When I was younger, I
was sure I’d been born into the wrong century. Everything I
read about America in the 1800s made me wish I’d lived along
that expanding Western frontier where people lived adventurous
lives. My life seemed stale and predictable in comparison, with all
the excitement sapped out of the West, buried under shopping
centers and Interstates. As I traveled, I used my dog-eared copy of
“The Journals of Lewis and Clark” as part road atlas,
part travelogue of that earlier West.
I’d squint at
the passing scene, dissolving the mini-malls and subdivisions. I
obliterated Phoenix and pictured a vast plain of saguaros. I wiped
Denver off the map and envisioned a people-less Front Range. It was
not only the geography, but the ideals of America in the mid-19th
century that fascinated me, especially as I read the extravagantly
enthusiastic essays of Thoreau, Emerson, Whitman, and Twain. They
knew they were heralding something fresh.
Recently,
I’ve begun to question that rose-tinted view. It’s true
that if you were white and male — being rich didn’t hurt
either — it was a great time to be alive with the call of Manifest
Destiny ringing down the canyons. But what if you were female,
black or Native American? You were disenfranchised, a slave, or the
target of a genocidal campaign. After York, the slave owned by
William Clark, confronted every danger endured by the Corps of
Discovery, begged for his freedom. Clark refused. Have you ever
heard of Margaret Fuller, Margaret Wood Emerson, or Elizabeth
Palmer Peabody? They were the Transcendentalist women, writers as
gifted as their male counterparts, but confined by roles that would
never recognize their genius.
Life expectancy at the time
was about 36. Tetanus, small pox, polio and rheumatic fever were
common. People died from shaving after lethally infected nicks.
Teeth were pulled, not saved, there was no anesthesia, and personal
hygiene was sketchy. People had rotting teeth and stank, women
spent 120 hours a week cooking, cleaning, mending and washing, and
there were no labor laws to protect anyone. Most people lived and
died within a day’s journey of their homes.
And
what of life today, an historical tick of the clock later? By any
American yardstick, I’m hardly rich, though by the standards
of much of the rest of the world I’m a Rockefeller, though
that’s another story. Yet in the past year I’ve had
experiences that a generation ago people would have considered
lifetime events. I’ve traveled widely, including overseas,
and vacationed in some of the most beautiful spots in the West.
I’ve worked largely from home and spent abundant
time with my kids; ate fresh, great tasting and varied food; read
any newspaper in the world I wanted on-line; had my choice of
nearly any kind of music or movie ever recorded; and stayed in
instantaneous touch with friends and family all over the planet via
email. Great coffee. Fantastic beer. None of these luxuries is
beyond the reach of most people with a regular job.
And
here’s the best part: At the same time I enjoyed modern
conveniences, I also experienced some of the best of those earlier
“innocent” times. I headed for the mountains for
camping trips, hiking in un-peopled wilderness, though with far
less wildlife than two centuries ago. With a lightweight sleeping
bag, comfortable pack and great raingear, I was able to go almost
anywhere. These are the good old days.
Perhaps all
generations feel this wide-eyed wonder. My father, a child of the
Great Depression, vividly remembers the day they took away the
icebox and brought in a refrigerator. People must have felt that
same wonder when they got their first washing machine or electric
lights.
Yet I can’t shake the feeling that
there’s something fundamentally different about our times.
The changes seem more permanent and what’s left to protect
more precious, even as the amenities abound. I’m not ignorant
of the costs of our high-tech, globe-trotting existence. If
everyone in, say, China enjoyed our standard of living, which they
are on a path to do, the planet’s natural resources would
soon be exhausted.
It’s easy to envision a time
when the only open spaces will be those legally protected as
wilderness — small islands in a sea of subdivisions. But
that’s years away, isn’t it? Until then, I have a
million acres of publicly owned land in my back yard and a film
festival up the road. Life is great. Right?
Steven Albert is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a
service of High Country News (hcn.org). He is a
wildlife biologist and senior scientist in Albuquerque, New
Mexico.
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