Reviews & Essays
New West Book Review & Interview
Carl Haywood’s Innovative Take on Explorer David Thompson
Canadian David Thompson is considered by some to be one of the shrewdest explorer-mapmakers to ever chart or trek a course. Following quickly on the heels of the Lewis & Clark Expedition, Thompson is widely credited as being the first person to set up a commercial trading post in Montana, a northwestern business venture called Saleesh House. Several opinions have always existed relating to the post’s precise location.
Shunning foregone historical conclusions, Carl Haywood, author of Sometimes Only Horses to Eat ($24.95, Stoneydale Press), has not only raised serious questions about Thompson’s travels in northwestern Montana, but he has offered new interpretations of his own that certainly command confutation.
Carl Haywood will discuss his book at David Thompson Days in Thompson Falls, Mont. on July 4-5, at the Libby Public Library in Libby, Mont. on July 14 (7 p.m.), at The Corner Bookstore in Sandpoint, Idaho on July 19 (1 p.m.), and information on his other regional appearances is available on his website.
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New West Book Review
Short Stuff: Daniel Grandbois’ “Unlucky Lucky Days”
Unlucky Lucky Days
By Daniel Grandbois
BOA Editions
122, $14
On his website, Colorado fiction writer Daniel Grandbois describes his first book, Unlucky Lucky Days, as a "collection of nonsense and absurdist tales" so I guess I should have known better than to go seeking the real-life inspiration for one story, "Mansion," about a turtle who is "an executioner in retirement" and becomes stuck in a mansion he was trying to execute (if that make sense, you've got a more agile mind than I do). Grandbois writes that a librarian decided to take the mansion as a paperweight, and "that's where you can find the executioner right down to this day—in the fish tank near the children's books at the Boulder Public Library."
Daniel Grandbois will read from his book at the Tattered Cover (LoDo) at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, July 8. Munly and the Lepercalians will also perform.
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Western Nature Writers
An Interview with David M. Armstrong
David M. Armstrong is a Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Colorado and the author of several books, including the recently published third edition of Rocky Mountain Mammals (University of Colorado Press, $19.95), a guide to the mammals of this region and those in Rocky Mountain National Park in particular. Packed with photos and facts, the book is worth its weight to lug on a backpacking trip. I recently interviewed Professor Armstrong via email about the best way to spot mammals in the wild, the projected fate of the pika, changes he's observed in Rocky Mountain National Park, the dearth of Bigfoot sightings there, and how we should "honor [our] cousin," the montane vole.
New West: Have you noticed any changes in Rocky Mountain National Park over the years?
David M. Armstrong: The fauna of any place is a dynamic phenomenon, a “work-in-progress,” and changes are sometimes subtle. Obvious changes in recent decades have been the substantial increase in the number of elk in the National Park and vicinity, ups and downs in numbers (hence visibility) of bighorn sheep and beaver, the increase in the number of black bears in recent years, the establishment of moose in the National Park (from introduced population in North Park).
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New West Book Review
On the Road with Boulder’s Queen of Shoes and Sloth
Queen of the Road
By Doreen Orion
Broadway Books, 293 pages, $13.95
Don't be fooled by the author photo in the back of Boulder author Doreen Orion's new travel narrative, Queen of the Road. It depicts her wearing sneakers and exercise clothes, smiling next to her dog at a scenic overlook to which they've presumably hiked. Although she looks like a standard REI-shopping, backpacking, Yoga Journal-reading, outdoor-worshiping Boulderite, she reveals her true nature early on in Queen of the Road, which details the year she and her husband Tim spent cruising America in a tricked-out luxury bus.
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New West Book Review
“Bronze Inside and Out” by Mary Strachan Scriver
Bronze Inside and Out: A Biographical Memoir of Bob Scriver
By Mary Strachan Scriver
368 pages, University of Calgary Press, $44.95
When Mary Strachan moved to Browning, Montana in August, 1961 to teach school, she didn’t imagine that one day she’d sleep with a cat, dog, gopher, badger, a few bobcats, a couple of foxes and an eccentric artist twice her age. But that’s exactly what happened when she met and married Bob Scriver who was residing and working as a bronze sculptor on the Montana Blackfeet Reservation.
“It was a mammal pile,” Mary Strachan Scriver said, happily describing the creature-lined bed where she and Bob Scriver cuddled up and slept the night away. “If Bob could have figured out how to get the eagle in the bed with us, I’m sure he would have done it.”
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Western Book Roundup
Policing Nonfiction, and Boulder Writer’s “Just Do It” takes Manhattan
Bryan Burrough recently reviewed Alexandra Fuller's The Legend of Colton H. Bryant for the New York Times Book Review. Burrough admired Fuller's poetic writing, but wasn't convinced that the book should be classified as nonfiction because so much of it consists of dialogue that she wasn't present for, and she admits in an author's note that she "juggled time" and took other "narrative liberties." Burrough writes:
"That’s not artistic license. It’s cheating. Not cheating in the sense that plagiarism is cheating. I don’t believe Fuller has committed a major literary felony here, but it’s clearly a misdemeanor, even if she comes out and admits it."
Also in the Roundup: A Denver Post reporter has sex with his wife 101 days in a row and recovers in time to write the tale.
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New West Book Review
“Here There Nowhere”: Michael Brophy’s Haunting Landscapes
Here There Nowhere: Paintings by Michael Brophy
Oregon State University Press
49 pages, $25
The first painting I saw by Oregon's Michael Brophy was "Night Truck." Although its subject matter might be considered ugly, it's a beautiful painting, with a silver semi front and center, charging through a dark night, illuminated by the headlights of the vehicle behind it like a stage performer awash in footlights. It's an evocative image that cast me, and surely many who look at it, back into memories of long night drives across the West. There's something about it that reminded me of an Edward Hopper painting: maybe the name, which recalls "Nighthawks," Brophy's skillful use of empty space and artificial light, or perhaps its feeling of brooding isolation that invites viewers to question exactly how they came to spend a sleepless night following this steel behemoth, the natural world surrounding the road erased in darkness so that they might be anywhere.
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New West Book Review
“In the Blast Zone” Examines Mount St. Helens’ Recovery
In the Blast Zone: Catastrophe and Renewal on Mount St. Helens
Ed. By Charles Goodrich, Kathleen Dean Moore & Frederick J. Swanson
Oregon State University Press, 124 pages, $15.95
In 2005 a group of writers and scientists from Oregon and Washington gathered to spend a weekend camping near Mount St. Helens on the 25th anniversary of the volcanic eruption that rained debris on the surrounding area, destroying flora and fauna for miles around, leaving behind what looked like "a gray, lifeless landscape." But as the essays by the participants in this pilgrimage that are collected in the new anthology In the Blast Zone detail, all was not destroyed: burrowing gophers survived under the soil, while other plants and animals took refuge in "rotten logs, snow banks, and ice-covered ponds." Logging companies quickly moved to replant trees, but the Mount St. Helens Volcanic National Monument was established, allowing scientists to observe the natural recovery process that would ensue without human intervention.
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New West Book Review
‘Mustang’: Defending Wild Horse’s Place in West, and in History
Mustang: The Saga of the Wild Horse in the American West
By Deanne Stillman
Houghton Mifflin
348 pages, $25
Some 55 million years ago, the ancestor to the modern-day horse, the “dawn horse,” appeared on what would become North America, writes Deanne Stillman. Four million years ago, Equus, the first creature we would recognize as a horse, appeared in what would be the American West. Long after vanishing from the region along with many fellow prehistoric mammals, the horse returned to the continent with the Spanish conquistadors and found its home again on the Western landscape.
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New West Book Excerpt
The Rise of a New Ranch in the American West
Courtney White's new book Revolution on the Range (Island Press, $25.95) seeks common ground between the goals of Western ranchers and environmentalists. White reports on individuals who are working to end the "tribal warfare between denizens of the 'Old' West and advocates of the 'New,' with lassos on one side, and lattes on the other." Publishers Weekly wrote, "In a time when environmental reporting has become justifiably gloomy, this book is a refreshing breath of pragmatic optimism." In the following prologue, White introduces the ideas that fuel his book.
In 1996, I had an anguished question on my mind: why didn’t environmentalists and ranchers get along better? In theory they shared many of the same hopes and fears—a love of wildlife, a deep respect for nature, an appreciation for a life lived outdoors, and a common concern for healthy water, food, fiber, and liberty.
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