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ADIOS AMIGOS: TALES OF SUSTENANCE AND PURIFICATION IN THE AMERICAN WEST Page Stegner 224 pages, hardcover: $24. Counterpoint, 2008. -
Karl Bodmer’s “Remarkable Hills on the Upper Missouri.” PLATE 34, FROM MAXIMILIAN, PRINCE OF WIED, TRAVELS IN THE INTERIOR OF NORTH AMERICA, LONDON: ACKERMANN, 1843.COURTESY DEPARTMENT OF RARE BOOKS AND SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA
In Adios Amigos: Tales of Sustenance and
Purification in the American West, Page Stegner revels in
striking juxtapositions: the fragile beauty of rivers contrasted
with their staggering power to destroy; people working to preserve
forests and wildlife alongside a younger generation bent on using
nature for self-serving purposes. This absorbing collection of
essays stems from Stegner’s experiences rafting and canoeing
Western rivers, including the Colorado, Yampa, San Juan and
Missouri.
Stegner effortlessly mixes historical accounts
with descriptions of the land, drawing comparisons between his own
experiences and those of past explorers and artists such as John
Wesley Powell and Karl Bodmer. In lesser hands, this might be a
dull read, but not here. Take this description of the walls at
White Cliffs along the Missouri River: “They have weathered into an
architectural symphony of columns, spires, pedestals, flying
butresses, and alcoves. Prince Maximilian in 1833 saw ‘pulpits,
organs with their pipes, old ruins, fortresses, castles, churches
with pointed towers.’ “
To give his
descriptions punch, Stegner heaps up the details, almost to the
point of absurdity: “(Melted snow) is now coursing down every crack
and crevice in those head-water mountains, is now trickling,
running, gushing, pouring, surging, flooding down every fissure,
furrow, ditch, gully, gulch, ravine, and canyon, is overflowing the
Wild Horse Dam above Mountain City, is ripping down banks, tearing
out trees, washing away livestock, cow and cowgit alike, women and
children, little does and lambsy-divey.”
But Stegner
wants his readers to do more than just notice the beauty of the
land; he wants them to preserve it. Quoting his father, Wallace
Stegner, he writes: ” ‘We are the most dangerous species of life on
the planet, and every other species, even the earth itself, has
cause to fear our power to exterminate. But we are also the only
species which, when it chooses to do so, will go to great effort to
save what it might destroy.’ Which, I wonder, will we ultimately
choose to be?”
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Rolling on the rivers.
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