Jornada Del Muerto, Or Journey of the Dead, Professor of English at Lyndon State College, Contains No National Or State Parks
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Alan Boye. Tales from the Journey of the Dead: Ten Thousand Years on an American Desert. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006. x + 256 pp. $26.95, cloth, ISBN 978-0-8032-1358-6. Reviewed by Fred MacVaugh Published on H-Environment (November, 2007) Jornada del Muerto, or Journey of the Dead, professor of English at Lyndon State College, contains no national or state parks. What govern‐ writes in the book's introductory narrative, "Trav‐ ment land exists in this region of central New eling the Camino U.S. 380." "And out there some‐ Mexico desert is largely shrouded in the mystery where too are the tales of poets and dreamers, of of White Sands Missile Range or rigorously fenced ordinary men and women who spent their lives and protected privately owned range land such as under the wide and ruthless sky of the Journey of Ted Turner's 300,000-plus-acre landholding, the the Dead" (p. 7). Simply stated, this is Boye's objec‐ former Armendaris grant. Roads are very few tive: to discover and convey these stories and the and, except for U.S. 380, mostly dirt. Thus, in an history, happiness, misery and hope rooted in the era when people commonly carry cellular phones 120-by-50-mile swath of desert that witnessed Eu‐ with built-in GPS and rental car companies use ropeans' entrada into North America and the satellites to track the speeds renters drive, Alan dawning of the nuclear age. Like much of the Boye hiked, biked, and conversed, as well as mo‐ West, the Jornada del Muerto is an iconic place at tored, his way across the length and breadth of once at the core of American identity and all but this desolate desert landscape. The result, Tales unknown--home to Billy the Kid, writers, ranch‐ from the Journey of the Dead, is a collection of his‐ ers, and entrepreneurs as well as the site of Indi‐ torical narratives that tell the story of the desert an wars, bloody Civil War battles, Trinity Test Site through the tales of the people who have lived or and late-twentieth-century wildlife reintroduction continue to live there. efforts. Many previously published histories have "Out there somewhere in the sand and dust discussed aspects of the Jornada's past, but until and the ruins of war are the stories of sadistic now, few, if any, focused solely on the region in its killers, of directionless rebels, and of gun-toting entirety or through time. cowboys," Boye, author of Holding Stone Hands: Each one of the nineteen chronologically ar‐ On the Trail of the Cheyenne Exodus (1999) and a ranged chapters comprising Tales from the Jour‐ H-Net Reviews ney of the Dead is a stand-alone narrative, but yet sweeping story grounded in thorough sec‐ read one after the other as Boye arranged them ondary research, oral interviews, and apparently and they proffer a well-rounded and yet particu‐ extensive archival research that make tangible lar picture of the Jornada and some of the many the historical continuity of the desert underlying people who have passed through its water-poor, contemporary residents' affinity for the place they sun-scorched expanse, settled there, or died try‐ call home. This is the book's strength. ing (hence the name). After introducing readers to This strength, however, is compromised by and situating them on the Journey of the Dead, one major weakness--the absence of numbered Boye introduces the region's deep geologic and in‐ foot- or endnotes--that results from a presumably digenous past, which he explored in the company conscious choice to blend narrative styles (the his‐ of federal land managers and geologists. In the re‐ torical narrative, the travel narrative, and the mainder of Tales, Boye writes about an assort‐ modern familiar essay) to make the story of the ment of historical and contemporary fgures and desert's history more appealing and accessible to residents--some famous, some infamous, many or‐ an audience that includes more than scholars dinary. There is the Wild Man, who wandered alone. Rather than use numbered notes to cite the back and forth across the Jornada, living out‐ sources of particular information in each narra‐ doors, for decades prior to August 1945; there is tive, Boye included as notes in the back matter restaurateur Rowena Baca, who is credited with brief descriptions and/or listings of the sources inventing the green-chili hamburger; there is the and what he drew from each. For any historian or infamous scalp-hunter James Kirker, who the literary scholar who wants to follow up on or Mexican government hired in 1839 to scalp learn more about what Boye writes, the seven‐ Apaches; there is Victorio, who was among the teen-page compilation of notes arranged by narra‐ last Apache leaders to resist white encroachment tive, in conjunction with the seventeen-page bibli‐ in the Southwest. There is the writer Eugene ography, may be of only marginal value and assis‐ Manlove Rhodes, who, reared on the Jornada, tance. What I as a reader found most disruptive spent most of his adult life trying to return there about this practice, however, were the instances after leaving to meet and marry his wife in New in the book where Boye had recounted an histori‐ York. Lastly, among many others, there is Flo Mar‐ cal event with such thoroughness and detail that I tin, who has spent much of her lifetime fghting to stopped reading and questioned how he knew reclaim her land from the federal government what he was writing about and where he had ac‐ since she and her husband were evicted when the quired the information. Boye's use of a citation military established White Sands Missile Range at style familiar to many of his book's most likely the outset of World War II. Many of these people readers (for example, historians) would have sub‐ considered the Jornada home and spent their stantiated his credibility as a writer, particularly a lives eking a living from its harsh and at times un‐ scholarly writer, as well as ensured the usefulness forgiving landscape. Boye portrays these people of his text for other readers, researchers, and and their stories (often using interviewees' own writers. words) with compassion and respect. Their words Boye's use of the narrative "I" to situate him‐ and recollections, meanwhile, make Tales more self in the landscape and to suggest the immedia‐ than simply a collection of essay-length historical cy of his observations and encounters with people narratives with the place, or setting, the only com‐ and place is also likely to disturb scholarly read‐ mon denominator. Read together, the narratives ers. From the perspective of a historian, Boye's form a whole that presents a palimpsest-like view use of the frst-person singular prevents him from of the Jornada's history--a layered and particular 2 H-Net Reviews achieving the alleged analytic distance and objec‐ perhaps because he is a traveler and temporary tivity that is the supposed hallmark of proper visitor to the Jornada rather than a resident, nev‐ (and traditional) histories--of professional histo‐ er successfully resolves and marries these con‐ ries. Because Boye's narratives are not history in flicting narrative objectives into a single seamless the traditional sense, however, but rather an whole. This is not a fatal faw, however, because amalgam of historical and travel narrative and Boye is writing about the desert as a traveler. And modern familiar essay, his use of the "I" is wel‐ rather than intended for residents, historians or come and necessary. Unfortunately, however other people intimately familiar with the Jornada risky Boye's use of the "I" when considered from and its long history, Tales from the Journey of the the perspective of the historian, his use of the Dead appears to be written for a general audience rhetorical "I" was not risky enough when consid‐ largely unfamiliar with the region. Read from this ered from the perspective of the essayist. Con‐ perspective, Boye effectively conveys the histories trary to the tradition of essay writing, Boye pur‐ and stories of the desert and of the people he in‐ posefully reveals little of his personality in the in‐ tended to reveal. The book is especially recom‐ dividual narratives or the book as a whole. In mended for people planning their own trip to the only one narrative, "The Final Walk," does he in Jornada del Muerto or who want to know about fact attempt to universalize his subject or give the region. voice to his ideas. "Time is not an awareness of Note the future," Boye writes, "nor is it a dream about [1]. Dan Flores, Horizontal Yellow: Nature the path we have taken in our lives. Time is al‐ and History in the Near Southwest (Albuquerque: ways and simply the precise point on our voyage. University of New Mexico Press, 1999); and It is the earth navel, the nan sipu from which, in William deBuys, Enchantment and Exploitation: the singularity of our birth, we rose, and to which, The Life and Hard Times of a New Mexico Moun‐ in the unity of our death, we all return. When, tain Range (Albuquerque: University of New Mex‐ through the blindness of our pride or the mass ico Press, 1985). hysteria of war, we fail to see the unity of our journey, we fight only ourselves to death" (p. 207). This single instance of reflection also marks Boye's only overt effort to glean or make meaning from the Jornada, its people and past, or his own travel experiences.