"Ellen Wohl has created a masterful and lyrical natural history of the Rocky Mountain West. She writes with a naturalist's attention to detail, an artist's eye for color, a geologist's long view of change, and an activist's passion. Wohl brings a fresh perspective to fundamental issues—grazing, fire, water, restoration, the limits of resilience—and reminds us of the crucial 'connectedness of humans and landscape'."
—Stephen Trimble, author of Bargaining for Eden: The Fight for the Last Open Spaces in America
Ellen Wohl chose to study rivers as the shapers of earth's landscape--more importantly she became a geomorphologist---someone who combines geology, chemistry, ecology, climate and human history to understand landforms and the processes that shape them. For 20 years, Wohl has been living and researching the landscapes of the West, seeing the conflict between the romantic view and the environmental history of the region.
The book is divided into two sections, Discovering the West and Inheriting the Past. All of us had to discover the West. Some were fortunate enough to be born here; others came for family vacations, college adventures or careers.
Early perceptions of the West conjure up cowboys, Indians, bison, mountains, fishing, skiing. Realities become never-ceasing wind, Halloween snowfall, fire, an obsession with weather. The author confesses her learning curve and her new urgency to the call for conservation of the region's land, water, and resources.
There is much to learn about the way rivers and the landscape are changing. The natural causes as well as the manmade ones.
The section in the second part of the book called Snow had interesting insights. In Colorado, snow now represents not only a new season but a complicated system of water policies and economies--all due to snowmaking. The ski industry is not content to rely on weather patterns so manmade snow is now altering the water supply in many ways. The water supply for snowmaking is drawn from the same streams allocated for drinking water, agricultural irrigation--increased competition and usage. In the search for more water, streams can be contaminated--i.e., abandoned mine sites--this contaminated snow melts into adjacent streams and spreads the poisons downstream. Electrical energy necessary to run snowmaking air compressors and water pumps comes primarily from coal-burning power plants--causing pollution. Snowmaking can double the amount of water that runs into adjacent streams during snowmelt, undercutting stream banks, toppling trees, and reducing fish habitat. Think about this when you see ads for Aspen, Vail and the many ski resorts sprouting up all across the West.
Wohl no longer fishes and her reasons are simple: "First I do not like to kill fish. Second I do not like to eat fish. Third I do not like the machinations necessary to enable me to fish." In Fishing the reader learns about the introduction of nonnative species to improve the fishing which also introduced whirling disease. Wohl questions why fishing allowed in national parks but not hunting. And in the concluding part of the essay says: “When fishing is taken to extremes, the fish become trophies, not living things. I do not fish because I respect streams. I do not need a fishing rod to invite contemplation. The moving water alone suffices.”
Time and again the knowledge of the landscape, the information on human alteration to our surroundings, and the concern for the future of the ecosystems come through in each essay. Aside from the personal reflections and the educational aspects is the beautiful use of language to describe the color and texture of water:
“At the Little Colorado River , milky turquoise-blue water forms a striking contrast with the red-and-tan rock walls and the royal blue sky. Cream-colored sediment the consistency of yogurt makes for sticky footing in the shallows, but the center of the stream is a fast current cascading over travertine steps.”
“I appreciate the colors of winter: textured white snow, somber green branches of pine and fir, warm reddish bark of ponderosas, blue-gray sky the hue of ice on a deep pond. In summer the rivers and creeks here area the color of herbal tea. In winter the creeks look black, and the rivers flow pale jade-green over the ice, and forest-green in the deeps.”
From the Epilogue these words:
“Others have protested eloquently against the dangers of seeing the western United States not as it is but as we wish it to be. Wallace Stegner wrote in "Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs": "It is probably time we looked around us instead of looking ahead….Neither the country nor the society we built out of it can be healthy until we stop raiding and running, and learn to be quiet part of the time, and acquire the sense not of ownership, but of belonging.” I want to belong. Belonging grows from love and understanding and from recognition of limitations and responsibilities. These can only come from looking at the country and thinking about how its past and its present can together shape its future. This is knowing.”
There is no better guide to show us our limitations than Ellen Wohl. Read her to understand where the West has been and what we can do to belong now and in the future.
Barbara Theroux is the manager of Fact & Fiction, now part of the Bookstore at the University of Montana.
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