Introduction
This book began with a fortuitous reunion of two friends. Photographer Meredith Ogilby and I bumped into each other at the fourteenth annual Headwaters conference in Gunnison, Colorado. Meredith had recently visited Dick Pownall after his commemorative ascent—at age seventy-five—up the 13,770-foot Grand Teton in Wyoming, on the Pownall-Gilkey route named after his 1948 first ascent. Dick’s quiet self-assurance and disregard for fanfare led Meredith to question what qualities define this extraordinary westerner. And who are others in the West living in defiance of limits? In a similar vein, I was considering who the people with enough passion and vision to make a difference in today’s West are. We had no idea that the conference, with such a powerful combination of what George Sibley coined the West’s “heavy lifters,” and our chance encounter would be the catalyst for a four-year journey to articulate the Rocky Mountain West through its people. We committed to travel the West in search of men and women who could answer our questions: How has the West defined you? Where do you think the West is heading, and what is your role? Are you hopeful about the future of the West?
Two weeks later we found ourselves in Stewart Udall’s living room on the outskirts of Santa Fe, New Mexico. Stewart exemplified the character we sought, someone who helped shape the West and its future. He was born and raised in Arizona, grew up knowing and working the land, and dedicated his life to safeguarding the region’s environmental integrity—though not all of his efforts are without controversy. He is gen- erous of spirit but is also a widower who struggles with the loss of his eyesight and sometimes despairs for his grandchildren’s future. He calls himself “a troubled optimist.”
We drove thousands of miles looking for others shaped by the geography of the West and discovered pockets of the country we never knew existed. I remember dropping into Big Hole, Montana, on a sunny, bluebird afternoon and finally understanding the term Big Sky Country.
In far south New Mexico, we visited the Gray Ranch and Warner Glenn’s family on the Malpai bor- derlands. The southwestern landscape at first seems harsh and desolate, but at sunset a softness comes over the land: the mountains glow purple and the horizon seems endless. Along the border framed by the Peloncillo and Chiricahua mountains, where Geronimo hid from the US Cavalry in the 1880s, our journey grew heavy when we saw a lone Hispanic man handcuffed to a fence along a barren stretch of dirt road.
We encountered a blinding sandstorm on the Navajo Reservation, so powerful that sand filled our camper-truck even with the windows and doors closed. We had just spent an afternoon with James and Mae Peshlakai at their home in Cameron, Arizona, where we listened to Navajo tales of cultural dislocation. The next morning we drove through the sandstone sculptures of Monument Valley, and the world seemed clean and hopeful again as we reflected on the value of preserving the oral tradition. It reinforced our decision to combine our conversations and Meredith’s black-and-white portraits into a book that honors that tradition.
Early in the project we sought out iconic west- erners known for their unique visions: Charles Wilkinson, Patricia Nelson Limerick, Daniel Kemmis, Terry Tempest Williams, and William Kittredge. As the road grew longer, we discovered men and women such as Donald Warne, Jennifer Speers, and Lani Malmberg, whose faces are not as familiar but whose inspiration and commitment also come directly from the land.
We dropped in on Charris and Dulcie Ford at Mimbres Hot Springs in a canyon at the foothills of New Mexico’s Gila Mountains. It was the first time either of us had been to a commune, and they left this message on our phone: “We’re right after the sawhorse on the left. You can’t see our house from the road, but look for a black 1951 Plymouth with weeds growing out of it. And if you wouldn’t mind, please bring eggs, bread, milk, goat cheese, and organic bananas.”
We traveled in Meredith’s camper-truck or stayed in cheap motels. We called on old friends and asked to sleep on their floors and couches. To gain perspective on the severity and history of some of the issues facing today’s West, we attended conferences: Quivira Coalition, Headwaters, Colorado College State of the Rockies, and the Wallace Stegner Center Symposium. During our drives we read out loud Charles Wilkin- son’s Fire on the Plateau, Daniel Kemmis’s This Sovereign Land, Bill deBuys’s River of Traps, Patty Limerick’s The Legacy of Conquest, Gary Paul Nabhan’s Coming Home to Eat, and books by Wallace Stegner, Aldo Leopold, and William Kittredge.
We were among the old guard huddled in our sleeping bags in the wee hours at the Ed Abbey Speaks gathering, a reunion of Ed Abbey’s closest friends who gathered to commemorate the fifteenth anniversary of his death and also the fortieth anniversary of the Wilderness Act. It was held at Pack Creek Ranch, outside Moab, Utah, and there we listened to Abbey’s giant friends Dave Foreman, Katie Lee, and John Nichols roar against the forces that have degraded the West. Later, in Bozeman, Montana, we heard Doug Peacock, the model for Ed Abbey’s George Hayduke in The Monkey Wrench Gang, lament, "I thought by now there would be a hundred Ed Abbeys.”
We spent an afternoon with Terry Tempest Williams in the desert canyon where she said she would take the people she loved if the world were about to end. We hiked with Terry up to a petroglyph of a great horned owl whose eyes look upcanyon toward a rock that holds an ancient pictograph of a woman giving birth. Over Mexican food and margaritas, Terry lived up to her reputation as a storyteller and convinced us that the fate of humanity and the land are inseparable.
These are conversations. They are not written essays, but moments of honest, thoughtful dialogue. We met people in coffee shops, noisy bars, and restaurants, and were invited into their homes. We shared stories, laughter, tears, and too many cups of coffee. The power of each story motivated us to leave our families again and again. As we traveled the West attempting to capture these individual personalities, what we found is that they captured us.
What Meredith and I discovered on our journey is a large community of visionary men and women who are highlighting solutions for a region that has been struggling with political agendas, bureaucrats, developers, climate change, pollution, habitat destruction, ecological degradation, and loss of culture. Each of these individuals has influenced the West. While their approaches to land use, public policy, or border issues may incite controversy, each remains determined to seek solutions. They share the common thread of a commitment to place as well as a profound appreciation for the complexity of the problems the West faces. And though many may share Stewart Udall’s troubled optimism, most maintain hope for the West’s future.
These timeless stories and photographs show a cross section of the West as it is today, however incom- plete. Many of the West’s most pressing issues are discussed in these pages. As you read about the struggles and motivations of these individuals, we hope you feel, as we do, a sense of stewardship for this, Our Beloved West.
