Chasing Water in the Arid West

“In the two years it took to complete this book, I flew the length of the Colorado River nearly twice with a wonderful collection of pilots ranging from my father and friends to a U.S. border patrol officer, a crop duster, a retired civil engineer, and a large-animal veterinarian. Whether we flew at 200 feet (my favorite elevation) or 2,000 above the river, the perspective of our mighty and ancient western river was always spectacular, awe-inspiring, and humbling.” — Peter McBride

The Colorado is the great life-giving river of the American West. It provides vital water to more than 30 million people living in our arid southwest. It is also one of the most dammed, diverted, and heavily litigated rivers in the world.

Photographer Peter McBride has produced a stunning and disturbing new look at the great river, The Colorado River: Flowing Through Conflict. McBride (and author Jonathan Waterman) follow the river’s epic 1,450-mile journey from its headwaters high in the Colorado Rockies to its dried-up delta touching the Sea of Cortez. McBride and Waterman document both great beauty and incredible environmental abuse along the way. This is a terrific book if you want an up-to-date report on the Colorado River — it does justice to the majesty of one of the world’s great rivers.

Keep this book handy in the next year ahead! As we mentioned in an earlier post, the Rocky Mountain Land Library is one of several organizations that have joined together to celebrate our most precious natural resource. Water 2012 is still in its planning stages, but the next year will see a statewide collaborative effort to promote awareness of the history, use, protection, and stewardship of Colorado’s water. Stay tuned (and for more on Pete McBride’s wonderful book, please treat yourself to aerial images galore, in the inspiring film attached below!).

And here’s a few more classic Colorado River books from the Land Library’s shelves!

Running Dry: A Journey From Source to Sea Down the Colorado River by Jonathan Waterman (author of many books in our collection, and Pete McBride’s river companion), Restoring Colorado River Ecosystems by Robert W. Adler.

Water and the West: The Colorado River Compact and the Politics of Water in the American West by Norris Hundley, Jr., Dead Pool: Lake Powell, Global Warming, and the Future of Water in the West by James Lawrence Powell

For more on Pete McBride, be sure to visit his website, and please, take a look at this film — as visually engaging as the book!

And here’s a link to our earlier post:

– Water 2012 & Beyond

“Anything else you’re interested in is not going to happen if you can’t breathe the air and drink the water. Don’t sit this one out. Do something. You are by accident of fate alive at an absolutely critical moment in the history of the planet.” – Carl Sagan

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Zora Neale Hurston & the Power of Books

Inspired by books and stories, Zora Neale Hurston eventually found a way to stretch her limbs:

“In that box were Gulliver’s Travels, Grimm’s Fairy Tales, Dick Whittington, Greek and Roman Myths, and best of all, Norse Tales. Why did the Norse tales strike so deeply into my soul? I do not know, but they did. I seemed to remember seeing Thor swing his mighty short-handled hammer as he spread across the sky in rumbling thunder, lightning flashing from the tread of his steeds and the wheels of his chariot….That held majesty for me….

In a way this early reading gave me great anguish through all my childhood and early adolescence. My soul was with the gods and my body in the village. People just would not act like gods. Stew beef, fried fat-back and morning grits were no ambrosia from Valhalla. Raking back yards and carrying out chamber pots were not the tasks of Thor. I wanted to be away from drabness and to stretch my limbs in some mighty struggle.”

Always in search of inspiration, the Land Library will continue to return to a central theme over the next few weeks: the intrinsic value of reading, the power of books, and those first moments — our childhood encounters with the printed page. Our continued source of inspiration for these posts will be Maria Tatar’s Enchanted Hunters: the Power of Stories in Childhood (pictured above), a wonderful blend of scholarly insight and personal memoir. Maria Tatar has also included an invaluable appendix which records writer’s recollections of how books changed their lives — writers such as Zora Neale Hurston.

Next Week — Chet Raymo & the Roots of Wonder

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The Mystery of Everett Ruess

“Bitter pain is in store for me, but I shall bear it. Beauty beyond all power to convey shall be mine; I will search diligently for it. Death may await me; with vitality, impetuosity and confidence I will combat it….My heart beats high but my eyelids droop; tomorrow I will go. Adventure is for the adventurous. Life is a dream. I am young, and a fool; forgive me, and read on.” — Everett Ruess

Wandering alone with burros and pack horses through the arid southwest of the 1930′s, Everett Ruess has passed into legend. Still in his teens, he became friends with Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Maynard Dixon, and Dorothea Lange. Along his desert trail he sent his family and friends vivid letters full of Muir-like ecstasy at all he experienced. When he wasn’t writing, he was painting and sketching — the southwest literally flowed through this remarkable young man.

Then, in November 1934, at the age of 20, Everett Ruess vanished without a trace — one of the great unsolved mysteries of the American West.

This month sees two new biographies of artist, writer, and wilderness explorer Everett Ruess: Finding Everett Ruess by David Roberts, and Everett Ruess: His Short Life, Mysterious Death, and Astonishing Afterlife by Philip L. Fradkin (both pictured above).

Both new books acknowledge the mystery of Everett Ruess’ death, but they also help us marvel at his remarkable life, and his travels through a long-gone age.

Everett Ruess blockprint, along with a photo of Everett and his pack burros, somewhere in the Southwest

“I have been thinking more and more that I shall always be a lone wanderer of the wildernesses. God, how the trail lures me. You can not comprehend its resistless fascination for me. After all the lone trail is the best. I hope I’ll be able to buy good horses and a better saddle. I’ll never stop wandering. And when the time comes to die, I’ll find the wildest, loneliest, most desolate spot there is.” — Everett Ruess, postscript to a July 12, 1932 letter to his brother, Waldo.

And here’s a few more books on Everett Ruess, from the Land Library’s collection:

Wilderness Journals of Everett Ruess, edited by W.L. Rusho (drawing on Ruess’ diaries of 1932-33), Everett Ruess: Vagabond for Beauty, W.L. Rusho’s groundbreaking 1983 book, and On Desert Trails with Everett Ruess (first published in 1940, and still in print).

Even a wilderness wanderer needs the comforts of home:

“There are a couple of things I wish you would send me; Don Quixote, a Modern Library book which you can get for 95 cents, and eight of those half-pound chocolate bars which you can get downtown for eight or nine cents each. Get half of them plain, and half with raisin and peanuts.” — June 19, 1934 — Everett Ruess’ letter to his parents.

Monument Valley, blockprint by Everett Ruess

“I am going to pack up my burro, and take a jaunt thru Monument Valley to a row of cliffs I know of, explore every box canyon, and discover some prehistoric cliff dwellings. Don’t laugh. Maybe you thought they were all discovered, but such is not the case….Most of the country is untouched.” — March 9, 1931 — Everett Ruess’ letter to a friend.

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Sherman Alexie & the Power of Books

In this moving passage, Sherman Alexie recollects what he read as a child, and why:

“I read books late into the night, until I could barely keep my eyes open. I read books at recess, then during lunch, and in the few minutes left after I had finished my classroom assignments. I read books in the car when my family traveled to powwows or basketball games. In shopping malls, I ran to the bookstores and read bits and pieces of as many books as I could. I read the books my father brought home from the pawnshops and secondhand stores. I read the books I borrowed from the library. I read the backs of cereal boxes. I read the newspaper. I read the bulletins posted on the walls of the school, the clinic, the tribal offices, the post office. I read junk mail, I read auto-repair manuals. I read magazines. I read anything that had words and paragraphs. I read with equal parts joy and desperation. I loved those books, but I also knew that love had only one purpose. I was trying to save my life.”

Always in search of inspiration, the Land Library will continue to return to a central theme over the next few weeks: the intrinsic value of reading, the power of books, and those first moments — our childhood encounters with the printed page. Our continued source of inspiration for these posts will be Maria Tatar’s Enchanted Hunters: the Power of Stories in Childhood (pictured above), a wonderful blend of scholarly insight and personal memoir. Maria Tatar has also included an invaluable appendix which records writer’s recollections of how books changed their lives — writers such as Sherman Alexie.

Next week — Zora Neale Hurston & the Hammer of Thor

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Worlds Before Us

“There are many dinosaur books, but most are aimed at kids or specialists. In Dinosaur Odyssey, Scott Sampson brings the subject alive for all, taking us to digs around the world, and then vividly weaving the story of how paleontologists debate the ecology and evolution of these amazing animals.” — Michael Benton, author of When Life Nearly Died

The past twenty-five years have been the most active period in the history of dinosaur paleontology — more dinosaurs have been named in the past quarter century than in all prior history.

Paleontologist and evolutionary biologist Scott Sampson (pictured above) has written one of the best available dinosaur studies for a general audience — Dinosaur Odyssey: Fossil Threads in the Web of Life. Throughout this well-illustrated volume, Sampson paints the picture of a long gone world — not just dinosaurs, but the complex interactions they had with mammals, insects, and other forms of life (especially plant life).

Walk across the physical landscape of your daily life and try to imagine the lost lives that once inhabited your world. That inkling (that the world is built on countless paleoworlds) can infinitely enrich our sense of awe about our own life on earth. Reason enough for the Land Library to diligently build a strong paleontology collection over the years. Wonderful books all, and here’s some of our favorites:

The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs by Gregory S. Paul (covering 735 species of dinosaurs, with more than 600 illustrations), Bonebeds: Genesis, Analysis, and Paleobiological Significance, edited by Raymond R. Rogers, et.al. (which tackles a truly fascinating subject — those unusually rich fossil assemblages, thick with finds and ecological insights).

Oceans of Kansas: A Natural History of the Western Interior Sea by Michael J. Everhart (the story of giant sharks, marine reptiles, and swooping dinosaur/birds — paleo-echoes now found on our land-locked Great Plains), Written in Stone: Evolution, the Fossil Record, and our Place in Nature by Brian Switek.

For more on Paleoworlds (& paleo-books), here’s a few pertinent past posts!

–Bone Wars in the American West

–The Perfect Blend of Pancakes and Paleontology

– They Are Still Among Us (mammoths, mastodons, and the incredible Snowmass excavation).

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Green Deen, Our Path is Green

“Islam is an active religion concerned with action on core ethical principles that are deeply congruent with a love of the planet. Following a Green Deen means following these principles, not only in our personal lives, but also within our wider communities, and prompting these communities into action. We have a responsibility to join with others — to become one — as a community that lives a Green Deen, treating the Earth as a Mosque.” — Ibrahim Abdul-Matin

In Arabic, “deen” is defined as a religion, a belief, a path, or a way. Ibrahim Abdul-Matin, sustainability advisor to the New York City Mayor’s Office, maps a tradition-based, and saner course for our planet’s environmental future in his new book, Green Deen: What Islam Teaches About Protecting the Planet. Abdul-Matin clearly demonstrates how a love for the earth underlies the goals and aspirations of Islam.

The lessons (and responsibilities) of the present moment are clear, or as Ibrahim Abdul-Matin writes, “Retreating from the world is something Muslims just do not do. In our Deen, our religious path, we have been taught to be present in the world, to plan for this life and for the next.“

For the Land Library it has been a fundamental (and budget-busting) decision to represent as many voices and traditions as possible for a library that is devoted to both people and nature, land and community. Green Deen is a book we can’t do without, as are these volumes, all essential in their own way:

Animal Welfare in Islam by Al-Hafiz Basheer Ahmad Masri (an examination of the Islamic principles of kindness and compassion toward animals), The Animals Lawsuit Against Humanity (a 10th century Iraqi ecological fable).

Islam and Ecology: A Bestowed Trust, edited by Richard C. Foltz, et.al, Animals in Islamic Tradition and Muslim Cultures by Richard C. Foltz, Man and Nature: The Spiritual Crisis in Modern Man by Seyyed Hossein Nasr.

For more on Ibrahim Abdul-Matin, be sure to visit his Green Deen blogsite, and we can also recommend Green Faith: Interfaith Partners for the Environment, and their information packed website.

And for more on the Land Library’s global reach, here’s a past post!

–Here’s a Safe Bet: We have a Lot to Learn, and We Always Will

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A New World Dawning

“From the elite ethos of Smith College to the raw frontier of northwestern Colorado, two friends dared to defy the conventions of their time and station. Dorothy Wickenden tells their extraordinary story with grace and insight, transporting us back to an America suffused with a sense of adventure and of possibility. This is a wonderful book about two formidable women, the lives they led — and the legacy they left.” — Jon Meacham

In the summer of 1916, Dorothy Woodruff and Rosamond Underwood, recent graduates of Smith College, left their wealthy Auburn, New York home for the wilds of Colorado. Lured to the West by Routt County rancher Ferry Carpenter, the young women were to be the new teachers at a remote schoolhouse in the tiny settlement of Elkhorn.

Dorothy Wickenden (executive editor of the New Yorker, and grand daughter of Dorothy Woodruff) recently found a neglected stack of family letters that reconstructed the young women’s adventures. And that’s the exciting starting point for Wickenden’s Nothing Daunted: The Unexpected Education of Two Society Girls in the West — a spirited tale of testing one’s limits in a fresh new landscape.

For Dorothy and Rosamund, the sense of a new world dawning came early:

“Although intent on their mission, they had bouts of overwhelming nervousness about what they had taken on. During the ride to Chicago, they took notes from the books on teaching that Dorothy had borrowed from a teacher in the Auburn schools. They also re-read the letter they had received the previous week from Carpenter:

My dear Miss Woodruff and Miss Underwood,

I was out to the new school house yesterday getting a line on how many pupils there would be, what supplies and repairs we would need, etc. …I have not heard from you in regard to saddle ponies, but expect you will want them and am looking for some for you….
I expect you are pretty busy getting ready to pull out. I you have a 22 you had better bring it out as there are lots of young sage chickens to be found in that country and August is open season on them.

With best regards to you both I am very truly,

Farrington Carpenter“

Dorothy Woodruff and Rosamond Underwood — Elkhead, Colorado, 1916

Hear from author Dorothy Wickenden, and learn more about the “unexpected education of two society girls in the West”!

Here’s a few more volumes from the Land Library’s collection on Women in the West!

So Much to be Done: Women Settlers on the Mining and Ranching Frontier, edited by Ruth Barnes Moynihan, Susan Armitage, & Christiane Fisher Dichamp, A Mine of Her Own: Women Prospectors in the American West, 1850-1950 by Sally Zanjani

Working the Land: The Stories of Ranch and Farm Women in the American West by Sandra Schackel, Covered Wagon Women: Diaries & Letters from Western Trails, edited by Kenneth L. Holmes, et. al. (Volume 2 of an eleven volume series), Cowgirls: Women of the American West by Teresa Jordan

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A Crash Course in Buddhist Principles

“At Tassajara, fire burned around some things and straight through others, in a course that might seem haphazard but was determined mostly by wind, relative humidity, topography. Similarly, the fire burned uniquely in each person. There wasn’t one fire, but many. There was a shared fire — the event Tassajara’s residents and friends experienced as a community — and the fires individuals lived through in the valleys of their own hearts.” — Colleen Morton Busch

In June 2008 more than two thousand wildfires, all started by a single lightning storm, blazed across California. Tassajara, the oldest Zen Buddhist monastery in the United States, was right in the path of a particularly ferocious firestorm. The monastery’s students were evacuated, but five monks made the difficult and complex decision to stay and help save Tassajara.

Colleen Morton Busch tells their story in one of the most intriguing new books we have seen in a long while — Fire Monks: Zen Mind Meets Wildfire at the Gates of Tassajara. The author describes what grabbed her about this story: “As soon as I read Tassajara director David Zimmerman’s account of the fire’s arrival, I wanted to tell this story — from as close in as possible, but also with a wide lens. What was it like to meet a wildfire with minimal training in firefighting but years of Zen practice to guide you? I believed others might benefit from knowing, the fire being a perfect metaphor for anything that comes uninvited and threatens to hurt us or the people and places we love….In Fire Monks, I wanted to portray Zen in all of its true complexity and relevance, as a continuous practice, a way of life that cultivates a particular kind of fearlessness whether or not there’s a wildfire at the gate.“

In the last few weeks the Land Library posted a piece on our collection of books on wildfires (Transforming the Landscape in an Instant and Over Time). Little did we know that we were about to receive a copy of Fire Monks, easily the most unique wildfire book in our entire collection.

July 2008, Fire retardant rains down near the Tassajara monastery.

As Rebecca Solnit writes in A Paradise Built in Hell — “Disaster could be called a crash course in Buddhist principles…” Colleen Morton Busch’s Fire Monks describes the challenges and opportunities such a crash course brings. Here’s more from the author herself:

Colleen Morton Busch on the fire’s aftermath: “During the book’s writing, I witnessed Tassajara’s recovery. Wildflowers bloomed on barren hillsides. Grasses sprouted, ferns unfurled, bright green shoots broke through the soil at the bases of charred tree trunks….New buildings gradually replaced burned ones. A community tested by a crisis continued to practice together and to examine their experience for whatever truths it might hold.“

A Kindred Book: A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster by Rebecca Solnit, a thought-provoking book about people not only rising to the occasion, but actually thriving in the midst of disaster. Bill McKibben called this “the freshest, deepest, most optimistic accounts of human nature I’ve come across in years.”

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The Endless Bounty of Once Neglected Land

“Land designated for use as allotments was usually simply land which did not find a more profitable use. It was seldom chosen for its horticultural potential, though of course the labour of the cultivators and their manuring of the soil have improved it over the years. For the sites were usually just the spaces left over, behind the houses or factories, limited in access from roads, or in the floodplains of rivers, or enclosed by the sweeping curves of railway lines.” — David Crouch, author of The Allotment: Its Landscape and Culture

Long before community gardens began to pop up across America, there was the allotment. More than two hundred years ago, England began a social experiment, one whose goal was to give the landless laborer the means to provide for himself. And so, the allotment movement was born.

World War II gave new urgency to the movement as Britain sought to achieve self-sufficiency for the uncertain struggle ahead. Britain’s famous Dig for Victory campaign was launched, as seasoned gardeners and raw novices alike were recruited into a new allotment army.

Garden historian Twigs Way has written a fascinating history of those years, Digging for Victory: Gardens and Gardening in Wartime Britain (co-authored by Mike Brown), full of history, stories, photographs, and the rich imagery from the entire Dig for Victory campaign.

Twigs Way has also written a second volume, Allotments (pictured above), a very entertaining history of the allotment movement over the centuries.

Little by little, the Land Library has built up one of our favorite sub-sections devoted to a particular subject — books focused on allotments & community gardens across the globe. Here’s just a few of those volumes:

Allotment & Garden Guide: A Monthly Guide to Better Wartime Gardening, Twig Way’s annotated reprint of the monthly guides published by the UK’s Ministry of Agriculture. As in her other books, Twigs has added many wartime graphics and posters, including the most iconic image of them all, the foot & spade Dig for Victory poster (pictured above).

Digger’s Diary: Tales from the Allotment, V. Osborne’s entries, originally printed in The Daily Telegraph, The Allotment: Its Landscape and Culture by David Crouch and Colin Ward (an indispensable and fun-to-read guide), and City Bountiful: A Century of Community Gardening in America by Laura J. Lawson

Following World War II, allotments saw Britain through the many years of austerity that followed. More recently, there has been yet another home-grown renaissance spurred on by the organic and grow-local movements. Allotments are alive, well, and here to stay — on either side of the Atlantic!

“Making space to look after, to show friendship and care — and other values not understood by the contemporary market place, allotment holding gives us a means to get out of our own home and join others in making good our future environment.” — David Crouch

And here’s a very fun film clip on a Royal visit to an allotment in Great Britain. It’s a fancier allotment than most, but we couldn’t pass it by, as it features Prince Charles — a longtime champion of both nature and vanishing rural ways:

Closer to home, for more on community gardens in the United States, here’s two good links:

–Denver Urban Gardens

–The Garden Resource Program (great things are happening in Detroit!)

And here’s a few past posts on the vibrant intersection between land, food and community:

–Tools for the Urban Homesteader

–A Gentle Rebellion, where some dirt will fly (school gardens!)

– A Brilliant Box of British Bee Books

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Fleece, Fiber, and Good Stories Too

“Natural fibers are part of our culture, our heritage. They have a living breathing animal (or a growing plant) behind them. They often have small-scale farmers or indigenous communities behind them, too — people and cultures whose livelihoods and historic identities can be supported by their continuing work with these fibers.” — from The Fleece & Fiber Sourcebook

OK, it’s official — we love this book! The Fleece & Fiber Sourcebook: More Than 200 Fibers from Animal to Spun Yarn, by Deborah Robson and Carol Ekarius, is a wonderful blend of history, craft and science. Robson & Ekarius span the globe in their quest for natural fibers — and the stories behind them. Among the more than 200 animals described are sheep, goats, alpacas, llamas, vicunas, camels, bison, musk oxen, yaks, and more. Each featured breed is accompanied by up-close photos of their fleece, fiber & yarn, along with helpful tips on dyeing, fiber preparation, and spinning and weaving particulars.

Deborah Robson & Carol Ekarius had this to say about their uniquely valuable book: “…our goal is to look at animal fibers in a way that hasn’t been done before. We are looking in more depth…at the animals that have provided handspinners, knitters and weavers with the foundation of their craft and artistry for thousands of years. You won’t find patterns in this book, but we hope you will learn a great deal about the wool and hair fibers that have clothed and served us for generation upon generation, back to the first person who picked a fluff of wild sheep fibers out of a bush and twisted them together.“

You’ll learn so much, with each page you turn!

A Winter Transformed: “Musk oxen grow several types of fiber, one of which is the animal’s famous underdown, also known as qiviut of qiviuq (as well as a few other spellings). Qiviut deserves its legendary status. This rare fiber has not been readily available for spinning or in yarn form until recently, but now qiviut is making its way into our consciousness (ooh!) and then, if we’re lucky, into our hands (aaah!)….Qiviut’s exceptional combination of fineness, softness, lightness, and warmth make it a delight to work with and wear….About half an ounce of qiviut in the form of a neck warmer — a tiny amount! — transformed our experience of winter.” — from The Fleece & Fiber Sourcebook

As many of you know, the future home of the Land Library will be at a historic ranch, set in the high mountain grasslands of South Park, Colorado. Buffalo Peaks Ranch has a rich history, including a tradition of sheep ranching. Recently, the Land Library received an extremely thoughtful donation of a fully-equipped weaving studio, which will allow us to hold workshops on a craft strongly in tune with the heritage of South Park. And, of course, we’ll have lots of books to call on for inspiration and advice — books such as these!

The Natural Knitter: How to Choose, Use, and Knit Natural Fibers from Alpaca to Yak by Barbara Albright, and Sheer Spirit: Ten Fiber Farms, Twenty Patterns, and Miles of Yarn by Joan Tapper, with fun & perceptive profiles of farms & ranches from Maine to Oregon.

And, here’s one of our all-time favorite volumes among our books on sheep!

Henry Moore’s Sheep Sketchbook: In 1972, when the packing and crating for a major exhibition made it impossible for Henry Moore to work in his sculpture studio, he retreated to a small shed that looked out on a sheep meadow. Over the course of several months, Moore captured the scene out his window, and upon completion of his Sheep Sketchbook, it was presented as a gift to the artist’s daughter, Mary.

For more on sheep, natural fibers, and a very fun film clip of sheepdogs in action, be sure to check out our earlier posts!

–Wild Fibers Stitching Us Together

–So Focused, So Intent (The Meeker Sheepdog Trials!)

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