch with Jim Andrews, the

editor who published Lopez’s first short story and who had at that time just founded the

publishing press Universal Press Syndicate, Lopez showed Andrews the collection of

Native American trickster stories: Giving Birth to Thunder, Sleeping with His Daughter.

Taken by the irreverent risqué humor of the stories, Andrews agreed to publish them,

asking if Lopez had written anything else. Hesitant, Lopez stated that he had, but that the

stories were what he would later call a “young man’s invention for its [Desert Notes]

unselfconscious prose and naiveté” and that it was never intended for publication (Newell

81). Reflecting back on that time of his life, Lopez explains that “the impulse to write

Desert Notes was not an impulse to publish a book. It was an impulse to write out the

way I look at things” (Newell 24). This impulse is what motivated Lopez to write Desert

Notes in a way that guides its audience to view landscapes through the similar lens that

was cultivated in him from an early age; a lens on landscapes that instills an inherent

reverence for them.

Fortunately, Jim Andrews ignored the warnings that accompanied the manuscript

and read the stories regardless. That same day, he called Lopez, to suggest that the

manuscript not only should be published but should come out before Giving Birth to

Thunder, Sleeping with His Daughter. Andrew’s stated, “[t]his is the way you should be

introduced as a writer, not with Giving Birth to Thunder” (Newell 22). Trusting

Andrews’ knowledge, Lopez at the age of twenty-four agreed over the phone. A few months later, he flew to Kansas City to sign a contract to write a trilogy: Desert Notes:

Reflections in the Eye of a Raven (1976), River Notes: The Dance of Herons (1979), and

Field Notes: The Grace Note of the Canyon Wren (1994).

POWER OF STORY

Similar to Lopez’s first published work The Gift, Desert Notes is a work that addresses humanity’s estrangement from the earth, and depicts the relationship that lies between language and landscape. I believe that embodied within the stories that make up

Desert Notes, Lopez succeeds in summoning the desert landscape to the forefront, so as to illustrate to his readers that it is a living entity upon which humanity is truly dependent. This very idea is recognized by a multitude of scholars as a common thread throughout Lopez’s literary career. In his literary exploration into the literature of Pacific

Northwest, Nicholas O’Connell asserts that “[a]ll of his [Lopez’s] narratives attempt to put the reader back in touch with the mystery of the land through storytelling…to reproduce the harmony of the land on the page. His stories function as distilled landscapes, communicating the mysterious truth of the land through the written word”

(O’Connell 168-9). Mike Newell in his book on Lopez’s writings reiterates O’Connell’s words: “[w]hat is crucial to him [Lopez] is a gestalt of the ecological relationships in a locale, including human activity, that promotes social cohesiveness” (Newell 76). Scott

Slovic expands on both of these points as he introduces Lopez’s writing style: “To overcome the absurdity—the meaninglessness and destructiveness—of man’s estrangement from the natural world is precisely the goal of Barry Lopez” (Slovic 137).

William H. Rueckert echoes Slovic’s words in his essay published in John Cooley’s collection of essays on contemporary American nature and environmental writers:

Lopez is concerned with what we have lost—a kind of

relationship to wilderness (including wild animals) that he feels is

essential to the good life—and with how we need to change if we

are to regain the attitudes necessary to this kind of relationship to

wilderness—that is, to the not yet humanized, to the Other, to the

prehuman, to the ultimate ground of all being, to the open

ground… (Cooley 140)

Each one of these authors’ statements are reiterated and solidified by Lopez in his interview with Kenneth Margolis as he explains what drives him as an author: “What I am striving to do is to assist the reader in the quest to understand landscape as not only something that is living but something that includes us and upon which we are subtly dependent” (Margolis 2). The predominant interrelatedness of all those who agree on what Lopez’s mission is, along with Lopez’s own statement, represents the profoundness of his works, yet does not illustrate why he chooses the form of story to enact this revelatory experience for his readers.

When Lopez walked away from the monastery and pledged to be an “instrument of grace,” he thought that he would be doing this through teaching. Instead, through his studies at the University of Oregon, he found that by bringing language and landscape

together in his writing, the landscape becomes the center of the work as both metaphor and a tangible entity. In writing, rather than in the classroom, Lopez realized he held the power to create a space where the reader may reimagine their dependence on the phenomenal world, thus inspiring them to become stewards of their surrounding landscapes. For metaphor pervades everyday life, language, and thought, and affects how we understand and experience reality, constituting the ways in which we see the world and influencing our attitudes, knowledge, values, and action (Lakoff). Metaphors form

everyday discourse, dictating how we discern and enact our connections with landscapes

and everyday life. Lopez’s use of metaphor allows him to write universally about

landscapes and their potential approachability. He illustrates to the reader a multitude of

approaches for them to emulate so that they may refamiliarize themselves with the

managed and unmanaged landscapes that surround them.

Lopez allows the landscape to be the center of the story as a realistic entity, as

well as having it function in the way landscapes generally do in nature writing, as the mere subject of focus as well as a background. But what he is also able to do is evade the broad glorification and objectification of the landscape that many writers fall into the trap of doing. The desert in both Mary Austin’s The Land of Little Rain and Edward Abbey’s

Desert Solitaire are prime examples of this. Comparatively, Lopez is further able to depict a level of detail that not only enthralls his reader’s imaginations but illustrates the level at which they might come to have a communion with the land. Illuminating the

landscape in both a metaphorical and realistic manner is a way in which Lopez, as suggested in many of his works, can function as an authentic storyteller and inspire his readers to reimagine their connections to the local landscape.

In an essay published in the book Crossing Open Ground, entitled “Landscape and Narrative,” Lopez relays a personal experience that transformed his perception of a landscape due to the power of story. The story begins with him up in Alaska as he sits around with a group of local men listening to their hunting stories; each story captured his attention due to its sharp observation of detail, and a few of the stories related to his current research on the wolverine. At the end of the evening, Lopez and several other men exited the host’s house into the persistent light of the far northern summer. While looking out at the Brooks Range, an unexplainable feeling came over him: “The landscape seemed alive because of the stories…I felt exhilaration, and a deeper confirmation of the stories…The stories had renewed in me a sense of the purpose of my life” (Crossing Open Ground 63). Terry Tempest Williams explains this kind of reaction to the stories in her essay A Sprig of Sage: “A story allows us to envision the possibility of things. It draws on the powers of memory and imagination. It awakens us to our surroundings” (Williams 121). Lopez became awakened to his surroundings as he heard the stories of the hunters, an experience that he was determined to understand.

Later in the story Lopez continues by investigating his renewed intimacy with life and the landscape, contending that many are familiar with this feeling brought on by

story, not because of the subject matter of the story but because of the manner the story is

told. Lopez attempts to familiarize his reader with his personal experience. Afterward, he

explains what a storyteller must do to achieve this desired effect. He suggests that a storyteller must not force upon the audience the subject matter of the story, using the story as a vehicle for an idea. Instead, the storyteller should focus more on cultivating an

intimacy with the audience by gaining their faith in the storyteller, who must hold a vast

amount of knowledge on the subject. “Intimacy deepens if the storyteller tempers his

authority with humility, or when terms of idiomatic expression, or at least the physical

setting for the story, are shared” (Crossing Open Ground 64). Lopez expands upon this

thought in an interview with Nicholas O’Connell:

[Y]our job as a writer is to do all that research to build a floor on

which a reader can wander around, and then create an environment

in which thinking and reaction and wonder and awe and

speculation can take place, and not try to do it in a dogmatic way,

or to be adamant that one thing or another has to be understood

precisely this way or otherwise it’s no good. A book should be rich

with suggestion. I mean, obviously, you want to bring the reader to

the point of view that you have, but you must do it in a respectful

way. (O’Connell 27)

The clearest illustration of a proper form of storytelling comes forth in Lopez’s

original folktale and travel parable inspired by the North American plains people, Crow

and Weasel. The story centered on the two characters, who take the names and forms of

Crow and Weasel as they venture into the Far North. After an extensive and terrifying

journey there, when they begin their laborious trip home they meet and are invited into

the lodge of Badger. That night, after he feeds them and offers them the pipe, Badger

asks the two of them to tell him the story of their travels. Weasel, feeling obligated,

begins to tell the story of their journey to the Far North, but Badger quickly interrupts

him to ask for him to stand while he speaks. Made uncomfortable by Badger’s request,

Weasel hesitantly stands and continues, speaking of the people they met called the Inuit,

and how they hunt an unusual white bear. Weasel is only a little further in his story when

Badger interrupts him again to ask where they were and if he could go into more detail of

what the Inuit camp resembled. Quickly describing the camp, Weasel returns to the story

of hunting the peculiar white bear, but once again Badger stops him, this time asking

Weasel to first tell him of the people that hunt the bear and what they look like. At this

point, Weasel becomes annoyed by Badger’s constant interjections, while Crow, who

understands what Badger is doing, sits quietly. Weasel continues, only to be interrupted

by Badger once more, as he asks for points of clarification. At that, Weasel becomes

openly irritated. Aware of his friend’s annoyance, Crow speaks up and interjects:

“‘Badger,’ he said, ‘my friend is trying very hard to tell his story. And I can see that you

are only trying to help him, by teaching him to put parts together in a good pattern, to

speak with a pleasing rhythm, and to call on all the details of memory. But let us now see

if he gets your meaning’” (Crow and Weasel 46). Crow defines the essential qualities of

storytelling and illustrates how to create what Lopez describes as an intimate experience

with the audience. Scott Slovic reminds us that when Badger asked where Weasel was, he

was not asking for arbitrary details, but expressing that the physical location of a story is

an essential part to telling a story, for it orients and grounds the audience (Slovic 144).

Badger’s questions are meant to provoke Weasel to tell a properly structured story, filled with a copious amount of details that place the audience directly in the experience of the story. Lopez provides the reader with a lesson in storytelling vicariously through

Badger’s interjections.

Once Weasel is done telling Badger of the Far North, with Badger’s continued

assistance, Crow attempts to describe to Badger the details of their home in the south.

Like Weasel, Crow is aided through his story by Badger, who asks a few questions here

and there to help the structure of the story and improve Crow’s ability to tell a story.

When Crow finishes his story of where they grew up in the south, Badger speaks directly

to the two men:

“I would ask you to remember only this one thing,” said Badger.

“The stories people tell have a way of taking care of them. If

stories come to you, care for them. And learn to give them away

where they are needed. Sometimes a person needs a story more

than food to stay alive. That is why we put these stories in each

other's memories. This is how people care for themselves. One day

you will be good story-tellers. Never forget these obligations.”

(48)

These obligations can be said to drive Lopez in his pursuit to create an instructive

environment in a non-dogmatic way, where contemplation, reaction, wonderment, awe,

and speculation can occur.

Lopez reiterates Badger’s lesson when he expresses the concept behind the

evocative Inuktitut word isumatag, which translates roughly to the word storyteller. In

Inuktitut culture, isumatag is the person who constructs the atmosphere in which wisdom exposes itself. The storyteller fulfills the role of an isumatag not by writing in a manner

where they appear all knowing to the reader or artificially wise, but by writing in a

manner where they are held accountable for both the subject matter and the reader

(Newell 73, Leuders 33). In an interview with Mike Newell, Lopez relays a conversation

he had with a native Métis man, which develops the characterization of an isumatag: “I

asked him how he imagined storytellers fit into his society, ‘You’re the storyteller as long

as the stories that you tell help. When they don’t help anymore, you’re not the storyteller,

even if you say you are’” (Newell 44). Fond of this concept of the storyteller, Lopez

holds himself to the level of an isumatag. As an isumatag, he embraces the responsibility

to respect the potential of a story to bring together the two landscapes that define a listener’s experience, a concept he explores in the essay “Landscape and Narrative.”

Lopez believes every landscape is made up of two landscapes: the exterior and the interior landscapes. The first is the exterior landscape; this is what we can perceive, not just what we can see at first glance, but also the ecology that makes up the landscape: the seasonal differences, its weather, geology, climate, and evolution over time. One must have a sense of intimacy with the landscape or what David Orr would call an ecological literacy, to fully understand what determines the multifaceted exterior landscape (Orr).

Lopez thoroughly articulates his vision of what this is:

You will anticipate the crumbling of the sedimentary earth in the

arroyo bank as your hand reaches out, and in that tangible evidence

you will sense a history of water in the region. Perhaps a black-

throated sparrow lands in a paloverde bush—the resiliency of the

twig under the bird, that precise shade of yellowish-green against

the milk-blue sky, the fluttering whir of the arriving sparrow, are

what I mean by “the landscape.” (Crossing Open Ground 64)

This conception of the term landscape functions similarly to my attempt to expand on the

Oxford dictionary’s definition. An inherent reverence for landscapes is instilled on the user of the term, once both of these conceptions are recognized. Furthermore, it is

Lopez’s belief that a story can capture all of the sensorial and spiritual characteristics

that make up an exterior landscape and unite them with the audience’s interior landscape. The interior landscape is what Lopez believes exists through a projection within a person of a portion of the exterior landscape. Internalized in us, the interior landscape interacts directly with our relations with the exterior landscape. Lastly, it is the interior landscape that is arranged “according to the thread of one’s moral, intellectual, and spiritual development” (65).

Lopez suggests that the storyteller can invoke a deep connection between his audience’s interior landscapes and the exterior landscape by authentically depicting the subtle and palpable relationships that make up the exterior landscape. Later in the essay

“Landscape and Narrative,” he contends that if the storyteller is able to combine both landscapes “the narrative will ‘ring true.’ The listener who ‘takes the story to heart’ will feel a pervasive sense of congruence within himself and also with the world” (66). This concept conveys Lopez’s captivation with the power of story. With this power, Lopez provides his audience a space to reimagine their connection with the world, so as to reverse “society’s [superficial] knowledge of the real dimension of the land it occupies,” which leaves the land vulnerable “to exploitation, manipulation for short-term gain”

(“The American Geographies” 62). Desert Notes takes the reader along as a journey, as the characters refamiliarize themselves with the American desert, an iconic landscape in

American literary history. Lopez’s use of the narrator and multiperspectival approaches to the topic focuses on reversing his audience’s estrangement from their surrounding

landscapes. His focus on refamiliarizing his readers with a landscape that Catrin

Gersdorf refers to as having “the universalist stigma of being seen as humanity’s worst topographical adversary” (Gersdorf 34) reveals to the reader the potential to connect to any landscape, including less deleterious ones. In the following chapter, I explore the literary history of the American desert so as to unveil society’s superficial association with the land and illustrate Lopez’s capability in facilitating his readers’ refamiliarization with any landscape.

THE GREAT AMERICAN DESERT AS WILDERNESS

To thoroughly understand society’s conception of the American desert, the role it

played in the development of the United States of America as a nation must be

considered. Although a common synonym of the word desert is wasteland, the literary

history of the American desert begins with a more affirming synonym: wilderness. It is

this term that Roderick Nash introduces in Wilderness and the American Mind, as “the

basic ingredient of American culture” (Nash XI). Nash argues that it was the raw

substances of the physical wilderness that American civilization was built from, along

with America’s conception of wilderness, which only functioned to complement and

affirm that civilization’s identity: a metaphysical binary that has been reaffirmed in a

multitude of manners. A prominent example of Nash’s conception is Claude Levi-

Strauss’ the raw and the cooked analysis, which is an analogy for civilization's reliance

on wilderness, for civilization (the cooked) is simply a refinement of wilderness (the raw)

and cannot be conceptualized without it (Levi-Strauss). American civilization was first

envisioned within this binary; only to be tainted later by the European legacy that

influenced America’s perception of its landscape as either an overbearing coarse

wilderness or a potentially lush garden.

In the Bible, Adam and Eve’s fall from the Garden of Eden was not just a fall from innocence, but a fall from an abundant life-sustaining garden into a land of scarcity

and unpredictability: a desert. Many Europeans believed that the heavenly garden lay

somewhere hidden in the West, a notion rekindled with the discovery of the New World.

This belief grew as the New World’s abundances were plundered and America’s identity as a nation was born from the land’s riches. That was until the year 1803 when the

nation’s land mass doubled from the Louisiana Purchase. The region purchased from the

French included the Mississippi River and its tributaries westward to the Rocky

Mountains, and extended from the Gulf of Mexico from New Orleans up the Red River to

the Canadian border. Early American settlers assumed this area was a continuance of the

fertile, arboreal, and water-plentiful lands that were so natural to the original thirteen

states, and Europe itself.

The American pioneers carried these preconceived notions with them as they

crossed the Mississippi in the early nineteenth century. What the pioneers found,

however, horrified them. Venturing into the arid and semi-arid plains of the West, their

notions that the continent in its entirety was a cornucopian bounty was smothered. This

land that terminated their conceived Eden would quickly lead to a political controversy

centered on the integration of it into the nation. From the conception of this

unconventional landscape blossomed two dominating ecological myths. These myths

currently continue to define America’s perception of the desert as a landscape. The first is

represented by the denomination of the region as the Great American Desert, an area that

was designated by many as unconquerable, uninhabitable, and inadequate. Those

invested in the agrarian lifestyle and who were accustomed to the riparian and forest

ecologies that make up the east created this myth. The second is the Garden myth, perpetuated by the European legacy, which deemed the region a cornucopian utopic land.

Determined to reap its entire potential, those who fell under the spell of this myth charged into the West to cultivate its riches and conquer its virgin soil (Gersdorf 49). To understand these two myths is to understand the root of Americans’ perception of the desert as a landscape.

The Great American Desert Myth

While indigenous nations have lived in various desert regions that make up the

Great American Desert for more than 30,000 years, and several Spanish and Mexican

cultures have endured existence in the desert for over 400 years, until the 1890s

American citizens found it a nearly impossible land not only to inhabit but also to

traverse. The scarcity of water was life threatening to the explorers and their pack

animals. As a land much more desolate and arid than the population of the eastern United

States, and before that Europe, were used to, those who ventured west were left aphonic.

Very shortly American explorers deemed the land unrecognizable and one which the

English language could not capture. This concept of the desert landscape as a linguistic

hurdle is expanded upon by Mary Austin in The Land of Journeys’ Ending: “[t]he

topography of the country between the Colorado and the Rio Grande cannot be expressed

in terms invented for such purpose in a low green island by the North Sea” (Austin viii).

Such an observation speaks to how foreign and unapproachable the desert was to the

early American explorers and illustrates their first impression of it.

Besides being inaccessible physically and linguistically to the American culture,

the desert also represented a psychological hurdle. Religious tales of the desert landscape

ingrained in the American culture a deep distrust of it. Informed by the Book of

Deuteronomy and Exodus, the desert consisted of “brimstone, and salt, and burning, that it was not sown, nor beareth, nor any grass groweth therein, like the overthrow of Sodom, and Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboim, which the Lord overthrew in his anger, and his wrath” (Deuteronomy 29:23). This concept, and the story from Exodus that told of how

God bound his people to withstand the desert of Sinai (Sin) for forty years due to their

transgressions (Exodus 17:1) molded early Americans’ perceptions of arid landscapes

that lay to the west.

Many Americans’ conceptions of the territory west of the Mississippi was

constructed strictly from the accounts of the Spanish explorers in search of the fabled

cities of gold and the few stories from the limited numbers of American explorers who

were brave enough to venture into the unknown lands. That was until the year 1806 when

two men were commissioned by the U.S. government to go on an expedition, gather

geographical information, and publish their findings. These two men were Lieutenant

Zebulon Montgomery Pike and Major Stephen H. Long of the American Topographical

Engineers. In 1810, Pike’s published journal depicting his travels would represent one of the first written accounts of a white American’s experience in the southwest. While he spoke in a slightly positive manner about the river bottoms and mountainsides of New

Mexico, he concluded that “all the rest of the country presents to the eye a barren wild of poor land, scarcely to be improved by culture” (Pike 302). While Pike’s words formulated the American viewpoint of the land west of the Mississippi, Stephen Long’s cartographical decisions were solidifying them. Catrin Gersdorf relays the impact of

Long’s decisions, stating, “[i]t was on the map resulting from this journey that the space between the 98th meridian and the Rocky Mountains was labeled the Great American

Desert, thus creating one of the most persistent yet also controversial geographical myths of 19th-century America” (Gersdorf 51). These two men formulated the dominant image of the American West. From this image the myth of the uninhabitable and futile landscape of the Great American Desert sprouted.

As manifest destiny drove the frontiersmen even further west in the early nineteenth century, these early perceptions grew deeper, for the desert stood as a sort of purgatory between them and their project, which in their eyes had God’s blessing. It was not just the biblical stigma that came with the Great American Desert but the inconceivable notion of it being crossed that raised suspicions of the land. Such a body of land was in the Americans’ eyes a boundary that hindered the advancement of

righteousness in the form of civilization, Christianity, and a developing economy.

Captured by the absence of literary voices who ventured into the area, this outlook

prevailed throughout the nineteenth century. It was not until the 1840s that a more

benevolent outlook counterbalanced this first myth: the Garden Myth.

The Garden Myth

A man of failing health, Josiah Gregg sought out the aridity of the West in hopes

of reviving his health in it. Joining a fur expedition on the Santa Fe Trail, he found

himself falling into a more lucrative vocation. As Gregg recorded his experiences in the

unsettled regions of the West, he realized that his use of metaphor in describing the

unknown territories was not only original but also highly accessible to the public. Filled

with metaphors such as the “prairie ocean,” an idea that not only captures the

expansiveness of the prairies but also how one goes about navigating them, his travel

narrative The Commerce of the Prairies spoke to the public and familiarized them with this foreign land that lay to the west. While his accounts are riddled with merciless

reports of the land’s lack of natural advantages that deem it hostile to an expanding

civilization, he does allude to the potential cultivation of the Great American Desert.

The high plains seem too dry and lifeless to produce timber; yet

might not the vicissitudes of nature operate a change likewise on

the seasons? Why may we not suppose that the genial influences of

civilization—that extensive cultivation of the earth—might

contribute to the multiplication of showers, as it certainly does of

fountains?…Then may we not hope that these sterile regions might

yet be thus revived and fertilized, and their surface covered one

day by flourishing settlements to the Rocky Mountains? (Gregg

135)

Through these accessible metaphors, Gregg influenced his audiences’ perception of the desert. The fantastical concept that the rain will follow the plough depicted in the passage above also had an enormous effect. As merely a fictionalized dream published in the public domain, Gregg’s words blossomed into a mass belief that there was hope for the

Great American Desert.

Shortly after the publication of Gregg’s theory, members of the federal government agency Geological and Geographical Surveyor of the Territories began to consider the possibility of Gregg’s speculations. Working under Ferdinand V. Hayden, the director of the agency, Samuel G. Aughey, a Professor of Natural Sciences at the

University of Nebraska, gave scientific credence to Gregg’s idea, arguing that planting trees in the Plains would yield a greater season of rainfall. While entirely inaccurate,

Aughey’s scientific hypothesis was supported by land speculators wishing to profit off

the untainted lands to the west. It was here that the infamous land speculator Charles

Wilber coined the slogan “Rain Follows the Plow” to promote the belief that through adhering to the Puritan work ethic and a little aid from the steel plow Americans could transform the desert into an Edenesque garden paradise. And thus the image of the desert as an emblem of scarcity and aridity was overcome by the Garden myth.

As America’s West was further explored and the possibility of it being inhabited continued to be considered, a retired American Major during the Civil War who additionally was a trained geologist set out to dispel the two myths that were enforcing

America’s impression of the Great American Desert. While his work was not completely about capturing the beauty of the desert landscape, he was one of the first American literary voices to do so, providing America with an alternate viewpoint to counterbalance the two popular myths. This man was John Wesley Powell. Through his focus on geographical realism and his extensive travels throughout the vast regions of the Great

Plains, the Rocky Mountain region, and the lands along the Colorado River, Powell was able to characterize the land in a way that defined it as neither worthless nor as a place to thoroughly exploit.

Although Powell did not wish the land to be entirely exploited, he did believe that it was necessary to grasp its geological and topographical makeup to salvage most effectively the resources that were able to be had. As David Teague puts it, Powell

viewed the desert “as a huge problem to be solved by the growing country” (Teague 43).

Congruent with this mission to aid America in doing this, he provided them with lyrical descriptions of the aesthetics of the land. While writing in the modes of government reports and geographical findings, his language leaned more toward the genre of creative nonfiction as he attempted to inculcate a respectful outlook in his readers. This is clearly

illustrated in an article that he published in which he directly invites the reader to venture

with him through the desert canyons: “Let us understand these canons” (Powell 394).

This invitation leads into an elongated narrative composed strictly of detailed

descriptions of the Gray Canon, the Orange Cliffs, Labyrinth Canon, and the Book Cliffs,

among others. His appreciation and depictions of the desert lands were unique for their

time and would soon come to stand as a beginning of an alternate literary perspective.

In the following lines, Powell addresses the preconceived notions of his beloved

land as he encourages his reader to acknowledge the opulence of it all:

What a world of grandeur was spread before us! Below was the

canon through which the Colorado runs; we could trace its course

for miles, and at points catch glimpses of the river. From the north-

east came the Grand through a canon that seemed, from where we

stood, bottomless. Alas to the west were lines of cliffs and ledges

of rock; not such ledges as you may see where the quarryman splits

his blocks, but ledges from which the gods might quarry

mountains; not cliffs where you may see the swallow build its nest,

but where the soaring eagle is lost to view before he reaches the

summit…Wherever we looked there was a wilderness of rocks-

deep gorges where the rivers are lost below cliffs, and towers and

pinnacles, and ten thousand strangely carved forms in every

direction, and beyond them mountains blending with the clouds.

(Powell 397)

Such a lengthy passage is included here, not to illustrate Powell’s long-windedness, but

to illustrate the level at which he provided his readers with a unique perspective of the

desert landscape. He contends that the gods have created this land, a stance that disputes

the image of the desert given by the Bible, only to continue capturing the expansiveness of the cliffs through the comparison of the swallow to the American national emblem, the bald eagle, and all of its greatness. By virtue of descriptions such as this, Powell can be

recognized as a catalyst for the desert writers that would follow, casting aesthetic eyes

upon a land deemed either worthless or as strictly a resource to be plundered. Although

his sublime descriptions of the desert landscape were not always prominent in his works,

he presented to the general public a contrasting and original viewpoint of a

misunderstood landscape.

At the same time Powell was taking his adventures, a vast settler expansion into the American frontier began. The expansion carried in its wake the railroads, mining, and the Dust Bowl. Each one of these iconic events were initiated by the prominence of the

Garden myth within America’s narrative. While the myth of the Great American Desert was discredited by the predominance of the Garden myth, the alternate voice for the desert initiated by Powell quietly continued alongside the plundering of the frontier.

Though several authors traveled to the desert and portrayed the elegance and relevance of its landscape, it was not until 1901 that a revolutionary piece was published that focused entirely on the aesthetics of the American desert landscape.

Born at the beginning of the Civil War, John Van Dyke grew up with tales of the

exploration of the West. A professor of art history at Rutgers College and highly inspired

by the British landscape theorist John Ruskin, Van Dyke traveled into the Great

American Desert to write about the aesthetics of landscapes he found there. Although

suffering from depression and not used to the harsh climate of the desert, Van Dyke still

was in awe of the beauty he found there (Van Dyke 123). Writing about the negative

effects of the expansion of the American civilization, and arguing that “the forerunner of

civilization is destruction, and its follower is always desolation” (Van Dyke 202), his

work The Desert seeks to save the desert landscape from its ominous fate.

While it can be said that Van Dyke’s vision of American civilization’s detrimental

disturbance has slightly come true in many parts of Western America, his work is

credited with establishing a unique lens for Americans to view the desert through.

Including chapter titles such as “The Approach,” “Desert Animals,” “Mesas and Foot-

Hills,” and “Mountain Barriers,” Van Dyke’s landscape narrative functions as an introduction to the aesthetic intricacies of the desert and the potential it holds as an escape from the dismal qualities of industrial capitalism: “You will not be surprised then if, in speaking of desert, mesa and mountain I once more take you far beyond the wire fence of civilization to those places (unhappily few now) where the trail is unbroken and the mountain peak unblazed. I was never over-fond of park and garden nature study. If we would know the great truths we must seek them at the source” (Van Dyke viii). He carries his readers through the desert, illustrating the land’s intricacies and beauty, so as to validate its worth and the role it plays for humanity’s benefit. This nurturing aspect of the landscape that Van Dyke alludes to is reiterated throughout Desert Notes within the theme and content, which will be covered in the chapters to come. Lopez would agree with Van Dyke when he states that “the deserts should never be reclaimed. They are the breathing-spaces of the west and should be preserved forever” (Van Dyke 59). This argument functions as a common thread throughout The Desert and explains his overall effort to realign American culture with the aesthetics of the desert landscape.

Though Van Dyke’s success in arguing for the preservation of the American

desert is not demonstrated through America’s concern for unmanaged landscapes, his

ability to illuminate the opulent characteristics for the general public is shown through

the popularity and acceptance of his writings. Edward Everett Ayer, a man who had

previously traveled through the Southwest, wrote to Van Dyke about his and his friend’s

reaction to the work. In the letter, he relayed that his friend, Benjamin Winchell, who was the vice president and traffic manager of the Union Pacific Railroad, had “sat up until two o’clock reading it and was anxious to go on the desert again. He had often recognized the feelings that [Van Dyke] expressed, but never had known himself how to express it or put it together” (Teague 128). Ayer would later write in his journal a similar reaction: “I had been on the desert 30 years before I really had any idea of its grandeur or its beauty”

(Ayer 26). While these two men’s reactions speak to Van Dyke’s achievements in divulging to his readers the worth of the desert, their reception also represents the power of story to effectively adjust a reader’s outlook on a landscape.

Peter Wild, the well-published scholar on John Van Dyke’s works, stated that The

Desert “did what few books do…As the first work to praise the desert for its beauty, it

led the way in a major shift of the culture’s outlook on the arid portion of its natural

heritage” (Wild 217), and while the authenticity of the statement is not to be argued, it is

one that needs to be unpacked. What Van Dyke’s work did was merely lead, or in other

words function as a catalyst for other authors to continue to shift the American culture’s

outlook on the desert landscape. When Mary Austin published The Land of Little Rain two years after Van Dyke’s publication and authors like Joseph Wood Krutch, Edwin

Corle, Wallace Stegner, Edward Abbey, Barry Lopez, and others gave to the world their visions of the desert, they were not just shifting the culture’s outlook, but combating

American civilization’s pervasive estrangement from all unmanaged landscapes.

Just as Van Dyke’s work illuminated the value of the desert landscape for Edward

Everett Ayer and his friend Benjamin Winchell, the authors listed above have the ability to do the same. In doing so, they address American society’s predominantly superficial knowledge of the American landscape, which leaves it susceptible to exploitation and manipulation (“The American Geographies” 62). Each one of these authors’ works that familiarize the reader with the desert landscape, in turn illustrate the beauty and importance of all unmanaged landscapes. The act of revealing the aesthetic qualities and naturalizing the general public to the desert landscape (a seemingly barren, unapproachable, and desolate one), in turn affirms the aesthetic beauty and importance of all unmanaged landscapes. As Catrin Gersdorf states, “It is in Lopez’s…writing that the desert comes closest to being the root metaphor for a reconstruction of America from an ecological perspective” (Gersdorf 38). With this idea in mind, I wish to proceed to the next section of this paper, where I analyze the collection of short stories Desert Notes.

DESERT NOTES: A GUIDEBOOK

Desert Notes: Reflections in the Eye of a Raven began simply as a young man philosophizing on his numerous trips to the Alvord Desert, a seven-by-twelve mile dry lake bed in eastern Oregon. While Lopez draws details directly from the desert landscape, his stories transcend the physical setting and create a space where the reader can begin to refamiliarize themselves with their own surrounding landscapes. Thus achieving a similar view of landscapes to the one that was cultivated in Lopez at an early age. Although this potential may not have been first intended by the author, he has articulated his yearning at the time he wrote the collection, to write in a manner that produced this very outcome.

On the other hand, he once categorized Desert Notes as “a young man’s invention for its unselfconscious prose and naiveté and was never intended by him for publication”

(Newell 81). The choice of the title, Desert Notes: Reflections in the Eye of a Raven, illustrates both Lopez’s unintentionality and yearning for the effective outcome of the stories. Overall, the title evokes a meditative subjectivity, while the word “Notes” alludes to a sense of Lopez’s experimentation and brief provisional writings. The subtitle insinuates a vicarious philosophical contemplation of the desert landscape through the perspective of a raven, seemingly deepening the playful use of the word “Notes.” At the same time that the title and Lopez’s comments misconstrue the weight the work embodies, Desert Notes is the very foundation on which Lopez built his authorial career.

Nicholas O’Connell speaks to this notion in his work, On Sacred Ground: “This spare,

sensual work [Desert Notes] serves as the blueprint for the rest of his works, both in its

use of the narrator and in its multiperspectival approach to the subject” (O’Connell 169).

With these two literary devices, Lopez triumphs in counteracting the two historically

archetypal myths that generate the general populace’s misconception of the desert.

Lopez’s attempt in guiding his audience towards becoming refamiliarized with an iconic

landscape that is known for its unapproachable characteristics is one that illustrates the

potential to become intimate with all landscapes. A feat that leads to overcoming both his

audience’s misunderstandings of the desert and two myths themselves.

In the reflective essay entitled “Afterword in Outside” Lopez comments on the time he was writing Desert Notes, and how the multitude of trips returning to the Alvord

Desert helped him develop his ability to write out the way he looks at things: “Being there prompted new thinking for me about the relationship between physical landscapes and descriptive language, and about the way physical setting might reinforce certain themes in a fictional narrative” (“Afterword in Outside” 1). Lopez continues this thought in an interview he did with Kenneth Margolis as he articulates that what he was doing then was “trying to bring language and landscape together in such a way that landscapes can come to the fore as a metaphor as well as a reality” (Margolis 2). In two different interviews, Lopez further expands upon this idea, as he contends that in bringing together language and landscape, he strives “to express the sensation of being fully present in the

playa desert” (Tydeman 73), as well as to “assist the reader in the quest to understand landscape as not only something that is living but something that includes us and upon which we are subtly dependent” (Margolis 2). These ideas are collectively represented when he states that the style of literature he attempts “concerns itself, finally, with the nature of reality, life as we live it. I am a writer who is deeply concerned with landscape—this one [his current surrounding landscape], others I know, and by extension all landscapes and our place within them, our relationship with them” (Tredinnick 53).

Lopez’s focus on bringing out the landscape through metaphor as well as reality provides his readers a space to do just this, not only on an immediate level but a universal one as well. Through his use of metaphor, he allows the desert to come to represent all landscapes, while his focus on realism resists the conception of the desert as a glorified fictional landscape. Lopez’s juxtaposition of exact details of the Alvord desert, alongside the two warnings, that the setting of the stories should be metaphorically considered, and that maps are misleading in nature, illustrates clearly the concept of his dual intentions.

Although many of the basic descriptions of landscape that appear throughout the stories, particularly in “Introduction,” “The Hot Springs,” “Perimeter,” and “The Wind,” resemble the Alvord Desert in all its traits, the reader must bear in mind the warning that

Lopez provides in the last story of the collection, “Directions.” In it he warns the reader that the most seemingly exact and detailed map is of no use to them, for it will only encourage their misplaced confidence: “Throw them out. They are the wrong sort of map.

They are too thin. They are not the sort of map that can be followed by a man who knows what he is doing. The coyote, even the crow, would regard them with suspicion” (Desert

Notes 75). While Lopez writes in a realist style, about an arid and ancient playa lined with an abundance of named and unnamed hot springs all lying between the looming presence of Steens Mountain, the Pueblo Mountains, and the Cascades, he does not mean his readers to conceptualize the Alvord Desert. Instead, he wishes his readers to emulate the relationship the narrator holds on both a metaphorical and a palpable level with the desert landscape. For, to follow the same path the narrator guides the reader on, would lead them to reconsider their preconceived notions of the desert, as well as reimagine their connection with their surrounding landscape. While Lopez draws details directly from the desert landscape, his stories transcend the physical setting and create a space where the reader can begin to refamiliarize themselves with their own surrounding landscapes. Consequently attaining an analogous view of landscapes to the one that was cultivated in Lopez at an early age. It is through this method that Lopez feels able to slow the destruction of the phenomenal world, for it is society’s continual defamiliarization with the landscape that leaves it vulnerable to exploitation.

Lopez attempts to reverse this predicament through his writings in many forms, but the most apparent ones are what Nicholas O’Connell identifies as the foundation for

Lopez’s future writings, his use of the narrator and the multiperspectival approaches

(O’Connell 169). One continuous voice speaks throughout each story and shifts fluently

between first, second, and third person narrative forms, so as to present the reader with several lenses by which to fully understand the mysteries of the landscape. Though writing in the genre of fiction, Lopez’s unique use of the first person narrative form is purposeful. In an interview he explains why he chooses to break the classic form of fiction: “I frequently use the first person in fiction because it allows for a kind of intimacy I can’t get in the second or third person” (Tydeman 75). It is for an overall intimacy with the reader that Lopez chooses to play with the fine line of genres, so as to guide the reader more successfully. By blending the various forms of narration, Lopez can interweave a guiding voice, which speaks to the reader directly, into his narrator’s various approaches to reconnecting with the desert landscape. As Lopez does this, the narrator encourages the reader to emulate his ways. Parallel to this, through his use of the third person narration, Lopez can provide alternative perspectives on the subject. Lopez’s fluent use of the three forms of narration prompts Sherman Paul to state, “Desert Notes is a guidebook without a map” (Paul 355).

What Paul alludes to in the above statement is Lopez’s wish to guide his readers towards refamiliarizing themselves with the phenomenal world, while also swaying the reader away from the shallow response that it is the Alvord desert that should be sought out as the intended landscape for the reader to reconnect with. In the story “Directions,” the narrator gives false directions to the reader, who is assumed to be trying to seek out the setting of the stories. The narrator does this by naming the towns Tate and Molnar,

both of which are nowhere close to the Alvord desert and do not exist in the state of

Oregon. The narrator also suggests that the reader should seek out a man named Leon, who is a late night Trailways bus passenger. The reader is told that he can be found at the bus station in Tate, and to make sure to ask him for directions. After guiding the reader to this source, the narrator warns that the directions Leon might sketch on a white napkin

“may end up meaning nothing at all. It is his words you should pay attention to…You may never hear a map so well spoken…Listen as you have never listened before” (Desert

Notes 77). The verbal map that Leon provides for the reader symbolizes the function of

Desert Notes as a whole. Both Lopez’s dismissal of conventional maps and his attempt to sway readers away from seeking out the Alvord desert illustrate what Catrin Gersdorf suggests is Lopez’s faith in narrative maps to guide readers to reimagine themselves back to a harmonious reengagement and enchantment with unmanaged landscapes (Gersdorf

212). It also represents his stylistic attempt to bring the landscape to the foreground as both metaphor and reality. For the reader is encouraged to delve into finding a fictionalized landscape, a landscape, which very well could be interchangeable with his or her own.

In this section, I will explore how Desert Notes in its entirety functions as a medium for Lopez to guide his readers to refamiliarize themselves with their surrounding landscapes. By weaving together the desert as an exterior landscape with his reader’s interior landscapes, Lopez successfully brings the desert landscape forward as both

metaphor and reality. In doing so, he valorizes all landscapes, so as not to leave them so

easily exploited. In accordance with Paul’s conception of Desert Notes as a guidebook, I wish to guide my readers in seeing the short stories in this very light through a deep analysis of the two foundational components that O’Connell suggests run throughout

Lopez’s career: his unique use of a narrator and a multiperspectival approach. From there, I will illustrate how Lopez can guide his readers towards reimagining their connection with the phenomenal world.

Desert Notes is made up of an epigraph, an introduction, and eleven short stories,

which several literary scholars, including Catrin Gersdorf and Mike Newell, believe are

told by different narrators. On the other hand, Sherman Paul, Nicholas O’Connell, John

Cooley, and I argue that one continuous narrator tells each story. This type of reading

allows the collection to be analyzed as a whole, which is hinted at in the story

“Introduction.” The collection begins with an epigraph from the book The Voyage of the

Beagle by Charles Darwin, and provides the reader with the all too common perspective on desolate landscapes, as Darwin questions his mental entrapment with such “arid wastes.” What follows is the story “Introduction,” which speaks of the narrator’s wish to understand the desert landscape through a series of personal inquiries, while at the same time directly welcoming the reader to do the same. The narrator relays these personal inquiries to the reader through the stories, “Desert Notes,” “Twilight,” “Perimeter,” “The

Blue Mound People,” and “The School,” each of which illustrates a different perspective

the narrator provides to become enchanted by the desert landscape.

The narrator’s own stories of personal inquiry are joined with two other stories of inquiry into a relationship with the desert. The first, “The Hot Spring,” is about a man as

he flees from society so as to become rebirthed by the solace of the desert. The other,

“The Wind,” speaks of a woman’s patience, as she spends an entire day lying on the desert floor observing the happenings of the desert. Each tale of inquiry into the depths of a relationship with the desert is complemented by the narrator pausing and intimately addressing the reader in a dialogic manner. The first dialectic held with the reader,

“Conversation,” acts to comfort and reassure them. “Directions” provides the reader with final words of guidance and caution. In similar fashion, the narrator also imparts to the

reader two eco-fables evenly dispersed within the collection. “The Raven” and “Coyote

and Rattlesnake” function equivalently to how Native American oral stories once served

to teach lessons and instill knowledge in their people. This is a concept Terry Tempest

Williams touches on in her work A Sprig of Sage: “[s]torytelling is the oldest form of education. It is the power of image making. Among Native Americans the oral tradition of a tribe is its most important vehicle for teaching and passing on sacred knowledge and practices of the people” (Williams 121). Lopez relies on “The Raven” and “Coyote and

Rattlesnake” to function similarly and relays to the reader the consequences of estrangement with the landscape, and what can come of exploiting its resources. What

follows is an analysis of the journey on which the narrator takes the reader. In it, I illustrate how Lopez, through his unique use of a narrator and a multiperspectival approach, can reverse society’s defamiliarization with the phenomenal world, just as I was affected when I first read his collection.

Charles Darwin’s Epigraph

It is no coincidence that Lopez began his collection of short stories with an epigraph from Charles Darwin. Attempting to reshape his reader’s views on the landscape, Lopez tactfully chose to begin his collection with words from a man who single-handedly brought about a paradigm shift in the mid-nineteenth century by revolutionizing how modern society viewed their origins. Priming his audience with inexplicably favorable words about the plains of Patagonia and other desolate landscapes,

Lopez invests in his reader a lens to comprehend the potential of the desert landscape.

Darwin might seem antiquated as a source, yet within his first lines he progressively separates himself from the common outlook on the barren landscape. “In calling up images of the past, I find that the plains of Patagonia frequently cross before my eyes; yet these plains are pronounced by all wretched and useless” (x). Darwin further expresses his baffling mental entrapment with a land as he states, it is a land “that can be described only by negative characters,” and yet it is the one that has taken hold of his

imagination. This aftereffect is not unique only to Darwin’s experience of a desolate

landscape; while he can be found stating that “the case is not peculiar to myself,” others have had similar revelations. Talking about the American Southwest, John Van Dyke

makes a comparable comment: "The waste places of the earth, the barren deserts, the

tracts forsaken of men and given over to loneliness, have a peculiar attraction of their

own. The weird solitude, the great silence, the grim desolation, are the very things with

which every desert wanderer eventually falls in love" (Van Dyke 19). Mary Austin

reiterates both Darwin’s and Van Dyke’s utterances, defining the American Southwest as a “land that once visited must be come back to inevitably” (Austin 5). Within this passage, Austin is alluding to both a physical return to the landscape and a mental one analogous with Darwin’s very own. Lopez offers these very responses to the landscape so that his readers may be open to an alternative outlook other than the conventional one presented. The passage where he does this is riddled with that conventional reaction to landscapes such as the plains of Patagonia and The Great American Desert: “without habitations, without water, without trees, without mountains,” “boundless,” “arid wastes,” “scarcely passable.” By including this passage Lopez satirically addresses the all too common misconceptions of these places.

Lastly, Darwin concludes with a mysterious question for his readers: what

attractive attributes could exotic landscapes such as the plains of Patagonia contain? This

lingering question is what Lopez intends his readers to carry into the first story of the

collection, “Introduction.” Although Darwin attempts to answer it, he admits to not being

a credible source. “I can scarcely analyze these feelings: but it must be partly owing to

the free scope given to the imagination” (x). From here, Lopez proceeds to provide his

readers with a series of points of view, which allow them to observe how the desert might

entice their imaginations. These different lenses are provided to illustrate one’s ability to

attain an intimate relationship with a landscape.

“Introduction”

Although the first story to appear in the collection after Darwin’s epigraph,

“Introduction” was the last story that Lopez wrote for the collection. In an interview with

Mike Newell, Lopez divulges that he was encouraged to write out a narrative that he had once told to his editor Jim Andrews, so as to include it in the collection. Hesitant, Lopez initially fought the idea, claiming, “Jim, this is a work of fiction. It’s not about what I did” (Newell 25). But, after a bit of convincing, he listened to his editor and wrote an introductory story to the collection. Lopez explains the process of writing “Introduction” in the same interview with Newell, explaining that “I had the form of a Desert Notes story straight in my head by then, and I shaped what Jim asked for in order to fit the form” (25). Lopez not only transcribed the story, but wrote an introduction to the

collection, an introduction for the reader to the desert, and an introduction to the process

of refamiliarizing oneself to a landscape.

But it is not Lopez’s words that the reader first encounters. Instead, Lopez chose to begin his introduction to his collection of short stories with another epigraph, this time from the acclaimed Desert Father, Thomas Merton. Through this choice, Lopez juxtaposes his introduction and the collection as a whole to Merton’s sacred pilgrimage into the desert. “With the Desert Fathers you have the characteristic of a clean break with a conventional, accepted social context in order to swim for one’s life into an apparently irrational void” (xi). This line references Lopez’s pledge to be an “instrument of grace,” as he walked away from a life at the very same Trappist monastery where Thomas

Merton had studied. In a way, the narrator’s following story not only mirrors the Desert

Father tradition depicted by Merton, but also Lopez’s mission in life.

Setting out to understand the secrets of the desert and to discard himself of what

Merton refers to as “conventional, accepted social context,” the narrator drives his van

out onto the desert floor, which by description could be somewhere in The Great

American Desert. He does this in hopes to enter into the desert on a spiritual and

metaphorical level. Lopez justifies this pursuit in an interview: “The reason you go into

unmanaged landscapes is in part to get out of a world in which all the references are to

human scale or somehow devised from a sense of human values” (O’Connell 15). The

narrator advises the reader on how to get away from these managed landscapes “by a

series of strippings” (xii), an act that will lead them to the achievement of the overall

goal, the ability to refamiliarize themselves with a landscape. This advice becomes a

reocurring theme throughout many of the stories, in which through casting off

materialistic distractions of modern life, one comes closer to communion with the

landscape.

Lopez refers to these “strippings” when he equates the process of “opening yourself up to an unmanaged landscape” to the process of “opening yourself up to another culture. Other cultures force you to consider that the way you approach reality is not the one and only way…Landscape is the culture that contains all human cultures”

(O’Connell 15). This very reverence of landscapes encourages the acceptance of a more inclusive definition of the word landscape then the one the Oxford dictionary provides:

“all visible features of an area of countryside or land.” Whether or not the reader recognizes the multifaceted characteristics of the word landscape, the narrator warns them that immersing oneself into any conception of a landscape is not an easy task.

Through a second person narration, which the narrator maintains for the first half of the story, the reader is told directly that “[t]he land does not give easily” (xi).

The narrator comes off as seasoned on the topic as he transitions into the second person narration and speaks to the reader as if he has already gone through the

tribulations of doing the same, which allows the reader to trust him. The narrator

accomplishes this while also guiding the reader: “You must come with no intentions of discovery. You must overhear things as though you’d come into a small and desolate town and paused by an open window” (xi). In these lines alone, the narrator has broken down the barrier that stands between the reader and the narrator as he addresses them in a

guide-like tone. The emphasis placed on how to approach the desert, as though one were

eavesdropping on a conversation, characterizes a major step of becoming “no longer

afraid of its secrets, cowed by its silence” (xi). It is this feat which the narrator holds to be

a very difficult task, for he continuously references and reveres silence as an obstacle to

overcome when approaching familiarization with a landscape. To overcome silence is not enough though, for he suggests the reader not try too hard: “You have to proceed almost by accident” (xi). The narrator transitions away from this suggestion, as he switches narration from the second to the first person, so to relay his first-hand account.

Driving his van out on an alkaline plain, the narrator exits the van as it rolls

unattended in a low gear eastward. Casually, he opens each door to climb in and out of each of them, only to later take his bicycle out and ride away in the opposite direction.

The narrator returns once more to the moving van to load the bike back in and let the van coast to a stop. This experience taught him about the needless societal attachments when in an unmanaged landscape: “Until then I did not understand how easily the vehicle’s tendencies of direction and movement could be abandoned, together with its systems of

roads, road signs, and stop lights. By a series of strippings such as this one enters the

desert” (xii). This is a very important revelation for both the narrator and the reader.

Throughout the collection, the narrator discloses his alternate approaches to fully entering

the desert, as well as two other approaches that he witnessed others attempt. The narrator

alludes to each one of his own approaches towards the end of the story as he speaks of

how he “developed methods of inquiry” (xiii).

The following story, “Desert Notes,” is referenced as the narrator states that he

merely might have seemed to be doing nothing but “smelling my hands cupped full of

rocks,” an action that the reader is guided to participate in towards the end of “Desert

Notes.” As he explains that he may have “appeared to be asleep. But I was not” (xiii) the narrator references the story “Twilight.” Within “Twilight,” the reader is told of the narrator’s mystical experience as he laid under a traditional Native American storm weathered rug on the bare desert floor. Lastly, he references the other three personal perspectival approaches, referred to in “Perimeter,” “The Blue Mound People,” and “The

School.” The line, “Even inspecting an abandoned building at some distance from the desert I would glance over in that direction, alert” encompasses all three stories.

Inspecting an abandoned building alludes to an act that is in both “The Blue Mound

People” and “The School.” His alertness towards the landscape pertains to the story

“Perimeter,” in which the narrator illustrates his awareness of the landscape to the reader.

As the last story that Lopez wrote for the collection, in “Introduction” he refers to each of the narrator's personal inquiries into the landscape. This conclusion establishes the potential for the narrator to acquire a profound connection with the landscape as he

“moved with exquisite ease,” unable to “disguise the waiting,” only to one day, notice that their “hands had begun to crack and turn to dust” (xiii). This final line, although abstract, not only illustrates to the reader the narrator’s metaphorical success in finding an intimate union with the landscape, but also confirms his competence to guide the reader to do the same. Each one of these stories has their function within the collection and guides the reader along a journey towards refamiliarizing themselves with their surrounding landscapes.

“Desert Notes”

With the narrator’s success in refamiliarizing himself established through the metaphor in the last lines of “Introduction,” he invites his readers to join him by refamiliarizing themselves to the desert landscape as he has. Rather empathetically he first sympathizes with the reader and how heavy conventional societal life is: “I know you are tired. I am tired too” (3). As the first lines of the story, the second person narrative form has already broken down the barrier that lies between the narrator and reader while also revealing the narrator’s similarities and vulnerability to the reader. As if

an elder reaching his hand out towards a lost soul, the narrator offers to guide the reader towards seeing the world as he does: “Will you walk along the edge of the desert with me? I would like to show you what lies before us” (3). Once again spoken in the second person, as the narrator brings the reader to stand alongside him to gaze and walk out into the desert, he transcends the obstruction of the page with the emphasis on the word “us.”

An anecdote in the first person narration quickly follows this transcendence of the page. The anecdote includes the narrator's wishes to conquer the devils of his life, and fear itself, a yearning that is safe to say lies within us all. He valorizes the desert landscape in the next line, as he suggests that unmanaged landscapes contain the power to grant freedom from these things. With the use of a blend of two narrative forms in a short two-paragraph stretch, the narrator has drawn the reader in to have them stand side by side at the edge of a landscape, which according to the knowledgeable narrator holds the power to strengthen a person.

As the narrator assumes the second person narrative form once more, the reins are pulled. The narrator requests the reader to suspend their preconceived notions of the desert landscape: “I know what they tell you about the desert but you mustn't believe them. This is no deathbed” (3). As he speaks out against the Great American Desert

Myth, the narrator resumes in a reassuring manner. He conveys that there is moisture that lies in the ground, and as if placing the reader at the edge of the desert in the rocking

chair on the cover photo, he asserts that the land is deceivingly contained, “You can see

out there to the edge where the mountains begin. You think it is ten miles. It is more than

a hundred” (3). Such an account depicts the desert’s sprawling beauty and the

mysteriousness of the illusionary landscape. The narrator’s provision of immediate

details, and direct conversation with the reader, not only produces a reality for the reader

but also allows the landscape to become mystified and an intriguing subject. It is now that

the reader is closer to considering the desert as more than just a bleak and desolate

landscape, and as a place worth valorizing and respecting.

Once again, having drawn the reader in, the narrator shifts into the first person narrative form to confront them with the reality of the future: “I’ve been told there is very little time left, that we must get all these things about time and place straight” (3). The

narrator references the fading existence of unmanaged landscapes and the plight of the

environmental crisis that continues to threaten the planet today, as he emphasizes the

need to establish a healthy relationship with landscapes: “If we don’t,” he states, “we will

only have passed on and have changed nothing. That is why we are here I think, to

change things. It is why I came to the desert” (3). Knowing from “Introduction” that the

narrator came to the desert to make a clean break with conventional society, and to create

a union with the desert landscape, it is now clear that the narrator also sees a connection

with refamiliarizing oneself with landscapes and halting the exploitation of the natural

world. This mirrors Lopez’s previously quoted conviction that “the more superficial a

society’s knowledge of the real dimension of the land it occupies, the more vulnerable the

land is to exploitation, manipulation for short-term gain” (“The American Geographies”

62). Through the use of the second person narrative form and the word “we,” the narrator creates his mission to reverse this predicament and the reader’s also.

The ability to protect the environment is not the only positive result of

reconnecting with the phenomenal world; the narrator reassures us that personal

revelations will also occur. Still within the second person narrative form, the narrator

contends that “[t]here is something else here, too, even more important: explanations will occur to you, seeming to clarify; but they can be a kind of trick. You will think you have hold of an idea when you only have hold of its clothing” (4). The narrator’s Zen-like teachings continue as he discloses that the reader must not only be patient but also clear their minds of everything, even thoughts of being patient. Shifting into first person narrative form he confesses to the tribulations of his attempts to follow his process,

invoking the symbolic Zen image of the snake eating its tail, an enso. Illustrated as a

sparingly painted black circle, the enso embodies the essence of Zen Buddhism and the

importance placed on finding complete freedom from thoughts and emotions, so as to live

completely in the now.

I must tell you something else. I have waited out here for

rattlesnakes. They never come. The moment eludes me and I hate

it. But it keeps me out here. I would like to trick the rattlesnake

into killing itself. I would like this kind of finality. I would like to

begin again with the snake. If such a thing were possible, the desert

would be safe. (4)

This purified mindset is what the entire collection is pushing towards, and is what the

reader is being guided to as they are carried along by the narrator’s assistance. Having

said this, the narrator once again shifts into second person narrative form to assign the

reader to do a very similar task that he had already admitted to doing in “Introduction” as he alluded to merely smelling his hands cupped with rocks.

The reader is told to attempt a series of mundane and childish tasks: combine a

series of organic materials back to their original forms, coax leaves from found sticks,

and attempt to find the scattered remains of a dead beetle. The narrator places importance

on each one, warning the reader to “be careful. It will occur to you that these tasks are

silly or easily done. This is a sign, the first one, that you are being fooled” (5). Each one

of these meditative tasks is a small step in clearing one’s mind, discarding the societal

pressures, and beginning to reimagine one’s relations with the phenomenal world. This is

a process clarified by Scott Slovic, as he argues that Lopez’s writing emphasizes the

importance of reawakening the authentic infantile awareness within ourselves:

The wonderment and pleasure—the sense of ‘congruence’—which

results from an openness to the given world is, of course, what

Lopez tries to convey…Zen practitioners, native people, and

children are held up as models for this desired way of

apprehending the world, and the task of the writer is to place this

worldview within reach of the ordinary reader. (Slovic 154)

Fulfilling this task that Slovic refers to, Lopez, through his narrator, encourages the cultivation of this outlook on the world, and as the story concludes, the narrator further argues that these tasks are simply foundations to grow from.

In the last paragraph of the story, the narrator agrees to leave the reader alone in the desert so that they may continue to explore and play. But once again, he warns the reader against trusting their thoughts, reminding them that what is making them want to leave is the very sensibility that has inevitably lead them to become unfamiliar with the landscape: “It will occur to you that these tasks are silly or easily done” (5). In conclusion, he bids the reader have patience and “wait until the rattlesnake kills itself”

(5). With these remarks lingering in the reader’s mind, the narrator follows “Desert

Notes” with a story of a man’s pursuit of communion with the desert landscape and the further positive attributes from reestablishing such a relationship.

“The Hot Spring”

Told entirely in the style of a third person narrative, “The Hot Spring” is the first

of the two inquiries into the desert relayed to the reader that are not the narrator’s. Having

welcomed the reader to the process of reimagining their relationship with the desert

landscape in “Introduction,” he then guides the reader towards the edge of the desert, so as to begin the process; the narrator then leaves the audience to their own devices at the end of “Desert Notes.” By completely removing himself from the next story and staying

in the third person omniscient, the narrator vicariously provides the reader with another

perspective on how to approach the desert landscape. Split into two sections, the first

section of the story discloses the man’s preparation and journey into the desert, and the

second in great detail speaks of the process the man goes through to become rebirthed by

the desert. Ambiguously writing in the first section, in what feels to be a hurried process,

the narrator places emphasis not on the journey out to the desert, but on what is to come

once the man reaches it. For, the pace of the story slows once he enters the desert, a

technique that guides the reader towards understanding what is important to take away

from the story.

Catrin Gersdorf labels the approach in this story as the “escapist” approach, for

the story is of a man’s journey away from society into the solitude of a desert hot spring

(Gersdorf 214). The narrator begins not by describing who this man is, but instead the

few material possessions he takes with him into the desert, as if to define him, as our

consumerist society would, by those possessions: “He would take a thin green sleeping

bag and a blue tarpaulin, a few dishes and a one-burner stove. He would take his spoon and only cereal to eat and tea to drink. He would take no books, no piece of paper to write on” (9). With limited possessions to distract him from his mission, the man drives the seven hours to the desert alone, with the radio off, picking up no hitchhikers, and stopping only for gas.

The narrator speaks of the drive in a familiar fashion, revealing that it is exactly

278 miles, and giving the reader only details of the road as signs of humanity fade away from the man’s mind. This notion is depicted congruently with the man’s path, as it carries him further away from society: “He would see few cows. He would see, on a long stretch of road, a golden eagle sitting on a fence post. There would be more space between the towns and more until there were no towns at all, only empty shacks” (10).

These are very significant details, for not only does it illustrate a “series of strippings,” but also the golden eagle is a spirit animal for many of the Native American tribes that lived in the plains. The golden eagle’s feathers were thought to hold access to one’s spirit and a heightened awareness of one’s surroundings (Newell 83).

Entering the outskirts of the desert, after witnessing such a spiritual sign, the man

parks his truck on a one-lane road, leaving the engine running, and pauses to take in the

solace of the desert. With the man’s travels over, the section ends. The last line of the

section, however, alludes to the recurrence of the events that had just been described, including the sighting of the golden eagle: “He would always arrive by one in the afternoon” (10). The narrator has just implied that not only is this man’s pilgrimage a ritual in some way but that the events of the trip are also consistent as well. This idea signifies that a trip into the solace of an unmanaged landscape can lead a person to become more in tune with their spirit, for just as the man passes by the golden eagle each time as he escapes all signs of civilization, symbolically a person can come closer to a spiritual awakening. The second section of the story, which tells of the man coming to life again, bolsters this reading.

The second section begins with an abundance of detail, depicting the man standing outside his truck fully immersed in the moment. “He inhaled the tart, sulphurous fumes rising up from the green reeds, the only bit of green for miles. He watched the spiders spinning webs in the wire grass and the water bugs riding the clots of yellow bubbles” (10). By giving immediate and exact details of the man’s sensorial experience with the desert landscape, the narrator draws in the reader, so that they, too, may encounter the world as he does. By doing this, the narrator prepares the readers to interact with their own surroundings in a comparable manner.

Once the scene resonates with him, the man gets back into his truck and drives out on the desert floor, towards the hot spring. As he gets close, the man places the vehicle

into neutral and coasts to a stop so as not to disturb the silence. The narrator treats the silence of the desert landscape as an entity to be cautious of, in the same manner that the act of listening is honored in the story “Introduction:” “He was careful with the silence.

He could hear his fingers slide over the plastic steering wheel. He could feel the curve of his lips tightening in the dryness” (10). This silence and the man’s heightened awareness are positive attributes of the landscape he has just entered. The narrator’s attention to detail in this section juxtaposed with the bleakness of the first section places value on the experience of entering an unmanaged landscape.

The man removes his clothes, leaves them in the truck, and walks naked to the hot spring. It is this intentional act that leaves him vulnerable so that he may fully immerse himself in the desert landscape. With no materialistic distractions of modern life to stand between him and the elements, he lowers himself into the water. Similar to a baptism, the man is cleansed by the water. The narrator focuses on the man’s sensorial experience and provides vivid details so as to both capture the moment and illustrate to the reader the extent to which the desert landscape can restore a person. “He could hear the water lapping at the entrance to his ears, the weight of water pulling on his hair; he could feel the particles of dust falling off his flesh, floating down, settling on the bottom of the pool; he could feel the water prying at the layers of dried sweat” (11). It is within these lines that the theme of strippings, first mentioned in “Introduction,” is fully embraced, for as

the man emerges from the hot spring, to stand naked on the desert floor, the narrator emphasizes his renewed consciousness.

As the man walks back to his truck, he is cognizant of the movement of his muscles with each step, how his eyes feel smoother, and how his body parts the air. All of these sensations only come with a heightened attentiveness and are generally overlooked daily. The story concludes as the man sits in his truck eating out of an earthen bowl, gazing across the desert, and imagining that “he had come back to life again” (12). Mike

Newell compares this final scene to the process of a Desert Father, as he purifies himself and participates in a communion with an earthen bowl (Newell 83). Conjuring up religious imagery throughout the second section, the narrator supplies an accessible perspective of a man’s genuine spiritual intimacy that he gains as he refamiliarizes himself with the desert landscape through a series of strippings. This sort of recognition of the spiritual nourishment from the landscape from both the narrator and the character of the story illustrates the necessity to have an inclusive definition of the spiritual aspects that make up the concept of a landscape. This very interaction with a landscape is what provokes Jim Dodge’s distinction of landscape “both as the source of physical nutrition and as the body of metaphors from which our spirits draw sustenance" (Dodge 341). As the reader’s guide, the narrator provides the reader a lens to comprehend these very characteristics that Dodge refers to; while the final lines of “Desert Notes” encourage the

reader to come to recognize the characteristics for themselves: “Wait until you see for yourself, until you are sure” (5).

“The Raven”

Having stepped away from his own narrative in “The Hot Spring,” the narrator once more relies on a different form of storytelling to guide his readers, this time in the form of an eco-fable. This choice of narrative can be seen conjoined to Lopez’s attempt to bring about a similar revelation to the one he had with his studies, a concept he speaks of in an interview with Nicholas O’Connell: “When I first began reading the serious thinking of Native American people, I realized another culture had put into formal terms a way of thinking I’d felt inclined towards since I was a child…” (O’Connell 16). Mark

Tredinnick expands on this way of thinking when he explains Lopez’s interaction with

Native American scholars:

Teachers like Toelken [Lopez’s adviser at the University of Oregon], and

later indigenous guides, led the young writer to non-Western aboriginal

cultures that believed what his own intuition told him: that places make us,

school us, offer us the guidance we need for good lives (with “places” here

understood not to exist separate from but to include the people who inhabit

it). (Tredinnick 57)

It is this intuition that Lopez attempts to instill in his readers through writing in the genre

of an eco-fable in the story, “The Raven.” Through fables centered on both the character

of the crow and the raven, the narrator relies on the genre to metaphorically provide the

reader with pertinent lessons.

The reader is metaphorically shown the terms of survival in any landscape

through the character traits of the raven as they are foiled against the overpopulating

nefarious crow. The narrator appoints the raven with a prophetic role, while the character of the crow is used allegorically to warn the reader of the negative consequences of

Western civilization’s depredations and defamiliarization from the phenomenal world.

This role that the raven is given is similar to the one he plays in Native American stories as the trickster figure. As the trickster figure, the raven is epitomized so as to instill lessons upon the audience. In many tribe’s stories, the raven is known for bringing fire to the people by stealing it from the sun, and stocking the rivers of the world with salmon.

In a similar fashion, the raven takes care of mankind by imparting upon the reader an example for them to emulate.

Telling the story in the second person narrative form, the narrator immediately breaks down the barrier that existed between him and the reader in the previous story,

“The Hot Spring.” He begins by addressing the reader and differentiating a crow from a

raven. The narrator focuses on the crow as he speaks of the crow as if it were a menace

and an adulterer, corrupted by living off of the streets, instead of in the desert like the

raven. While the raven is careful only to kill what it needs, the crow is said to kill for

sport, wastefully consuming whatever it wishes, only to celebrate its squandering: “They will tear out a whole row of planted corn and eat only a few kernels. They will defecate on scarecrows and go home and sleep with 200,000 of their friends in an atmosphere of congratulation” (16). These traits are not to be considered evil, for the crows are blind and ignorant to their faults. The narrator through an anecdote he includes shortly afterward speaks of this metaphorically. Although inaccurate, he recounts that when too many crows get together white film forms over their eyes, and they fall from their perch to lie dying of starvation where they land. The narrator informs us that when asked about this occurrence, the crow will simply state that we are misled. It is due to this that the narrator feels that the crow should not be seen as evil for its actions.

Having defended the crow, the narrator begins to tell of how the crow once

resided in the desert. At that time, they would try to squeeze out the vultures, traveling in

packs, and eating whatever they could find. The raven, on the other hand, would always

eat alone and out of sight. As the narrator juxtaposes the crow alongside the raven, he

places a slant on the crow’s insatiable traits. After this the narrator speaks of the downfall

of the crow, and what led to their disappearance from the desert landscape.

The narrator relays the story about the time that there were still crows in the

desert, and how there was once an alkaline water hole that lay at the edge of the desert.

Only the crow would drink from its bitter waters; no other desert dwellers dared to. While

the crow would drink sparingly, one or two drops at a time, this changed one day. The

crow overheard a raven cautioning an animal not to drink the alkaline water. Insulted the

crow quickly spread word to all of the other crows, who then became angry at the raven.

They began to challenge each other to drink more and more from the water hole, just to spite the raven. Eventually, they drank the hole dry and became blind. Intoxicated off of the alkaline water, they went cartwheeling throughout the desert and breaking their necks from flying into the canyon walls. Sometime after all of their antics, all the crows had died off. Slowly, the desert fungi and bacteria consumed their bodies, leaving only blue dust behind. Those crows that had watched from a distance fled the desert to live somewhere else.

Despite the story not being done, this small allegorical anecdote speaks of the

fate of Western civilization on a multitude of levels. It illustrates how our society became

too voracious to live only off of a landscape and what lead to our defamiliarization from

the phenomenal world as we were left to live only in our cities. On the other hand, it can

be seen as a warning of sorts, with the alkaline water symbolizing our exploitative nature,

for like the crow we are the only beings that dip into the alkaline waters, which, in this case, could be oil or any other non-renewable resource, to survive. The fall of the crow

seems to speak to how we will simply be subsumed by the landscape, and life will go on, a fate very similar to what is depicted in Alan Weisman’s work A World Without Us. In its finality, we see the resilience of the raven to survive in the desert when compared to the crow’s foolish demise.

The reader is left to imagine a crow cartwheeling across the desert and ponder our ominous fate as the narrator begins another anecdote, this time in regards to the raven.

The account is of four ravens sitting at the edge of the desert, patiently waiting for the sun to rise. Having been there all night, dew sat beaded on their wings. As the wind came from the snow-capped mountains from the north to ruffle their feathers, the ravens still sat “as still as the cracks on the desert floor” (17). It is like this that the ravens stayed until, at first light their bodies swelled and their eyes opened in reception to the rays.

Once the sun had risen, the four ravens still sat, waiting for the dew to dry from their wings. Fully dry, each one flew off towards each of the cardinal directions. With this, the narrator finishes his brief story, stating that”[c]rows would never have had the patience for this” (18). The tale is analogous to the ending of “Introduction,” where the narrator finds a deep metaphorical connection with the landscape: “One morning as I stood watching the sun rise, washing out the blue black, watching the white crystalline stars fade, my bare legs quivering in the cool air, I noticed my hands had begun to crack and turn to dust” (xiii).

Although an abstract tale about the raven as a character, it speaks immensely of the narrator’s multiple approaches to reconnecting with the desert landscape. Laid parallel to the tale of the foolish crows that died in the desert, the reader can come to revere the ravens’ resilient patience and ponder what the narrator, who speaks of how they all flew in different directions, means. If the ongoing Native American theme of the raven as a character is considered, the raven’s flight symbolizes their awareness and interconnectedness. The Lakota tribe believe that north represents wisdom and thought, east is salvation and spirit, the south is birth and purity, and west stands for death and clarity. When the character of the raven pursues each one of these directions, it symbolizes a sense of fulfillment and enlightenment gained from their perseverance in the desert landscape. While defining the raven as a desert dweller, this tale further distinguishes the crow as lacking patience and being unable to fly metaphorically in separate directions. Through these two tales, the first of the crow’s demise and the second of the positive attributes of the raven, it can be discerned that the crow symbolizes those who have become defamiliarized from the landscape, while the raven continues to embrace a connection with the landscape.

But, the story of the raven is not over. Having finished the two allegorical tales, the narrator directly addresses the reader and guides them towards learning more about the raven. For to understand the raven is to learn metaphorically the ways of someone who has not become defamiliarized from the landscape. A process that helps one break

away from a life like the crow’s. The narrator beckons the reader to venture once more

into the desert and advocates for the reader to bury himself or herself in the sand. Told to

leave only their eyes uncovered, and make sure not to blink, the reader is informed that

they should be able to observe the ways of the raven. The narrator encouraged the reader

to be patient and wait for an entire generation of ravens to pass: “Of the new generation

there will be at least one bird who will find you. He will see your eyes staring up out of

the desert floor. The raven is cautious, but he is thorough. He will sense your peaceful

intentions” (18). The raven must have the first word. While he states that he knows

nothing, the reader must not believe him. Once again, patience and persistence are

reiterated as necessary traits for strengthening one’s relationship with a landscape. At this

point, however, the reader is left only to imagine what could proceed from the

conversation with the raven, for the narrator divulges an alternative approach to

understanding the raven.

By searching the desert for remnants of a raven body, the reader is told they will

find a preserved raven’s foot. If one examines the raven’s severed foot they can discover more about him. The narrator follows this statement by providing a scientifically detailed

description of the raven’s foot, an act that illustrates that he has already done this. As he

articulates the details of the foot in the second person narrative form, the narrator engages

the reader’s imagination, places the raven’s foot directly in their hands, and allows them

to inspect it. He does this only to subtly weave a lesson in for the reader to emulate:

You will see that the talons are not as sharp as you might have

suspected. They are made to grasp and hold fast, not to puncture.

They are more like the jaws of a trap than a fistful of ice picks. The

subtle difference serves the raven well in the desert. He can

weather a storm on a barren juniper limb; he can pick up and

examine the crow’s eye without breaking it. (18)

Concluding the story with these lines, the narrator defines the life of the character who he

has persistently encouraged the reader to revere. Able to survive in the desert, the raven is

resilient and able to have little environmental impact. This ending is what prompts Mike

Newell’s following comment: “This story could very well be Lopez’s signature piece in

the book. The terms of survival in any particular landscape require an ability like the

raven’s, ‘to grasp and hold fast, not to puncture’” (Newell 84). Not only is this lesson

reflected in this story, but also in the collection as a whole. The narrator wishes to guide

the reader towards discarding their crow-like lifestyle and come to mirror the sage-like

wisdom of the raven. The pace of the collection is shifted once more as the narrator

transitions to speak of his own personal inquiry into cultivating a life like the raven’s, and he leaves the lessons of “The Raven” lingering in the minds of his audience.

“Twilight”

Labeled as the “New Ager” perspective by Catrin Gersdorf, “Twilight” captures a man’s mystical communion with the desert landscape (Gersdorf 214). Blossoming from the Western nations in the 1970’s, the New Age movement is characterized by a holistic view of the earth and emphasizes self-spirituality through a grounded connection with one’s surroundings. The narrator in this case practices a New Ager inquiry through the use of a Navajo storm rug, to gain a spiritual connection with the land. Familiarizing himself with a Navajo storm rug, which is designed to capture symbolically the Navajo’s four sacred mountains and the desert that defines the Navajo territory, the narrator can reconnect with the landscape through an inquiry into the history of the rug. It is because of the rug’s symbolism that the story is split into two sections. The first is the narrator articulating the story of the rug, and the second depicts the narrator using the rug for its traditional sacred intention.

The story begins in the first person narrative form, as the narrator summarizes the

scene, so as to give the reader an image to fix on: “I am sitting on a storm pattern rug

woven out of the mind of a Navajo woman, Ahlnsaha, and traded to a man named Dobrey

in Winslow, Arizona, for groceries in August 1934” (21). The narrator provides a glimpse

of where he is, so as to build a foundation for the narrative to stand on. He does this only to digress into an abstract account of an inanimate object: the storm pattern rug. The narrator transitions into third person narration to tell of the evolving history of the rug as

its original spiritual purpose was stripped from it, only to become an article of exchange.

He relays to the reader the rug’s sometimes unsavory history, which spans over thirty-

five years as it is stolen, gifted, and bartered for by fifteen different characters. With each transition of an owner comes a different usage and monetary value assigned to the rug.

Some owners use it as a rug, a blanket, a payment, or as a symbol of gratuity. Being transported completely across the states and collecting a variety of stains and smells, the narrator finally buys it from an antique dealer in Oregon.

His own experience is then focused on as the third person narrative form is

transitioned away from. The night the narrator buys the rug, at dusk, he undresses and lies

completely under the rug, and listens for the stories the rug will tell. Instead of the ability

to hear anything, the narrator tells us that “in this time I am able to sort out all the smells

buried in the threads and the sounds still reverberating deep in the fibers. It is what I have

been looking for” (24). With the first section finished and the last lines, quoted above,

followed by an extended indentation, the reader is left wondering if the narrator learned

of the rug’s detailed history by this surreal experience he has with the rug. This thought is

provoked by the narrator leaving the reader to wonder how the lingering smells and

reverberating fibers could be what he had “been looking for.” This method depicts the

potential of the rug to hold mystical powers and prepares the reader for what is about to

come in the next section.

To signify a passage of time, the narrator slips into the present tense, and the

second section begins as he takes the Navajo storm pattern rug into the desert and lays it on the ground from east to west. From this position he uses the rug to interweave his interior landscape with the external landscape of the desert floor. The narrator enters into a transcendent mindset. He explains that it “is only from such a height above the floor of the desert that one is able to see clearly what is going on” (24). With the wind coming from the south smelling of wet cottonwood leaves, the sun having just set, and the moon and a few stars only recently appearing, the narrator tells the reader that twilight is the best time to “see what is happening” (24).

From this vantage point, the narrator slips into a spiritual hallucination. His first

vision is of a character who seems to be a mix between a New Ager and a Desert Father:

“Already I have seen the priest with his Bible bound in wolves’ fur and the blackbirds

asleep in his hair” (24). Although he does not interact with the priest, the narrator’s vision

of him has a positive effect. As it grows later and the narrator continues to lie on the rug

and the desert floor, his visions become progressively more surreal. Each vision is

accompanied by smell and is later joined by a series of mythical happenings: “I see the

magnificent jethery loping across the desert like a greyhound with his arms full of oars. I

watch cheetahs in silver chariots pulled by a span of white crows. I see the rainbow in

arabesques of the wind” (24). Inexplicable in meaning, these events may only be provided to illustrate the persistence and tolerance of the narrator to endure, like the

raven, and become a part of the ongoing of the landscape. This is bolstered by his sight of

a jethery, the greyhound-like creature, which is of no significance nor has ever been

mentioned in another literary database.

As time passes, these mythical images are transitioned away from, and the

narrator begins to hear the voice of Ahlnsaha, the rug’s creator. Her crying and antiquated

song emerges. She sings of earlier times in the Arizona desert when there was “white

rain” and horses feeding on the prairie. But, as the narrator points out directly afterward,

there is neither rain, nor are there horses anymore. With the reintroduction of Ahlnasaha,

the narrator has reminded the reader of the events that took the rain and horses away from

her people, while also restoring the reader’s focus back on the character that functions as

the foundation of the story.

The pace of the story shifts as time passes. The moon rises higher and the clouds part, and with it the narrator imagines twilight’s failing light: “The two girls with the sun in a spiderweb bag are standing by the mountains south talking with the blue snake that makes holes in the wind with his whistle” (25). The two girls who entrapped the sun in their spiderweb bag symbolize the coming of nighttime and shortly after the narrator sees the faint light of twilight as it lingers on the contour of the horizon, which is embodied by the blue snake. The narrator feels the fading warmth that loiters from the snake’s whistle or appearance as it cuts the all too prevalent nighttime cool desert wind, creating stirring

air currents, which whistle through the surrounding rocks and trees. Although abstract,

the narrator’s imagery captures the surrealist experience of witnessing twilight in the desert. Providing the reader with a more accessible description, the narrator further clarifies his experience later in the story: “The day hugs the desert floor like a fallen warrior. I am warm. I am alert for any sort of light” (25).

But first the narrator divulges his aspirations of returning to the desert to emulate

a Desert Father, before he offers the reader this clearer explanation. He tells the reader of

how he will bring a “friar’s robe with a deep cowl and shoes of jute fiber” (25), and run

all night, only to make his way back reading the breviary, a religious text, by starlight.

This alternative religious approach to relating one’s self to the desert landscape is

provided in juxtaposition to the narrator’s New Age approach of lying under a Navajo

rug, awaiting visions and deeper relations. With both of these inquiries presented to the

reader, the narrator alters the form of the narrative into the second person narration to directly assure the reader, “I believe there is someplace out there where you can see right down into the heart of the earth” (25). Once again the potential to reconnect with the landscape and see deeply into its essence is reiterated, a theme, which continues to be drawn on as the narrator further divulges the conceivability of the potential. In the next four paragraphs the narrator justifies his statement, as he overemphasizes that one can find these experiences just as twilight fades; the narrator does this by beginning each paragraph with the clause “this [time] is the only time…” (23-4). While still in the second

person, the narrator is both able to inform the reader, and accredit himself as a

knowledgeable source on the topic, through the depiction of his own personal

interactions.

In the first paragraph of this group, the narrator imparts his wisdom about the

desert tortoises. He reminds the reader that it is at twilight that a person can find the

masses of tortoises gathering to make their pilgrimage towards the west where the water

is, only to return the same night to hide in the bushes, and eat bugs. Quickly shifting into

the first person to provide a quick anecdote on the nature of the turtle, he then concludes

by stating that he has spoken with these tortoises and found them rather “reticent” (26).

Although not helpful for the reader’s pursuit towards reengaging with the landscape, this

anecdote about the tortoises entices the reader to venture into the desert to witness this

sight.

In the next three paragraphs the narrator speaks of the heightened awareness that

comes with being in the desert at twilight. The first example is one’s ability to see both of

their shadows, cast by the fading sunlight and rising moon. Once again, the narrator

reiterates the need for patience; for, to see this phenomenon one must sit perfectly still while watching their primary shadow until the moon rays fill it with light and begin to cast a second shadow. It is at that moment that the reader is informed they can move: “If

you turn carefully to face the south you may regard both of them [both shadows]: to

understand the nature of silence you must be able to see into the space between your

shadows” (26). The revealed ability to fully comprehend the essence of silence is

monumental, an entity that the character from “The Hot Spring” was careful with. The

narrator has just guided the reader towards fully being able to commune with the

seemingly desolate landscape and overcome what Drs. Michael Bittman of the University

of New England and Mark Sipthorp of the Australian Institute of Family Studies argue is society’s "need for noise and their struggle with silence” (Hoffman 1). This meditative process of finding a space between one’s two shadows does not stand alone. The narrator in the next paragraph articulates another example of the intensified attentiveness that is triggered by being in the desert at twilight.

With such awareness, the reader is informed of their ability to sense the presence

of water in the desert. “This is the only time you will be able to smell water and not

mistake it for the smell of a sheet of granite, or confuse it with the smell of marble or

darkness…you will find water as easily as if you were looking for your hands” (26).

Promising the reader the ability to find a life-sustaining source in a seemingly barren

landscape, the narrator has once more advocated for an enticing aspect of venturing into

the desert at twilight. The rest of the paragraph is dedicated to both the assurance of the

presence of water and the fact that it is easily found due to the distinct resolute smell of it:

“…there will be no mistake about the direction to go once you smell it. The smell of

water is not affected by the air currents so you won’t need to know the direction of the

wind; the smell of water lays along the surface of the earth like a long stick of peeled

elmwood” (26). The expressed ability to smell and discover water in the desert at twilight

comes off not only as comforting but also as a step towards fully immersing oneself in

the phenomenon of the desert.

While the past three paragraphs have only promised a communion with the desert

landscape, it is in the last of the paragraphs that begin with the clause “this is the only

time,” that the desert at twilight is associated with aiding the reader in attaining a

provisional wisdom from the landscape. In spite of the fact that there is no reason for the

grey eagle to come to the desert, no rabbits to hunt, no cliffs to fall from, nowhere to roost, the narrator makes a promise to the reader: “It doesn’t matter how high he [the grey eagle] goes or how far away he drifts, you will be able to hear him” (27). Although the grey eagle is unable to be spotted because he disappears with the rising sun, the narrator reminds the reader of the importance of listening and suggests that the eagle’s powerful wings can always be heard. While there are no grey eagles in the desert, the roosting and hunting patterns are modeled after the golden eagle, a spirit animal already referred to in

“The Hot Spring.” By the end of the paragraph, the narrator turns away from mimetic identification with the eagle and instead moves toward figuring the connection between the eagle and the reader as divinely close. With the symbol of the eagle once more being called upon to stand for a passageway for accessing one’s spirit and for one’s ability to become more aware of their surroundings, the narrator has just promised the reader

success in both. This is illustrated by the end of this series of paragraphs, as the reader is

assured the ability to always listen attentively to the soaring of an eagle, smell the

presence of water, and understand the revered presence of silence, each of which comes

with patiently communing with the desert at twilight.

These three examples of the reader’s ability to refamiliarize themselves with the

landscape are followed by the narrator’s divulgence of the last heightened experience that comes with being in the desert during twilight: “The last thing you will notice will be the stones…they are the last things to give up the light; you will see them flare and burn like coals before they let go” (27). The narrator lists a series of stones, most of them either semi-opaque, translucent, or reflective, all of which in a fading light would give off an eerie scattered glow from the ground. The ability to see the lingering light stored in the desert stones is a sensorial experience that would come only with a heightened attentiveness similar to the narrator’s: “I am alert for any sort of light” (25). This sort of awareness is to be yearned for by the reader, and as the narrator promises the potential of each interaction with the landscape, he is both guiding the reader towards experiencing them, as well as acquainting the reader with the capability to experience each one.

The narrator leaves with a suggestion to keep a few of these stones that are the

last to embody the light of twilight in either the pocket or cupped in their hands as they

sleep, a symbolical proposition for the reader not to forget their experience of twilight, to

hold on to the lingering light, and like the stones, stay grounded. Shifting into first person narration to conclude the story with a personal anecdote, the narrator speaks of a previous experience in the desert at twilight. Having shared a night with a fellow New Ager, the narrator describes his companion, who was certain that the stones, which held on to the last bits of light, were the most important things to keep close. The man would always keep one tied to the back of his ear. As the narrator watched, his companion reached up with a wetted finger and painted a dusty lightning bolt on his cheek, a sight the narrator stared at until it got too dark. With very little symbolic meaning, the narrator finishes the anecdote and the story with the following line: “I rolled myself up in this blanket and slept” (27). As the last line of the story, the narrator offers no thematic conclusion.

Instead he reunites the anecdote with the beginning of the story, by referring to “this blanket” (27).

A unique story in the collection due to its New Ager surrealist nature, “Twilight” is connected by the recurring presence of a Navajo storm pattern rug, which the narrator uses to lie upon and allow his internal landscape to connect with the external one.

Analogous to the power of a story to “reorder a state of psychological confusion through contact with the pervasive truth of those relationships we call ‘the land’” (Crossing Open

Ground 68), the rug offers a similar outcome for the narrator, as he reconnects with its history and uses it for its traditional purpose. Leaving the reader with the imparted knowledge of the ability to gain a heightened awareness from a landscape, the narrator

transitions into another narrative of his own personal inquiry towards communing with

the desert landscape. Within the next story, “Perimeter,” he illustrates his newly achieved

consciousness by providing the reader with an intimate description of the desert in each

of the four cardinal directions. Such an approach is one that can be emulated by the

reader so that they might gain such a deep and cognizant relationship with the landscape.

“Perimeter”

Having spent several stories illustrating various approaches for re-familiarizing oneself to a landscape, the narrator personally takes the reader on a journey of becoming more intimate with the landscape. In its entirety, “Perimeter” embodies Lopez’s best use of all the forms of narrative from within the collection. Through the use of the second person narration, the narrator makes the immediate landscape the reader’s also, which he

captures through a fusion of both first and third person narration. Thus, he commands the

landscape to come forth as both metaphor and reality. With a fluent combination of both

the first and third person narrative form, the narrator describes the desert landscape with an abundance of detail while also personalizing it with anecdotes from his intimate relationship with it. This allows for the desert landscape to become an immediate entity, absorbing the reader into the physicality of the landscape. The narrator fully immerses the

reader by intermittently addressing them directly through the use of the pronoun “you,” which breaks down the barrier that stands between a narrator and his audience.

Through this process, the narrator gains the confidence of the reader, leading them to trust him not only as a guide but as an extension of themselves, at which point the setting is formulated both to represent the immediate desert landscape and to be a metaphor for the reader’s surrounding landscape. Although speaking of the effect of this writing style in regards to Arctic Dreams, Scott Slovic still captures Lopez’s interaction with the reader within Desert Notes:

Instead of simply immersing us in the experience of the Arctic, Lopez

guides us through a learning process which alternates between immediate

sensory experience and abstract reflection, both of which contribute to

achieving intimacy…When we, as readers, acknowledge Lopez’s

solicitation of trust and intimacy, we open ourselves to the possibility of

making contact…Perhaps it is just as important—and more feasible—for

us to use Lopez’s reports of the exotic to enrich our understanding of the

familiar. (Slovic 149-52).

By attaining the trust of the reader, the narrator has arranged for the reader to be susceptible to the transference of the narrator’s own ideology regarding landscape for the rest of the collection, leaving the reader to accept his ideology as their own. This is done

through a mixture of detail-specific descriptions of the landscape that engage the reader’s

interior landscape, and through a persistent blending of both first and second person narration, which liberates the exterior landscape to be projected as both reality and metaphor.

Broken up into four sections, the story dedicates each one to a different cardinal direction. Each section follows a specific formula. So as to engross the reader in the details of the landscape, the narrator begins in the third person to provide an in-depth description of the view of the cardinal direction. Following this, the narration shifts into either first or second person narrative forms, personalizing the experience of the landscape and placing the reader directly in the landscape to experience it themselves. To this effect, the reader is given the feeling of standing side by side with the narrator in the middle of the desert, as they are guided to imagining an intimate description of the immediate landscape.

Through the third person narrative form, the reader is told in the first section of the creeks that come pouring out of the blue mountains that lie to the west. Each creek

disappears into nothing when they reach the edge of the desert, but when they are

running, the creeks “make a terrific noise” (31). The first five lines are dedicated to an

unbiased description of the blue mountains and their creeks, as the third person narrative

paints a clear view of the west. He draws the reader in, and as if turning to the reader to

speak his opinion, the narrator transitions into a dialogic first person narrative. No one

has been able to count how many creeks there are, the reader is told, due to their constantly changing channels, though the narrator believes there are over twenty.

The dialogical tone is maintained as the narrator effortlessly drifts into the second

person narrative form to reinforce for the reader the notion that they are standing next to him as they look out to blue mountains. With an assertive tone, the narrator addresses the reader with the pronoun “you,” as he tells them that they could easily find one of the old creek beds in the mountains, but the real challenge is finding one of the streams that are still running, even if they are full. Encouraging the reader to go out and find these elusive creeks, the narrator bolsters his credibility as a guide as he once more returns to the first person narration: “I have had some success by going at night and listening for the noise”

(31). As the reader is provided with his own approach to finding these creeks, the narrator engrosses them in the image of the creeks flowing from the blue mountains. He does this by suggesting that they should try to find them, and then imparts to the reader a way to do so. As he concludes the section, the narrator shifts into the third person narrative form to

paint a clearer image of the west.

In the last paragraph of the section, the narrator tells of the sparse flora and fauna

that do not seem to depend on water. The narrator provides an exact description of the life forms that live in the desert, so as both to fill in the gaps of the reader’s imagination

of what stands between them and the blue mountains, and familiarize them with the sensorial experience of the desert landscape to the west. “The smells include hellebore, vallo weed and punchen; each plant puts out its own smell and together they make a sort of pillow that floats a few feet off the ground where they are not as likely to be torn up by the wind” (31). While the last two floral examples he lists do not exist, their inclusion is purposeful. Similar to the warning against the trustworthiness of maps in “Directions,” the insertion of fictionalized flora resists the reader’s reaction in becoming attached to the

Alvord desert as a mecca to refamiliarize themselves with, for they cannot discern the location through flora specific details. Instead, the reader is left to imagine the landscape of each story as metaphorical. As the reader becomes directly acquainted with an unattainable landscape, they are guided to follow Slovic’s suggestion: “Perhaps it is just as important—and more feasible—for us to use Lopez’s reports of the exotic to enrich our understanding of the familiar” (Slovic 150).

In the second section, the reader at the side of the narrator looks out to the north

of the desert landscape towards where the blue mountains transition into the white

mountains. It is there that the creeks are sparser than to the west, yet are more reliable.

The narrator employs the third person narrative form once again to paint the vista and

offers the reader an immediate image to engage with. Having referenced the last section

and cardinal direction, the narrator offers the effect of turning ninety degrees to absorb

the north. It is at the base of the white mountains that the creeks pool up at the edge of the

desert, causing a sort of swamp-like landscape to exist; for, as the reader is told, “water

takes a considerable time to evaporate and seep into the earth” (32), and grasses and

sedge grow.

As the narrator artfully transitions into the first person narrative form, he entraps

the reader’s imagination through his description of the landscape to the north. The narrator transitions so as to introduce the presence of ducks in the image: “There are some ducks here, but I do not know where they come from or where they go when the swamp dries up in the summer” (32). With this, the conversational element is emphasized, and the reader is drawn deeper into the landscape being described, only to experience the full effect of the narrator’s power over them in the next lines. With the fluent use of all three forms of narration, the narrator summons the image of the ducks as both a metaphorical presence and a reality for the reader. “I have never seen them flying.

They are always hiding, slipping away; you will see their tail feathers disappearing in the screens of wire grass. They never quack” (32). Transitioning from the first person into

third person narrative form, the ducks become metaphorically present in both the

narrator’s past and the reader’s present while the use of the second person narration

allows for them to exist metaphorically in the reader’s future reality. With the reader as a

witness to this image, the landscape that holds the ducks has just become metaphor and

reality, current in all happenings of life. It is this literary phenomenon that exemplifies

the level of awareness attainable from refamiliarizing oneself with a landscape. With this,

the narrator shifts away from the swamp scene, to paint a more immediate landscape in

the third person narration.

Identical to the first section, the narrator engages the reader’s imagination through

an extensive explanation of the small amount of trees and bushes of the desert to the

north. Out of the four cottonwoods there, only one of them is female; it is the oldest. The

reader is told that the “cottonwoods smell of balsam, send out seeds airborne in a mesh of

exceedingly fine white hair, and produce a glue which the bees use to cement their

honeycombs” (32). These informative details are complemented by similar descriptions

of the two black locusts that stand with the cottonwoods. The locusts, however, were

planted by immigrants and are younger, and shorter. One juniper tree stands with the

others, and at its base grow a few chokecherry bushes. These details create a reality for

the reader, which leaves them to imagine themselves standing just outside the grove of

trees. At this point the narrator breaks down the barrier of both the reader’s imagination and the words on the page as he switches into second person narration: “You can get out of the sun here at noon and sleep. The wind runs down the sides of the cottonwoods like water and cools you” (32). The narrator has directly placed the reader in the grove to feel

both the cool wind and shade from the trees as they counter the desert sun at noon. With

the reader interior landscape untied with the exterior landscape, once again the desert

landscape has become a metaphorical reality, reiterating to the reader the nature of

becoming familiarized with a landscape.

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The immersive experience is not over, however, for the narrator continues to

describe the scene. The reader is guided to notice the dilapidated cabin that lies on its

back, with its dark wood “dotted with red and yellow lichen and dry as sun-baked, long forgotten shoes” (33). The narrator balances this vivid imagery, just as he balanced the third person and second person narration, as he prepares the reader for the possibility of bumping into the dog that lives there. Utilizing the third person narrative form, the narrator describes to the reader what to look out for so that the reader can recognize the dog, as if they were both standing outside the grove: “An old tawny long-haired dog lives here. Sometimes you will see him, walking along and always leaning to one side” (33).

With the section concluded, the reader is left standing in the grove of trees in front of the toppled cabin. As they look for the dog that lives there, they can imagine the smell of the

cottonwoods, and experience the feeling of the cool breeze as it comes down from the

mountains.

With the start of the third section, the reader is brought back from the previous

idyllic scene. The narrator directs their attention to the east where the white mountain

range drops off, and there is a space on the horizon before the red mountains rise from the

desert floor. It is these red mountains that the narrator draws the reader’s attention

towards. The red mountains lie barren, other than the sparse sagebrush, and are complemented by the white sand dunes, which separate the mountains from the desert itself. Analogous to the previous sections, the narrator in the form of the third person

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narrative form references the presence of water at the base of the desert, and speaks of

how the red mountains are riddled with old creeks that make their way through the low- ceilinged caves of the mountains.

It is this landscape to the east that the narrator spends the beginning of the third

section illustrating, only to shift into the form of the second person narrative form to

immerse the reader directly into the scene. “The fish in these waters are white and

translucent; you can see a pink haze of organs beneath the skin” (33). The reader is given

the impression of standing next to the narrator as they stare into the water at the

swimming fish. The narrator is able to provide this immersive experience by giving the

reader exact detail, and through the use of the immersive pronoun “you.” Such an

impression leaves the audience to experience the scene for themselves. Following this

sensation, the third person narration is immediately returned to, expanding upon the

immersive scene. Noting the spiders, beetles, and the presence of bats in great detail, the

narrator urges the audience to imagine themselves looking about the cave, only to

transition away from it once more.

The dialogic tone is preserved, as the narrator tells the reader of his own similar experiences in these caves. In doing so, he transitions through all of the forms of narration. Interweaving the multiple forms of narration in a short three sentences, the landscape of the cave becomes both a metaphor for the reader, as well as a reality, just as

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the ducks were. The narrator leads with the first person narrative form to create a

metaphorical landscape that depicts his own reality. The narrator does this, only to expand upon it later with the third person narrative form to allow for it to become the reader’s as well, as he intertwines a second person narration and confronts the reader openly with the pronoun “you”: “I have always been suspicious of these caves because the walls crumble easily under your fingertips; there is no moisture in the air and it smells like balloons. The water smells like oranges but has no taste. Nothing you do here makes

any sound” (33). By adhering to a variety of the senses, the narrator produces an

experiential description of the caves, so as to provide the reader an opportunity to

acquaint him or herself with a landscape. Once again, through this approach, the narrator

furnishes the reader with yet another sensation to seek out.

As the effect lingers, the narrator retains the reader’s immersion in the landscape

as the next paragraph is told in the second person narrative form. The narrator as the reader’s guide tells of how to get to the caves and of the emotional effort that must be put forth. Articulated by the narrator as he speaks of how the reader must make their way through the crevices of the red, he later warns the reader of the fear that comes with the inevitable feeling of being stuck during the excursion: “Your eyes are pinched shut and the heels of your shoes wedge and make you feel foolish” (34). Upon walking the reader through the panic invoking experience, the narrator assures the reader that they will eventually enter the heart of the mountains to experience the caves.

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After the reader is guided through fully experiencing the caves of the red mountains, the narrator concludes the story with a further description of the landscape to the east. He speaks in the form of third person narration so as to provide the reader’s imagination a wider understanding of the white dunes that lie at the base of the red mountains. The narrator gives the landscape a life of its own as he depicts the ever shifting alkaline and white sand dunes by personifying the night wind: “The edge of the desert is most indistinct in this place where the white sand and the alkaline dust blow back and forth in eddies of the wind’s breath while it sleeps” (34). In these lines, the narrator has transformed a bleak landscape into an enticing one, causing the landscape to have a life of its own. With the section ended, the reader’s imagination is left to play with a full illustration of the dynamic landscape that lies to the east.

The reader’s attention is shifted once more, but to the south, as the narrator removes himself completely, so as to speak only in the second and third person narrative form. This narrative style leaves the reader to be immersed into the landscape without the narrator’s full presence there. As the last section begins, the reader is told how the red mountains eventually fall away to yield to the yellow mountains. It is these mountains that are rich in turquoise and silver, whose hillsides are filled with rabbits, and clouds surround peaks. This is the direction that the audience is directly informed by the narrator, through the use of the second person narrative form, that they inevitably will always come to face.

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Interweaving both narrative forms, the second and the third, the narrator continues

to leave the reader to reengage with the landscape that lies to the south as he speaks of the

horses that live in the hills. The twelve buckskin horses seem only to live in the desert to solely persist, living off of very little resources: “There is little grass but the horses do not seem to eat it. They seem to be waiting, or finished…In the afternoon they are motionless, with their heads staring down at the ground, at the little stones” (34). It is these qualities that the narrator has suggested the reader emulate in the previous stories, particularly in “Desert Notes” and “Twilight.” The reader is told of how there is a constant presence of the sound of the horses’ hooves “clacking” on the rocks of the desert floor. This effect provides a deeper sensorial experience for the readers to immerse themselves in, through the use of onomatopoeia. The narrator breaks away from the

description of the yellow mountains to conclude the story by addressing intimately the

reader and illustrating the landscape that lies to the south of the desert.

The reader is spoken to intimately through the narrator’s use of the second person narrative form, as he informs them that they can always engage with the landscape in the same way that he has just guided them to do: “…even on a dark night you can look out at the mountains and perceive the differences in direction. From the middle of the desert you can see everything well, even in the black dark of a new moon. You know where everything is coming from” (34-5). The reference to the levels of perception attainable

from the immersing oneself into a landscape bolsters the need to amend the Oxford

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dictionary’s limited definition of the term landscape, as just “all visible features of an area of countryside or land.” The reader is shown several other perceived characteristics that are not categorized by the definition, the most predominant one is magnetoception:

“…even on a dark night you can look out at the mountains and perceive the differences in direction” (34). The narrator’s assurance to the reader that they can reengage with the landscape in a similar manner as they have just done with his guidance, both bolsters the reader’s confidence in their ability to reimagine their own connections with their surrounding landscapes and the need to redefine society’s conception of the term landscape. With the narrative’s assurance still in the reader’s mind, another story is transitioned into, one which depicts the narrator’s own personal inquiry into the depth of desert landscape as he examines the existence of an ancient desert community from

“22,000 ± 1430 years BP” (40).

“The Blue Mound People”

“The Blue Mound People” for the most part is told in the third person narrative form. It is not until the end of the story that the first person narrative form appears in a rush, as the narrator provides both his theory on the ancient desert dwelling community and an alternative inquiry into refamiliarizing oneself with a landscape. The story negates the common misperception that comes with Great American Desert myth, by suggesting that there was once a society that lived strictly off of the desert landscape. The tone of the

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story is what both Catrin Gersdorf and Nicholas O’Connell define as anthropological, for

it provides a systematic and methodical perspective of how to approach the desert

landscape for the reader to emulate (Gersdorf 214, O’Connell 170). In an interview,

Lopez has disclosed that it is this anthropological tone that he utilizes to discuss

metaphorically tolerance, dignity, and ethical concerns (Gersdorf 215). “The Blue Mound

People” is a seamless illustration of his success with this approach, as he redefines a

common misperception of the desert landscape and illustrates another one of his personal

inquiries in refamiliarizing himself with a landscape.

As the narrator introduces the blue mound people, he does so in a tone that is the

farthest from a proper example of what Gersdorf and O’Connell speak of. But, as the

story progresses, a more authoritative anthropological tone is cultivated. The narrator

begins the story with the iconic fable-like adverb “Once,” and starts rather passively, only

to follow up by abstractly stating that the blue mound people once numbered “at their

greatest concentration, perhaps two hundred” (Desert Notes 39). This statement is not the

rhetoric of a credible source on the subject. While the reader hesitates to trust the

narrator, they are quickly swept up by the narrator’s use of a diction more fitting, one that is found in an anthropological or scientific journal: “It has been determined by a close examination…” (39). Such a tone as the one found here is carried throughout the majority of the story and is what provokes Gersdorf’s and O’Connell’s categorization of the story as an anthropological perspective on the desert landscape.

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Through a careful reconstruction of a remnant’s muscle tissue, the narrator

informs the reader that the society, which lived in caves at the edge of the desert, lived around “22,000 ± 1430 years BP” (40). Further studies show that they lacked vocal chords and looked very similar to a modern man. Although having died all in the same year, the narrator deduces that they “were both comfortable people, free from want, and a sedentary or perhaps meditative people” (44). These qualities are all defined by the plethora of artifacts found in their caves: intricately woven linen clothing, sage sandals, a

variety of cooking utensils, knives of silver and black obsidian, bone china, porcelain,

glass and crystal shards, pewter candlesticks, and scraps of beeswax. All of these artifacts

were found abnormally preserved and were what led the narrator to believe the potential

for mankind to both inhabit and live comfortably within the desert landscape.

As the story proceeds, the theme of humanity’s ability to live in the desert is

continually reiterated as further details of the society are divulged. The caves in which

these people lived within are said to be peculiarly intricate, with multiple entrances,

maze-like interconnecting hallways, and storage areas, while their diets were equally as

inexplicable. The society was said to have sustained itself off of a varied diet of meat and

a variety of fruits and vegetables: “varieties of melon, tomato, cucumber, celery” (40).

Evidence of this was found fossilized in their refuse pits. What is unusual about these

findings is that there was no sign of hunting implements or weapons found, as well as no

evidence that suggests that the soil was ever able to yield the fruits and vegetables.

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The question of how they provided for themselves remains

unanswered…just as there are no hunting implements, so there are no

agricultural tools. Nor is there evidence of elaborate religious ceremonies

nor extensive artwork nor are there tools or ovens to work the glass and

metal objects found in the caves (and it is extremely unlikely that these

were obtained in trade as we know of no other cultural group with such

skills in existence at this time) (41-2).

The narrator transitions away from his anthropological tone upon revealing this particularity. Switching entirely to the first person narrative form he adopts a more personable tone to develop the mystery of how a people were able to exist in the desert.

He first does this by writing off any hypotheses on the subject as ideas that should not be

taken seriously. In doing so, the narrator cultivates the prospect of a society that survived

solely off of their intimate relationship with the desert landscape. As the narrator propagates this mystery, he personally dispels the conception of the desert as a desolate uninhabitable landscape, as well as any convictions that downplay the importance of refamiliarizing one’s self with their local landscape.

The reader is informed of a potential explanation for the blue mound people’s existence, which lies in the series of unusual mounds of blue earth that can be found in each cave and the perimeter of the desert. These foot high mounds are what the people

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get their namesake from and are what the narrator states “might be evidence of a bond

between the people and the desert” (44). The mounds hold a perfectly smooth and round

white stone at their centers and are made up of a deep blue-grey dust. With the narrator’s

focus on these blue mounds and the suggestion that they might hold some explanation of

the people’s ability to exist, one has to wonder if the narrator is attempting to refer to the

story, “The Raven.” In the story, the ravens who had an intimate relationship with the

desert landscape were foiled against the crows who were reckless and less intimate with

the landscape. By the end of the story, the crows, who exploit their relationship with the

desert landscape, die. Their carcasses fade into a blue dust similar to what makes up the blue mounds, leaving the ravens to live in the desert. Such a reading equates the meditative blue mound people with the sage-like ravens and delivers a stronger

impression of the people who inexplicably lived in the desert. Similar to the underlying

theme in the eco-fable “The Raven,” the theme of the narrator’s exploration of the

existence of the blue mound people seems to emphasize the importance to become

intimate with a landscape and to have a minimal environmental impact.

The narrator lets the theme resonate, as he provides no conclusive thoughts on

how the blue mound people came to be “bound up in an unusual relationship with the

desert” (44). He leaves the potential of a lifestyle that would allow a society to live

comfortably in a desert landscape up to the audience’s imagination to grapple with. What

might come to mind is a lifestyle after “a series of strippings,” as the narrator previously

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put it, one that is less exploitative and wasteful (xii). This lingering effect is what

prompts Sherman Paul to argue that “imaginary or not, they [the blue mound people] are

the ancestors the narrator searches for” (Paul 357). The Blue Mound people are a culture for the narrator not only to strive to emulate but an example of the relationship with a landscape that the narrator is attempting to guide his audience towards pursuing. Lopez articulates this very idea in an interview with Mark Tredinnick:

The aboriginal lifeway is the manifest form of our intercourse with

landscape. In it you see embodied immediate awareness of the lore of the

place, as it touches people and all things, and you find a practice of ritual

that celebrates, remembers, articulates those truths. (Tredinnick 55)

It is these truths that the narrator is guiding his audience towards. Each personal inquiry

that is encompassed by a short story in the collection can be viewed as a suggested

practice of these rituals that lead to truth.

“Conversation”

As the narrator enters into a conversation, he suspends his usual instructive

narrative style and utilizes both the first and second narrative forms. Vicariously through

playing devil’s advocate with his interlocutor, the narrator discreetly prompts the reader

to consider a new outlook. In turn, the reader is provided with a foundation for self-

reflection, allowing them to weigh their views and questions off of the two interlocutors.

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Standing in the middle of the desert, the narrator is questioned about the

feasibility of living there. In response, the narrator metaphorically encourages the third

party to imagine a paradoxical shift in how they interact with the landscape:

Have you ever seen a spider make a web? The thread comes out through

little holes right above his ass. It is so thin you can hardly see it. He makes

a trap for the bugs in the air. Before the web is made, before the bug is

caught, the bug knows nothing of webs. It’s as if the bug and the web

didn’t exist. The bug dies, he is eaten, he becomes material for a new web.

The wind tears the old web down. (47)

The third party replies with a clarifying question as if predicting the potential of the reader’s inability to grapple with the narrator’s metaphorical response: “The point, then, is to hold still, to stay in one place?…To wait. Is one supposed to wait for…what? Do you wait for something, for some thing to appear? Someone to come? Are you suggesting a mental thing” (47)? In these lines, the third person is employed to guide the reader towards properly understanding the trajectory of the narrator’s convoluted suggestions.

Urged to “wait for yourself,” the third person is told that to find their true self, they must reinhabit and refamiliarize with a landscape (47). Just as the reader is encouraged to wait and become intimate with a landscape to “see for yourself” in the story “Desert Notes” (5), the suggestion is reiterated in a manner that prompted Sherman

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Paul to comment on the story’s qualities: “This passivity belongs to egolessness, but it is a wise passivity, as in Thoreau, alert” (Paul 357). Paul’s association to an alertness and egolessness and what he equates to Thoreau’s approach to a landscape is exactly what the narrator has been nudging the reader towards up to this point in the collection of short stories.

Further along in the conversation, the narrator directly addresses how our society has become defamiliarized from the phenomenal world, explaining that a person should go into a landscape and “wait for yourself” (47), so as to reverse their estrangement from place and themselves. It is this notion that Gary Snyder develops as he claims that

“knowing who we are and knowing where we are are intimately linked” (Snyder 189).

Snyder’s conviction of the link between becoming attuned to our surroundings and ourselves is rooted in his concept of reinhabitation, a process that coincides with Lopez’s mission to guide his readers towards throughout this collection.

The narrator goes on to argue a point similar to Yi Fu Tuan’s declaration that

“Americans have a sense of space, not of place” (Tuan 24), as he faults the third party with having become rootless and lacking any sense of place. Thus, they have little connection to their inner self:

You are stretched out like a string all over the place. The end of the string

is here, the rest is there and there. Back there in the mountains, on the

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other side. You must reel in the string, you must roll yourself up in a ball

and then unravel yourself out here where you have the room and the clear

light to study the condition of the threads. (48)

The narrator lingers upon this metaphor as he advises the third party to contemplate the relationship of their string to the landscape and how it interacts with the phenomenal world, goading the reader to look inwards and repair the faults in their string.

As if predicting a skeptical response to his encouragement for the third party to become rooted in a landscape, the narrator foregrounds for the reader the third party’s negative reaction: “I must tell you this. I think this is bullshit” (48). Just as the narrator directly addresses the predicted skepticism towards his propositions in the story “Desert

Notes,” (“It will occur to you that these tasks are silly or easily done. This is a sign, the first one, that you are being fooled,” and “What makes you want to leave now is what is trying to kill you”), he immediately discourages this very same reaction in this story by staying a step in front of his audience. “It’s bullshit because you are afraid your string will be too short. You are afraid it is too frayed, that you will be making knots all the time, that your web will be small and ridiculous” (48). As host of this conversation, the narrator is not only illustrating the Western world’s general reaction to any encouragement towards environmentally conscious mindsets, but also he is appealing to his audience’s hesitancies.

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To conclude the conversation, the narrator provides another insightful reaction to

his conversation, so as to defend his argument once more. “I don’t trust metaphors” (48).

Said by the third party, this reaction is in direct response to the convoluted metaphors

previously discussed and indirectly alludes to a frequent disregarding remark towards environmental authors who rely on metaphors to reach the public. After the reader is presented with this generalized response, the narrator ends the story with a line that valorizes the entire collection of short stories: “I am not talking metaphors. I am telling you the truth” (48). Mike Newell’s reaction to this concluding line is not only appropriate but essential for depicting the importance of metaphor to Lopez’s work: “In a classic

Trickster maneuver, the value of metaphor is artfully dismissed by the narrator when it is actually an axis on which many of Lopez’s themes spin” (Newell 86). Although the majority of the stories from this collection rely on metaphor to have the desert landscape represents the reader’s own local landscape, the narrator disregards his reocurring reliance on metaphor and instead labels them as truth. The narrator validates the significance of the story and leaves the audience to ponder the importance of staying in one place, refamiliarizing oneself with the landscape, and the potential of this effort to

reveal their truer self. As an ongoing theme to the previous stories, the reader is guided to reflect on the prior stories and reevaluate each one’s significance.

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“The School”

Following the story “Conversation,” the reader contemplates the truth and depth

of the numerous philosophical metaphors that have previously arisen as the narrator

offers one last alternative inquiry into the depths of landscape, segueing into the story

“The School.” Other than “The Blue Mound People,” this story is unique, for it is rooted

in an inquiry into a managed landscape. To illustrate this, the narrator brings the audience

to the site of an abandoned school house in the middle of the desert. Focusing on a

balance of all three narrative forms, the narrator begins the story by fully immersing the

audience in the setting as he directly addresses them and familiarizes them with their

surroundings. It is not until later in the story that the first person narrative form is more

thoroughly utilized to reveal the narrator’s previous history with the site. Before this is

done, however, the narrator fully immerses the audience in the surroundings, so he does

not intrude on their experience as he introduces a stronger third voice into the story.

It is the bullet holes littering the school house that the audience’s attention is first

drawn to; as an immediate detail the narrator instantaneously draws the reader in: “Look

from the size of the holes you can guess at the size of the bullets” (51). This personable

tone is held in the first few lines of the story until, once the reader is absorbed into the scene, a more authoritative voice is transitioned into. The narrator does this for two

reasons. As with previous stories, it allows for a more intimate interaction with the reader, and it allows the reader to invest confidence in the narrator as the reader’s guide.

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This effect can be found in several spots: “Maybe whoever…maybe who made these

holes in the floor was shooting at something, a rattlesnake. We have a lot of rattlesnakes”

(51). This formula is mirrored for a similar effect several lines later: “You’d never be

able to tell what kind of bullets those holes are from, only if the shots came from inside

or outside. That’s a shotgun blast” (51). In both of these incidents, the reader is drawn to

rely on the narrator for information as he transitions from a passive second person

narrative form into a legitimate source on the subject. Each occurrence both familiarizes

the reader with the managed landscape and further engages them.

The narrator maintains his conversational tone and draws the audience further in

the room: “In the back here where the kitchen was…here…was the stove” (51). The narrator emphasizes the experiential interaction with the school house by pacing the speed with which he guides the reader through the room, having them take in each detail

slowly. His use of the ellipses captures the feeling of being given a house tour and shown each particular detail of what is, in this case, an abandoned school house. The third paragraph is peppered with the narrator’s attempts to make his audience more familiar with their surroundings as he relies on the second person narrative form: “You can see what it was like. You can make out down here where someone’s taken the name plate: see where the light affected the color of the metal over a period of years” (51)? As this method is further utilized, the reader is brought to conceptualize the history and

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happenings of the school house, learning the story of what has occurred after it was

abandoned.

The tone of the narrator becomes more assertive as the reader is led further into

the building. Instead of showing them what they can learn about the building, the

narrator’s presence grows more noticeable in the room as he transitions into the first

person narration, reminiscing about what he can remember of the building: “This open

space here is where the rear door used to be, double doors of oak. I remember there were

big brown knots in there, chocolate-colored and bigger than your fists…” (52). By continuing his account of the doors, the narrator guides the reader to grow emotionally invested in them: “They brought those doors over from the valley in 1921. Connie

Whalen’s father who owned the mines bought them” (52). Just as the narrator guided the audience towards developing an intimacy with the desert landscape, he interjects his own voice into the narrative to give the reader additional details to consider, breathing life into the desolate managed landscape of an abandoned school house.

For the rest of the story, the narrator interweaves the first and second person narrative for to familiarize the reader with each part of the school house, just as returning to the abandoned site has allowed him to refamiliarize with it:

These places were where the casement windows were. We’d open them in

the hot weather and the front doors to get cross ventilation. There were

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fourteen panes of glass to each one. That was one of my jobs, to clean

them. There’s part of one of the window lattices out there in the rabbit

brush. (52)

You know—here, look at this: even the window latches are gone. I knew

they broke the glass and tore out the framing (you can see where they

started a fire in the corner over there with some of the framing) but here

somebody has gone to the trouble to take out the latches. (53)

Not only is the audience developing a familiarity with their immediate surroundings, the

school house, they also are being led to conceptualize what it once was like. On both

levels, the narrator exemplifies how one might inquire into refamiliarizing themselves

with the phenomenal world, through acquiring an awareness of detail and investigating

the stories that lie rooted in each landscape.

Progressively the reader is provided further insight into the history and current

condition of the school house until the narrator digresses into a recounting of how it came

to be abandoned. Because the school was a part of a mining town, the class sizes withered

away in conjunction with the cinnabar vanishing from the land. As time went on, the narrator left the area, along with the rest of the population of the town, and nothing became of the old school house. The county school superintendent reclaimed the bell that was in the cupola, while the cupola was later torn off of the building. The desks,

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textbooks, and stove heater, along with the maple flooring, the narrator admits simply

were taken without his knowledge.

Similar to Darwin’s description of how his mind inexplicably returns to the desolate landscape of the plains of Patagonia in the epigraph to the collection, the narrator returns to the abandoned school house from time to time: “I come over

sometimes and try to clean it out, burn up the garbage. I don’t know what for. The last

time I came over was about five years ago” (54). The narrator’s sense of stewardship of

the abandoned school house mirrors Barry Lopez’s belief in the result of refamiliarizing oneself with a landscape, whether it is a managed or an unmanaged one. While the narrator throughout the story has illustrated how one might inquire into becoming more familiar with a managed landscape, at the same time he has characterized his own familiarity and intimacy with the abandoned school house. It is this relationship that drives the narrator to return and tend to the building, an act that mirrors Lopez’s rationale: “The more superficial a society’s knowledge of the real dimension of the land it occupies, the more vulnerable the land is to exploitation, manipulation for short-term gain” (“The American Geographies” 62). In this case, the abandoned, desolate school house is a metaphor for the desert landscape, and for all landscapes for that matter; as the narrator reveals an alternate inquiry into refamiliarizing oneself with a landscape,

Lopez’s convictions have been reinstated by the metaphor contained within the story.

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“The Wind”

In the same manner that the narrator offers an alternate perspective of an inquiry into a deeper relationship with the landscape in “The Hot Spring” through the account of a man’s communion with the desert, he provides a description of a woman’s communion with the desert landscape in the story “The Wind.” Written entirely in the third person narrative style, the story exposes a woman’s intimate, sensuous interaction with the landscape, as she lies naked on the desert floor. In contrast to the stories where the narrator provides a guiding voice to emulate as he refamiliarizes himself and the reader with the landscape, “The Wind” allows the reader to observe the outcome of a woman’s inquiry into refamiliarizing herself. The effect of this, like the “The Hot Spring,” provides the reader with another perspective on the subject other than the narrator’s own.

The story opens with a woman on the desert floor as she lies naked and on her side, not just looking out to the desert, but “sighting,” a verb that captures her focus and intent of lying there (59). It is her intense focus that allows her to notice the intricate details of an ant as it passes between her and the sun, rolling a bit of white granite.

Seemingly a mundane sight, it is the details she notices that reveals her level of concentration and awareness: “…the sun is pinging in the creases of his body as though he were made in sections of brown opaque glass” (59). Such a level of awareness is what the narrator has periodically emphasized for his audience to strive towards throughout the previous stories.

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As the woman further observes the undertakings of the ant, her awareness

prompts her to experience the ant's interaction with the landscape on a sensorial level

empathetically. Conscious of the immensity of the granite cinder in comparison to the

ant, the narrator’s description of it evolves from a “grain of white granite” to a “boulder”

(59). With this shift, the audience is guided to recognize the woman’s heightened relationship to her surroundings. As the ant pushes the boulder into a crack in the desert floor, she places her ear to the earth, anticipating a reaction. Somehow, she can hear the grain of granite crash to the bottom of what has now transformed from a “crack” and a

“crevice,” to a “chasm” (59). Once more, with the varying noun use, the narrator illustrates the level of empathetic awareness that the woman practices. Such a consciousness is directly urged upon the reader to pursue in many places throughout the collection: “You must overhear things, as though you’d come into a small and desolate town and paused by an open window,” “Listen as you have never listened before,” as well as vicariously through the character’s respect for silence in the story “The Hot

Spring” (xi, 77, 10). Through narrating this woman’s intimate interaction with the landscape, the narrator is able to indirectly reiterate the importance that awareness plays in the process of refamiliarizing oneself to the phenomenal world.

As time progresses in the story, the woman remains on the desert floor. Her interaction with the landscape grows increasingly surreal as she imagines herself literally

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becoming one with the ground. Focused on her breathing and the sensory experience of the dry desert air filling her lungs, the woman quickly slips into a deeper consciousness:

She imagines her hair slipping into the cracks beneath her, the long shiny

black hair rolling like quicksilver off itself and over the alkaline dust and

cascading down into the cracks, winding under the earth until her head is

bound there like a rock pinned beneath a spider web. (59)

In her mind, she is firmly rooted in the landscape, a fantasy that leads to her increased attentiveness to her position in the physical world. Similar to the man’s interaction with the desert landscape after he is purified by the hot spring in the story “The Hot Spring,” the woman becomes exceptionally conscious of the movement of air around her body.

He felt the pressure of his parting the air as he walked. (12)

She can feel the air bending like water around the soles of her feet and can

feel it wash up her legs and pool in her belly, running back down through

the dark hair and piling between her thighs; feel it moving in twirls up

over her ribs, rushing up across her breasts, lying in the pocket of her

throat, flowing up over her ears like hands burying in her hair; coming up

the side of her leg, around below her hip under her back where there is

space between her and the earth, back across her chest and gone, over her

arm, tingle, finger, stretch, gone. (60)

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This elongated passage captures an extensive intimacy between a woman and her surroundings, as she comes to the revelation of the depth in which one can commune with a landscape. This revelatory experience is sustained the longer she remains on the desert floor, interrupted only by her ongoing observance of the ant.

Just as the caressing air current finishes its occupation of the woman’s body, the ant emerges from the crevice into which he had previously disappeared. Alerted to the ant’s presence by his attempts to drag a sage twig out of a crack, the woman turns and watches his battle. Once again, the woman’s heightened awareness permits her to experience her surroundings on the ant’s level. What was described by the narrator as a mere “sage twig” is transformed into a “log” as she places her ear to the ground and listens as the ant sends it plunging down another crack in the earth: “He gives a twig a push and she hears it crash like a log batoning down the walls of a shale canyon tearing the earth loose” (60). Once again, the woman can acquire an unusual perception of the world through the ant’s perspective as a consequence of her focused awareness. The ant disappears down a crack, upon accomplishing his task, permitting the woman to return to her heightened interaction with her surroundings.

Rolling over onto her stomach, the woman, without the distraction of the ant, is sensitized to the presence of the desert sun as it graces her freshly exposed skin.

Analogous to the experience of the air current caressing her body, this too proves to be a

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highly sensual interplay with her surroundings. Just as the narrator illustrated the woman’s previous interaction with the landscape, he goes to great lengths to grant the audience the ability to partake vicariously in the voluptuous journey of the light and warmth as it overcomes the woman’s body:

The light covers her and she can feel its weight against the back of her

legs…A pressure against her ribs. Up over her back and the tiny hairs fold

under the coming weight like rolling wheat sheening the light. It pools in

the dimples of her flesh and washes out over her legs to her ankles and

splashes over her heels and down the soles of her feet and pushes against

her toes…It curves around her face and she can feel it curve in the corner

of her eye and run out over her nose vibrating the hairs on her cheeks. It

tunnels up between her breasts and is gone. (61).

The light is gone equally as quick, just as the air current left her, and the focus of the narration transitions from the path of the light to the woman once more. The woman awakens, to notice that the corner of her mouth is wet against the desert floor. Rolling onto her side and drawing her knees close to her, she assumes the extremely symbolic fetal position. Naked and lying on the desert floor in the fetal position, it can be deduced that she has, or is about to go through a symbolic rebirth.

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It is from this position that the woman’s attention is drawn, once again, to the

sight of the ant emerging from a crack in the earth. The ant is busy struggling with a husk

of a seed when the woman notices a swirl of dust form and begin to make its way in their

direction. Upon dragging the seed to a nearby rock, the ant pauses, resting a bit, while the

dust swirl meanders its way across the desert floor. The woman watches patiently as the

scene unfolds. With the ant still resting by the grey stone, the swirl reaches him, and the

scene intensifies: “It come suddenly over the grey stone like a wave breaking, bowls the

seed from the ant’s grasp into a foreign crevice and tumbles the ant away” (61). Akin to

the other times the woman has watched the ant, her empathetic awareness brings a larger-

than-life feel to the minuscule happenings surrounding the ant.

With the sun setting behind the mountain ridge, the woman puts her clothes back

on, conscious of her skin tingling from the exposure to the sun. Enkindling a fire, she

does not notice the ant crawl from the crack where it was blown into the same crevice

that the seed disappeared into. This is where the ant stays, surfacing with the seed only

when the woman has fallen asleep. With that, the story is concluded. Although an undramatic ending, the story finishes so subtly that it leaves the reader to reconsider what they had just read, seeking an explanation for the story. While it is unmistakably clear to

the reader that the woman achieves a deep intimacy with the landscape that allows her to become intensely aware of both the micro and macro happenings occurring around her, it is the recurrent overly sensual descriptions throughout the story that provoke a question

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of what level of intimacy the woman is attaining with the landscape. Sherman Paul’s

consideration of this question both undermines all other analyses of the story and

reinstates my own:

Finally, there is a correlative story of nakedness, of the repossession of

body and the anima. In this story of a white woman who comes into

intimate relationship with the land, the play of mind and light enacts a

cosmic eros that is salutary as against the perhaps more explicitly sexual

and miniaturized instance of the ant (a male) with the seed. (Paul 357)

Paul’s notion of the salutary cosmic love that is formed between the woman and the landscape is the defining outcome that the narrator guides his audience towards.

While the reader might become preoccupied with the convoluted erotic affiliation of the symbolic ant and his seed as he passes fluently from each crevice, it is the ending that suggests otherwise. For, without any proverbial final nail in the coffin to solidify such a reading, the audience is left with the only conclusive understanding, one that coincides with the recurring message from the narrator: there is a beneficial outcome in refamiliarizing oneself with the landscape, and to do so is necessary. Juxtaposed alongside “The Hot Spring,” both of these third person narratives reiterate the same message. In each story the characters strip down, commune with the landscape, and become both refamiliarized and reborn. In “The Hot Spring,” the man sits in his truck

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after having a baptismal dip in a hot spring imagining “that he had come to life again”

(12). The woman in “The Wind” is seen lying naked on the desert floor and after a series

of highly sensorial driven intimate interactions with her surroundings assumes the fetal

position, symbolic for being graced with the purity of birth and rebirth. Each outcome lends itself to the reader’s conceptualization of what the narrator is driving at, as he utters in the story “Introduction”: “By a series of strippings such as this one enters the desert”

(xii).

“Coyote and Rattlesnake”

The second to last story in the collection, “Coyote and Rattlesnake,” is where the narrator metaphorically wraps up his guiding messages to his audience. The story is told in the form of an eco-fable and is considered by Sherman Paul as the “representative anecdote of the book” (Paul 355). Just as he did in the story “The Raven,” the narrator reverts back to a style of storytelling that was once relied on by indigenous cultures to impart life lessons and instill morals in their general populace. Instead of relying on the characters Raven and Crow, the narrator tells a story of Coyote and Rattlesnake, two archetypal characters from Native American traditional stories. Traditionally the trickster figure, Coyote plays an equivalent role in the story. He fulfills this role as the narrator vicariously guides his audience towards having a similar revelation as the Coyote’s.

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The narrator tells the story entirely in the third person narrative form in order to

remove his physical self from the page and allow the reader to simply experience the story. The narrator administers a fable-like introduction with the stock opening phrase

“One time,” as he opens the scene with Coyote out hunting at the edge of the desert.

Promptly, Coyote comes across Rattlesnake, who is lying in the shade of a rock waiting

for mice to come along. Coyote sits down on the rock admitting that he is also hunting.

After a while, he lets out a dramatic sigh and discloses his discontent with his life: having

to hunt constantly and move around.

Coyote’s dissatisfaction leads him to question Rattlesnake about his contentment

with just waiting day after day. Through his passive response, Rattlesnake unintentionally

invigorates Coyote: “It’s the way things are” (65), which provokes Coyote’s crisis of

faith:

“Rattlesnake, tell me, do you really mean to go on like this year

after year? Doing exactly as you are told?”

“How is that, Coyote?”

“Akasitah has said how we should live, that the coyote will hunt

rabbits, that he will die at the hands of Shisa. He has said that the

rattlesnake will live on the ground where he can see nothing and that he

too will die at the hands of the Shisa. Who are the Shisa that I must hunt

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rabbits and step in traps as though I had no eyes? Who are the Shisa that

you are beaten with sticks when they find you? We have all done as

Akasitah said we should. But Akasitah is the friend of the Shisa. He is the

enemy of all others.” (66)

With Coyote’s speech as the audience’s first introduction to the characters Akasitah and

the Shisa, it is easily deduced that Akasitah is representative of a higher being or spirit, while the Shisa are comparable to mankind, or more specifically, to Western culture.

Solely perceived through Coyote’s eyes, both Akasitah and the Shisa exude negativity; yet, Rattlesnake defends Akasitah’s intentions, as he provides a contradictory view by telling Coyote that he has it all backwards. Impervious to Rattlesnake’s attempts to pacify him, Coyote disregards Rattlesnake’s words and becomes determined to ameliorate their relationship with Akasitah and the Shisa. With that, Coyote begins to walk towards the mountain where Akasitah can be found. Telling Rattlesnake that he will see him when he returns, Rattlesnake watches Coyote go, only to resume his usual waiting and watching for mice.

The extended indentation between the end of this scene and the next provokes the reader to reflect on what they just read. It is Coyote’s displeasure with having to always hunt and live a rootless lifestyle, alongside Rattlesnake’s contentment and perseverance that leads the reader to begin to ruminate over the narrator’s previous guiding words

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about the importance of patiently staying in one place. This is articulated clearest in the

story “Conversation:” “The point, then, is to hold still, to stay in one place? / Yes…You

wait for yourself” (47). Left to consider this reiterated lesson, the scene opens to Coyote

climbing the mountain at the edge of the desert where Akasitah lives in a white cloud.

Coyote struggles with the steep climb to the top of the mountain and he cuts both his paws and the flesh of his hands on rocks on the way up. Coyote falls exhausted on his face, unable to move, and remains on the ground to recover. As he opens his eyes, he notices that he has reached the top of the mountain and that it is flat, covered with an unusually thick grass, and has a black lake in the middle of it. From the edge of the water, with his back turned to Coyote, Otter greets him: “You have come to see Akasitah about a new way of life” (67). Coyote is left speechless, surprised by Otter’s knowledge of why he has made the climb, and at how clearly Coyote can hear him across the lake as Otter stands with his back to him.

As another archetypal character in Native American stories, the otter is generally a helping figure, who aids other characters in their journeys. It is these traits that can be found in Otter as well. Otter continues, before Coyote can respond to him, advising

Coyote that he must first purify himself before meeting Akasitah. Not knowing if he can be heard, Coyote asks Otter how to do this. Once again, patience and perseverance lie at the root of what Otter guides Coyote to do, as he emphasizes the importance of both once

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again for the reader. Otter tells Coyote that he should build a small fire and sit by it all

night. He warns Coyote that he only gets one chance to speak with Akasitah, so Coyote

must know exactly what he wants and not be scared or prideful. If Coyote has any doubt,

fear, or pride, Otter tells him, he might as well turn around and go back down the

mountain, for Akasitah will disappear, and Coyote will spend the rest of his days running,

looking over his shoulder.

Intimidated and overwhelmed by Otter’s warning, Coyote quietly contemplates taking heed and going back down the mountain, only to be swayed otherwise by the thought of how Rattlesnake would laugh at him. Coyote decides to stay and collects small twigs to start a fire. The night grows darker and cooler, and as Coyote lays closer to the fire, he notices that it gives off no heat nor consumes any kindling. Undeterred, Coyote curls up and begins to reflect on all that he had witnessed of the Shisa:

He had seen their cities from the mountains south of the desert. He could

see beyond the curve of the earth from those mountains. He had watched

the land change under the hand of the Shisa. But that is not what bothered

him. In the old days the Shisa had planted, they had put things back. Now

they planted nothing, they returned nothing. Each winter there were fewer

rabbits. Something could not come from nothing. Each day the Shisa came

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closer to the desert. It could not go on forever. They had changed it. They

had broken the circle and made it straight like a stick. (68)

What Coyote has witnessed is unmistakably the plight of Western expansion and the advancement of modernity. Vicariously through his eyes, the audience perceives the effect of modernization, while at the same time becoming empathetic with his situation.

The narrator draws on classic Native American imagery from Black Elk’s great vision, which historically functioned as an ominous warning for the Lakota of their demise: the

Shisa breaking the circle and straightening it out. This comes directly from Black Elk’s first great vision, which occurred when he was nine years old while he was ill and unresponsive. In the vision, he is shown an emblematic sacred hoop, which represents the phenomenal world. As the hoop is broken in the vision, Black Elk is shown of how his tribe’s connection with the land is eventually lost, leading to their starvation: “And when we reached the summit of the third ascent and camped, the nation’s hoop was broken like a ring of smoke that spreads and scatters and the holy tree seemed dying and all its birds were gone” (Black 30). With this parallel metaphor, the narrator can enrich the symbolic meaning behind the Shisa, as well as have his audience cultivate an inward eye.

Coyote’s thoughts are cut short by the cold, and he begins to watch the stars above. Meditating on how Rattlesnake would still be waiting for mice, he recalls when the Shisa first came over to the valley and how it was full of rattlesnakes. The Shisa came

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and began beating the rattlesnakes to death, only to continue beating them long after their deaths, kicking the bodies under bushes or throwing them away. They persisted at this

until a wiser Shisa took their actions as a sign and led the rest of their people away from

the valley. Coyote’s memory of the Shisa slaughter of the rattlesnakes is quickly followed

up by another unpleasant memory of the Shisa’s exploitative ways.

Giving the audience no time to contemplate the weight of Coyote’s stance on the

Shisa’s treatment of the rattlesnakes, the narrator bombards the reader with Coyote’s memory of how the Shisa desecrated a sacred mountain. It is while Coyote is considering the reason he came to the desert that he is reminded of how “the Shisa had cracked open the sacred mountain with a great machine and taken the blue heart of the mountain away with chains” (68). As Coyote remembers fleeing from the sacrilegious pursuit of the mountain’s heart, the audience is given an alternative view of mountaintop removal and its effects. Coyote knows that since the wise ones who had led the Shisa away from the rattlesnakes had died, it would be only a short time until development would follow. With the development would come the day that Coyote would have to walk into a trap as if he was blind, just as Akasitah had ordered.

Coyote stays up the rest of the night to watch the fire and listen to the wind rustle the tips of the thick grass, determined to tell Akasitah that his inevitable fate with the trap is unacceptable. The fire burns itself out at the same time that the sun rises. With the new

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day’s light Coyote takes in his surroundings from on top of the mountain. In the same order that the narrator refamiliarized the reader from the center of the desert in

“Perimeter,” Coyote takes his time gazing in each cardinal direction: “Coyote looked to the west for the last star in the black sky, to the north for Akasitah’s white cloud, to the red mountains in the east, and to the south where he saw a sign of a good day in the yellow light” (69). As he becomes aware of the landscape, Coyote’s attention is drawn to

Otter, who is standing at the edge of the lake. It is after some time that Otter addresses

Coyote, informing him that he must go north and wait.

Coyote follows Otter’s instructions and waits, only to suddenly sense a warm spot in the wind: the presence of Akasitah. With the previous night’s memories still fresh in his mind, Coyote draws upon the emotions tied to them, to clearly tell Akasitah why he should change his mind about the Shisa. Coyote speaks of the chaos they have caused, how the Shisa are leaving nothing untouched, and how even the mountains soon will disappear. He pleads with Akasitah to allow himself to become more than just a coyote to the Shisa, to permit Rattlesnake to get off of the ground so he might be able to see something coming, and for himself to be able to walk out of the traps set by the Shisa.

Coyote finishes by exclaiming that if Akasitah does not act soon, the Shisa will take even the desert.

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There is a space in the wind during which Akasitah does not immediately respond to Coyote. When Akasitah does decide to speak, he states that Coyote cannot see the entire situation. Coyote is then informed of how he can understand the Shisa:

The Shisa are like a great boulder that has broken away from the side of a

mountain. The boulder makes a great noise as it comes down the side of

the mountain. It tears away great chunks of earth and rock and breaks the

trees like twigs, throwing up a cloud of dust against the sun and you are

afraid for your life. There is no need to be afraid. It only seems this way

because you have never known the world without the Shisa…Soon they

will hit the earth at the bottom of the mountain and roll out into the desert

leaving a little trail in the dust. The boulder will come to a stop. (70)

The metaphorical boulder breaking away from the mountainside captures the Western world’s defamiliarization from landscape. The boulder’s wake of destruction embodies

Lopez’s firm belief that “the more superficial a society’s knowledge of the real dimension of the land it occupies, the more vulnerable the land is to exploitation, manipulation for short-term gain” (“The American Geographies” 62). Through this metaphor, the narrator can both warn his audience of their imminent doom and emphasize the significance of his guiding narratives towards refamiliarization with landscapes by harkening back to one of his first narratives told, “Desert Notes.” The narrator’s guiding

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words can be easily overlooked on the first reading, but they gain greater implication

when read alongside the metaphor of the boulder.

You must wait. You must take things down to the core. You must be

careful with everything, even with what I tell you.

This is how to do it. Wait for everything to get undressed and go to

sleep. Forget to explain to yourself why you are here. Listen attentively.

Just before dawn you will finally hear faint music. This is the sound of the

loudest dreaming, the dream of boulders. Continue to listen until the music

isn’t there. What you thought about boulders will evaporate and what you

know will become clear. (4)

Akin to how Leslie Marmon Silko weaves a cautioning eco-fable throughout her novel

Ceremony to warn her audience of the disastrous consequences of world-alienation, the

narrator formulates a narrative in a similar fashion. Through the metaphor of the boulder,

the narrator prods the audience to reflect on his guiding words towards reimagining their

connection with landscape, so as to reverse the Shisa’s pending fate.

After Akasitah tells Coyote what will come of the Shisa, he bids Coyote farewell and reminds him not to worry about them anymore. Unable to find Otter by the edge of the lake, Coyote is alone at the top of the mountain, left only with the choice to return to

the desert. The climb down takes Coyote the rest of the day and it is not until night that

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he sits down and relates everything to Rattlesnake. Rattlesnake then clarifies Akasitah’s words to Coyote: “The Shisa have become so large they are moving back into themselves. They have become like a storm turned inside out, that hurls lightning into itself until it is very small and then there is nothing…When the storm comes across the hills towards the desert, watch how it turns itself into nothing” (71). Coyote questions

Rattlesnake on how he could be certain of this, after which Rattlesnake reminds him of the importance of staying in one place and watching. Rattlesnake prompts Coyote to watch how when a storm cloud comes over the hills into the desert it is diminished into a small wind. It is because Coyote is always going off somewhere, Rattlesnake explains, that he cannot understand anything.

Hearing this, Coyote gets up to go. When Rattlesnake asks where he is off to, he tells him that he is merely going to hunt for rabbits. Instead, Coyote goes to the top of the highest hill in the desert and sits with his back against a rock to look out on the horizon and wait for a cloud. It is here that the story ends, with Coyote observing a metaphorical storm cloud and wondering if Rattlesnake had ever lied. The narrator leaves the story open-ended, with the same effect for which it was used in “The Wind”: to leave the ending in the audience’s hands.

Will the Shisa’s ways continue? Will the cloud turn in on itself, hurling lightning into itself until it dissipates? Will the boulder reach the bottom of the mountain and

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simply crash into the earth to be left motionless and unable to disturb anyone anymore?

Or, can the audience make Rattlesnake and Akasitah into liars? Can they follow the

guiding suggestions of the narrator and learn how to refamiliarize themselves with the

landscape and not, as Sherman Paul puts it in his reaction to this eco-fable, “self-destruct”

(Paul 356)? It is these questions that are left unanswered for the audience to consider as they turn to the last story of the collection, with the metaphor of the boulder lingering in their minds.

“Directions”

Upon having the significance of all of the previous stories reemphasized by the

metaphor of the boulder in “Coyote and Rattlesnake,” the audience begins the final story

in the collection with an amenable mind. The narrator addresses his audience directly

through the uses of both the first and second person narrative form so as to immediately

engross them: “I would like to tell you how to get there so that you may see all this for

yourself” (75). As the first line of the story, it gives no specification of where the narrator

is alluding to, or what “all this” is about. His ambiguity leaves the audience to acquire the

answers only from the past narratives. In this case, the “where” is the setting of the

previous stories worth of multiperspectival approaches to the desert landscape; the “all

this” is the act of personally achieving the similar goal. For, as the narrator states “all

this,” he inclusively references each story in the collection, which all have had the

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overarching setting of the desert landscape. Within this first line, the narrator has articulated his final intentions to guide his audience towards reversing the plunge of the metaphorical boulder down the mountain. It is this very notion that he follows up with by the end of the story.

In the next line, however, the narrator’s guidance is suspended with a warning against the potential fixation on the physical setting. Anticipating the audience discovery of the site where each narrative is situated, the Alvord Desert, he spends a considerable

amount of time swaying their focus away from this conception and on to how it truly is a

metaphorical stand-in for their own immediate landscape:

But first a warning: you may have already come across a set of detailed

instructions, a map with every bush and stone clearly marked…your

confidence in these finely etched maps is understandable, for at first

glance they seem excellent, the best a man is capable of; but your

confidence is misplaced. Throw them out…The coyote, even the crow,

would regard them with suspicion. (75)

In referencing the two senseless characters of his eco-fables, Coyote, and Crow, the narrator confirms his devaluation of any reliance on a map into the desert landscape and influences the audience to depend on his own guiding words. Effectively turning the audience away from a false conception of the landscape he wishes them to refamiliarize

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themselves with, the narrator does not return to his initial articulation but offers a clarification of the directions he is about to give.

The directions are the best he can give, the narrator explains, yet they come with caution: “There is, I should warn you, doubt too about the directions I will give you here, but they are the very best that can be had” (75). The adverb “here” applies to both the following directions given, as well as the collection as a whole and how it functions as what Sherman Paul explains as “a guidebook without a map” (Paul 355). The warning is warranted; the narrator’s description of the directions is entirely equivocal. Where they say left, sometimes you must go right, north must be read as south at certain times, and they do not rely entirely on the audience’s starting point. The narrator predicts the confusion these instructions might cause, and just as he did in “Desert Notes” and

“Conversation” he preemptively pacifies his audience’s doubts and reassures them: “I am saying you will have doubts. If you do the best you can you will have no trouble” (75).

The audience is given the benefit of the doubt, and the narrator comes to assume that they will eventually find their way.

Contradictory with the narrator’s former convictions against maps, he suggests that they make a map once there. Although their map might consist of a few lines or a set of numbers, it will be the only map the audience ever trusts. The audience is advised to be careful with this trusted map, not to leave it out where someone might mistake it for a

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scribble and throw it away or shred it, but also not to hide it too well and raise suspicion.

It is this caring for the map that will teach the audience the lesson of the futility of

drawing one. The narrator suggests that it might just be better to get along without one:

“It is best in this case to get along without one, although you will find your map, once

drawn, as difficult to discard as an unfinished poem” (76).

Directly after the narrator comes to this conclusion, he changes his tone and

begins a formal articulation of the directions to get there. As explained in the very

beginning of this chapter, the directions the narrator provides are tenuous and rely on the

reader to search out fictionalized towns and an imaginary character, Leon. It is not the authenticity of these directions that should concern the reader. It is the way the narrator uses the opportunity to provoke them to reflect on the collection as a whole. Skillfully the narrator does this both through exemplifying Leon’s qualities and the directions he gives.

It is during the fall that the audience is instructed to go north to the town of Tate and wait at a bus stop for a man dressed in a blue shirt and khaki trousers, named Leon.

Once he has arrived on a bus from Galen, the narrator tells the audience to introduce themselves as a journalist from North Dakota interested in seeing for themselves a famous desert that lies somewhere west of Tate. After giving these false directions, the narrator tells the reader to take Leon to coffee and “[l]isten as you have never listened before,” for, “you may never again hear a map so well spoken” (77). The audience is told

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that as Leon gives exact details on how to get there, he might sketch a map on a napkin, which may end up meaning nothing at all. They are warned of this so that they will listen intently and be persuaded not to use any kind of recording device. The narrator later in the story further explains this point: “…a tape recorder is of no use. He will suspect it and not talk, tell you he must make connections with another bus and leave. Or he will give you directions that will bring you to your death” (77). After explaining this, the narrator tells the audience that after Leon is done speaking, they should just take the napkin with

Leon’s map on it and begin their trip.

It becomes clear that the narrator has seemingly endured the same journey, as he speaks with authority, telling his audience exactly what they will undergo. It is a three to four-day trip, with the last part being strictly on foot. As the narrator warns the audience about this, he reveals the insignificance of the destination: “Prepare for this. Prepare for the impact of nothing. Get on a regimen of tea and biscuits and dried fruit. On the third or fourth day, when you are ready to quit, you will know you are on your way” (77). Told they must endure what seems to be the most ruthless trip, the narrator continually urges the reader on. It is when the audience’s throat is coated with dust to the point where they cannot breathe that they are halfway there. When the soles of their feet burn and are numb, they will know they have made no wrong turns, and when they can no longer laugh at anything, they will know it is only a little bit further. It is with authority in his

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voice that the narrator relays these landmarks in the journey. He does this only to end with the satirical assurance that “[i]t will not be as easy as it sounds” (77).

Through his jesting tone, the narrator turns the focus of his audience on to themselves; he does this with a single line: “When the dust chews a hole in your canteen and sucks it dry without a sound you will have to sit down and study the land for a place to dig for water” (78). In this line alone, the narrator has conjured up two different narratives. The first is “Twilight,” where he directly tells his audience how to find water:

“This is the only time you will be able to smell water and not mistake it for the smell of a sheet of granite, or confuse it with the smell of marble or darkness…you will find water as easily as if you were looking for your hands” (26). The second occurs when he stands in the middle of the desert with the reader and aids them in familiarizing themselves with their surroundings in the narrative, “Perimeter.” As the narrator is doing this, he points out several spots to find water. The first is in the white mountains to the north, the narrator explains that “at the edge of the desert where the creeks pool and where grasses and sedges grow and the water takes a considerable time to evaporate and seep into the earth” (32). It is also to the east within the caves in the red mountains that there are old creeks that run, which hold white translucent fish (33). Having previously shown the audience where to find water in the desert, the narrator ends the story by assuring them that from the middle of the desert, even on a dark moon “[y]ou know where everything is coming from” (35). Shown how to find water in the desert, the audience has clearly been

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guided to overcome the largest obstacle of their journey towards refamiliarization with

the desert landscape. This line not only goads the audience to reflect on how they might

find water in the desert, but also has them reconsider what else the narrator has taught

them in refamiliarizing themselves with their own landscape.

As the audience ponders over an entire collection of short stories’ worth of guidance, they are left with no other directions, only the faintest memory of the journey they have been guided through at the narrator’s side. First, the audience was brought out into the desert by the narrator to be left alone to look out on to the desert and accomplish a series of minute tasks (“Desert Notes”), only to be swept up by a narrative about a man’s rebirth at the site of a hot spring (“The Hot Spring”). The audience was then given time to take into consideration the negative consequences of Western society’s blind exploitation of resources as they were told an eco-fable centered on lessons of perseverance, moderation, and awareness (“The Raven”). From there they joined the narrator as he practiced a New Ager approach so as to connect with the landscape, an experience that revealed the mystic ability to refamiliarize oneself with a landscape

(“Twilight”). Once they witnessed this revelation, the audience stood at the side of the narrator as he brought the desert alive with description and observation, familiarizing them with the landscape as he did it (“Perimeter”). Within desert caves, the audience had their conception of the potential of living with a minimum impact on a landscape questioned, as they learned of an ancient people who had an unfathomable relationship

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with the desert landscape (“The Blue Mound People”). Their lifestyles were further

questioned when they listened to two interlocutors, as one articulated the significance of

awareness and the importance of being rooted enough to know one’s true self

(“Conversation”). After which the reader is brought out to the site of an abandoned school house where they were taught the authenticity of Lopez’s conviction that “the more superficial a society’s knowledge of the real dimension of the land it occupies, the more vulnerable the land is to exploitation, manipulation for short-term gain” (“The

School”) (“The American Geographies” 62). As they left the school house, the audience observed a woman as she lay naked on the desert floor, patiently communing with the phenomenal world, familiarizing herself with the landscape (“The Wind”). The reader is then sat down and told an eco-fable, so that they would sit down at the side of the character Coyote, to ponder whether Western society would continue to exploit all landscape, as he wonders the same (“Coyote and Rattlesnake”).

From the beginning, the narrator has prepared his audience for their journey into a metaphorical desert: “By a series of strippings such as this one enters the desert” (xii).

Each stripping and approach guides a person closer to becoming refamiliarized with a landscape. By the end of the collection, the audience is left on their own with a concluding thought from the narrator: “You will always know this: others have made it”

(78). Alongside the narrator, who revealed how he became refamiliarized with the desert landscape in “Introduction,” the audience can look back and know that the man in “The

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Hot Spring,” the woman in “The Wind,” and Leon from “Directions” have also begun to

battle Western society’s blind exploitative regime against the natural world, which is

fueled by its unfamiliarity with it. At the side of these people, the reader chooses whether to use the guidebook and emulate the many approaches illustrated throughout the collection or simply watch as the boulder of Western society crashes to the ground.

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CONCLUSION: THE EFFECTS OF LITERATURE AS A GUIDEBOOK

In the foreword, I acknowledged the effect Lopez’s stories had on me at an early

age. Intrigued by the potential of finding an explanation for this effect, I was driven to

analyze Desert Notes in hopes of finding a reason and relevance for my experience.

Could a collection of short stories guide a reader towards discovering methods of refamiliarizing themselves with the phenomenal world, and in turn goad them to apply

these methods? Although not as well developed, from the beginning these questions sat at

the back of my consciousness. From my research and analysis of Desert Notes, I found both answers to these queries and explanations for how the collection of short stories

came to have an effect on me.

In my research, I uncovered two deep-rooted convictions of Lopez's, which

inspired him to create a guidebook for his audience to reimagine their relationship with

landscapes. The first is his faith in the power of story and his wish to function as an

isumatag in society; the second is his belief that it is because the Western world has

adopted such a superficial view of the landscapes it occupies that they blindly exploit

them to no end. Both Lopez’s life experiences and research aided him in the cultivation

of these convictions. His life experiences provided his conception of a relationship

necessary to be had with the natural world, which does not leave it susceptible to

exploitation and manipulation. The belief in the inherent power of a story to reorder its

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audience’s perception of the natural world, along with coming to comprehend the root of

the Western world’s exploitative ways, came from his research.

When Lopez wrote Desert Notes, he attempted to capture the very essential

relationship with the natural world, which he discovered through his life experiences.

Similar to many other environmental writers, he admits to attempting to “write out the

way I look at things”; and “assist the reader in the quest to understand landscape as not

only something that is living but something that includes us and upon which we are

subtly dependent” (Newell 24, Margolis 2). While this is an underlying mission for the

majority of environmental writers, Lopez’s unique ability to bring the story’s landscape

to the foreground as both reality and metaphor is what distinguishes him from the rest.

Many environmental writers attempt to challenge Western society’s exploitation

of the natural world through either romanticizing a landscape scene, providing first-hand

adventurous tales of their bouts with wilderness, or arguing in essay form why we should

change our ways. While Lopez applies these methods at various times throughout his

career, he also relies on two distinctive writing tactics. By skillfully interweaving various

narrative forms and offering the reader multiple perspectives through which to become

intimate with a landscape for them to emulate, he guides his readers away from their

inherent destructive tendencies. These two devices are what make Desert Notes such an

effective work of literature to function as a guidebook.

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When juxtaposing Desert Notes with the works contained in the genre of environmental literature, I do not wish to downplay the works of those environmental writers who rely on stock styles and techniques to reach their readers. Instead, I urge environmental writers to be conscious of the effective potential that lies within the use of a blend of narrative forms and multiperspectival approaches and hope that they might incorporate these writing styles into their works. In regards to the environmental literary canon, I encourage scholars to analyze them once more through these two lenses, so as to uncover their inherent ability to have an impact on the reader’s perception of the environment.

When literature is a guidebook for refamiliarizing the people with the phenomenal world, it functions as stimuli for readers to become ethical stewards of landscapes. The narrator of Desert Notes invites its audience to become aware of their surroundings on both a micro (e.g. the women’s awareness of the ant in “The Wind”) and a macro level

(e.g. in the stories “Twilight” and “Perimeter”). This level of awareness leads to a multitude of revelations: examples of this are the recognition of one’s essential dependence on these landscapes and a consideration for how easily degraded these fragile environments become. These two logical conclusions promote both stewardship and a sense of place. This is a process referred to by Aldo Leopold as acquiring a land ethic; a term explained in A Sand County Almanac:

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The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include

soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land…a land ethic

changes the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-community

to plain member and citizen of it. It implies respect for his fellow-

members, and also respect for the community as such. (Leopold 239-40)

What Leopold is referencing in these lines is the endpoint that Desert Notes guides its

audience towards.

When I look back on my fourteen year-old-self, to the time directly following when I read Desert Notes, I recognize a change in me. My response to Lopez’s efficiency in bringing the desert landscape to the foreground as metaphor and reality is not only a response to his unique use of multiperspectival approaches and a blend of narrative styles

but also a response to the narrator’s guiding words. The desert transformed from a barren wasteland to an intriguing landscape, one that I wanted to explore. The setting of each story replaced my surroundings. After I was guided to become familiar with the desert, the story’s setting, I would put down the collection and want to refamiliarize myself with my own setting, the phenomenal world. If every reader could have this same response to

Barry Lopez’s work, I believe there would be a populace who is not blindly charging into the future with environmental degradation in their wake. I often hope that I am not like

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Coyote: destined to sit and watch the metaphorical boulder of the Western world come plummeting down the mountainside inevitably crashing to the ground.

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