An archive is a repository of information, a window into the past. They are all around us. In libraries and institutions. In notebook pages and in the trees from which those pages were made. At the bottoms of lakes and buried beneath parking lots. For the Archives Issue of High Country News, we offer you stories about the past, told through the lens of the present. The past has a lot to teach us. We can marvel at newly discovered knowledge of long-ago eras. With the benefit of hindsight, we can identify where we went astray and attempt to make reparations. We can learn from the past, search for answers, or just ponder the trappings of an earlier time.
This moment, the ever-present now that rules our days, is what it is only because of what came before. Thankfully, we can turn to archives, both natural ones and those curated by human hands, to understand what the West was like before the internal combustion engine, before colonization, before agriculture. It’s a good thing that this information has been collected and preserved, giving us reference points for the vast changes that have been made to the land, the waters, the atmosphere. As the way forward through drought, scarcity and inequity becomes more complicated and menacing, we may need this data to protect and defend natural and human communities and outfit them for continued longevity. The past informs the future. I hope you enjoy this backward-looking, forward-thinking issue of HCN.
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This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline A window into the past.
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