New West Book Review
Desert Solitude: Amy Irvine’s “Trespass”
By Jenny Shank, 2-29-08
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Trespass: Living at the Edge of the Promised Land
By Amy Irvine
North Point Press
361 pages, $25
Utah native Amy Irvine’s first book Trespass: Living At The Edge of The Promised Land is an unusual hybrid that combines memoir, natural history, Western history, anthropology, and an examination of the Mormon religion. Irvine, who now lives in Colorado, writes with authority about all of these subjects, though sometimes the transitions between so many topics within a particular chapter can be dizzying. Luckily, her clear, detailed prose will help ground readers as they try to keep up with the leaps of her fertile mind.
The book is divided into four parts, each of which is named for one of the periods of prehistoric Native American culture in Utah: Lithic, Archaic, Basketmaker, and Pueblo. Irvine draws parallels between these cultures, Mormon society, and her own life. Irvine follows many timelines simultaneously, including that of the successive populations of prehistoric peoples in Utah, and that of the adventures of her polygamist Mormon ancestor, Howard Egan, who was with the original group Brigham Young led west.
The simplest thread to follow is that of Irvine’s own life, and she begins her personal tale during a time of turmoil, after her estranged, alcoholic father has committed suicide, she has ended her first marriage, and decides to move from Salt Lake City to San Juan County in southern Utah be near her lover, Herb, and to live amid the red-rock desert that she loves.
Although the natural landscape proves to be as inspiring as she had expected, the inhabitants of the area are less than hospitable to newcomers. Herb is a long-haired, occasionally nudist lawyer for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, and Irvine writes grants for the same organization. The SUWA has few friends among the ranchers and rural folks who populate the area and graze their cattle on open land; at one point they call the SUWA “terrorists,” and often their trucks bear a window sticker of “the cartoon character Calvin, pants down…urinating on the logo of the Sierra Club.”
The most compelling aspect of Trespass is its portrayal of how torn Irvine is between her heritage and her current beliefs. She was raised partially within the Mormon church; her father was an atheist, her mother a Mormon, and upon their divorce, Irvine asked to be baptized into the faith, in part because almost all social life in Salt Lake revolved around the LDS church. Irvine also developed tremendous respect for her ranching relatives. As Irvine grew up, however, she could find no model for the kind of woman she wanted to be among the expected roles in LDS church. A Mormon neighbor named Charity displays the standard attitude when she explains to Irvine why she doesn’t have time to hike in the area around her home: “Between keeping house, taking care of my children, and getting to church, I’ve got all I can manage.” One of Irvine’s grandmothers did provide a model for her, as an atheist and a painter who embraced the beauty of the desert and didn’t mind not fitting into Mormon society.
Although Irvine becomes a writer, a wilderness activist, and according to her publisher’s bio, “a nationally ranked competitive rock climber,” she is still drawn toward her Mormon neighbors, seeking human companionship. Most of them are friendly until they find out who her employer is and that she’s no longer a practicing Mormon. At one point Irvine, who used to favor Lycra workout clothes, dons a standard-issue Mormon dress in order to go incognito and enjoy easier social relations: The dress “buttons up over my collarbone and hangs straight off a high empire waist. It is so billowy that walking in it feels like floating across the floor.”
This dress description appears in a chapter entitled “Ghost,” whose structure is typical of the chapters in the book. It begins with an italicized imagining (based on historical accounts and journals) of the some of the1847 adventures of Howard Egan, including a striking description of an infant buried in a tree by a Utah tribe. Then it skips forward to June of 2001, when Irvine has gone to the town Laundromat, where she encounters a couple of missionaries who had tried to convert her earlier, as well as a smiling cowboy who takes an interest in her. At first she hides her beliefs, but as his questions about her employment become more probing, she finally admits to the rancher that she is a wilderness activist.
Like Superman revealing a hidden costume, she tears “at the top buttons” of her dress, pulls “the collar away” and announces that she works for the SUWA, which launches the cowboy into a tirade; she answers with one of her own. During their banter, the subject of the Paiute comes up, and Irvine segues into a five-page essay on the history of the Paiute and their relations to local Mormons. Then the narrative jumps back to the Laundromat and the cowboy, who softens to her and slips her his phone number. Another Mormon woman enters during their debate and at first condemns Irvine, then apologizes, saying, “I realize I haven’t been very Christian.” Although Irvine is a skillful writer, it can be difficult to follow her whirlwind structure.
Still, Trespass rewards the reader’s patience in many ways. Irvine’s inside look at the LDS church provides many astonishing details, such as this description of “the underwear worn by Mormons who have gone through the temple rites”: “a vast expanse of filmy white polyester that covers the entire trunk of both men’s and women’s bodies, kept on by some even during sex and gym workouts.”
Many people would have given up and moved somewhere where they wouldn’t feel so isolated; it’s to Irvine’s credit that she tried to stick it out in Utah. It’s clear that she loves the state’s land so much that for many years, even social ostracization couldn’t drive her from it. She writes, of Deseret, a state that Mormon settlers proposed creating 1849 that would have included Utah, Nevada, most of Arizona and parts of Colorado, California, and New Mexico: “It has never occurred to me…to leave Deseret entirely. I would simply creep farther to the edge, away from its society. The instinct was as natural as anything I have ever known.”
One dispiriting aspect of Trespass is that for all the efforts of people such as Herb and Irvine, those who seek to protect the wilderness seem to be fighting a losing battle. At one point they try to halt an ORV rally in a fragile desert ecosystem, and instead of getting angry at them, the locals laugh at their obviously doomed effort.
Toward the end of the book, some of Irvine’s friends have a standoff with some ORV drivers who want to cut across their land, and Irvine has a vision of what the West has become:
“These people are not the hardworking, mild-mannered, modest, and polite version of Mormons that I grew up with, nor are they like the folks of San Juan County. These are hybrids—the new West…They may or may not go to church, but they lack my father’s genteelness, and they definitely don’t ride horses or run cows. They are extreme recreationists—the same type who own the big powerful boats and high-powered personal watercraft that now dominate Lake Powell. And, more than any rancher, they hate environmentalists. I can’t help thinking that they embody what may be the Last Days in Deseret—not in a Christ-returns kind of way, but in terms of what the landscape can withstand.”
Trespass ends on this defeated note, with the future of Utah’s desert all but doomed, and Irvine’s relationship with Herb uncertain. For this and other reasons, Trespass isn’t the easiest read, but it is a loud, bracing, honest cry from the wilderness.
Irvine will appear tonight in Park City at Dolly’s Bookstore (6 p.m.), March 1 in Moab at Back of Beyond Books (7 p.m.), March 8 in Santa Fe at Garcia Street Books (4:30 p.m.), and March 18 in Denver at the LoDo Tattered Cover (7:30 p.m.), as well as in other regional bookstores.
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Comments
It seems like "Trespass" is getting a lot of positive attention and reviews, so maybe you can convince Amy Irvine to extend her tour with an Albuquerque stop. I checked--she doesn't seem to have an author website where you can contact her, but who knows, maybe she'll read this.
What's your favorite bookstore in Albuquerque? Bookworks?
happy reading,
Jenny
The funny thing is that to go to Santa Fe you have to fly to Albuquerque. We have lots of SUWA members, Wilderness advocates and other enviros, fans of Edward Abbey and Terry Tempest Williams. Dave Foreman lives here!
YOU might just learn something about this PLACE and YOURSELF!!
Most people in S. Utah see SUWA as a bunch of neo-hippie environmental carpetbaggers who are trying to destroy their communities and their way of life. But more people in urban Utah identify themselves as environmentalists and their voices are going to play a big part in the future of the state.