The Backbone of the World: A Portrait of the Vanishing West Along the Continental Divide - Hardcover

Clifford, Frank

 
9780767907019: The Backbone of the World: A Portrait of the Vanishing West Along the Continental Divide
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0767907019 ISBN 13: 9780767907019
Verlag: Broadway Books, 2002

Inhaltsangabe

An intriguing odyssey through the rugged terrain of the Continental Divide describes an endangered environment threatened by industrialization and economic, social, and political forces, a vanishing way of life, and the people desperately struggling to hold on to it.

Die Inhaltsangabe kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Currently the environment editor for the Los Angeles Times, FRANK CLIFFORD has been a journalist for more than thirty years. Before coming to California, he wrote about the American West for newspapers in Santa Fe, Tucson, and Dallas. A native of Minnesota, he lives with his wife in Los Angeles.

Aus dem Klappentext

In recent years, Los Angeles Times writer and editor Frank Clifford has journeyed along the Continental Divide, the hemispheric watershed that spans North America from the alkali badlands of southernmost New Mexico to the roof of the Rockies in Montana and into Canada. The result is The Backbone of the World, an arresting exploration of America s longest wilderness corridor, a harsh and unforgiving region inhabited by men and women whose way of life is as imperiled as the neighboring wildlife.

With the brutal beauty and stark cadences of a Cormac McCarthy novel, The Backbone of the World tells the story of the last remnants of the Old West, America s mythic landscape, where past and present are barely discernible from one another and where people s lives are still intrinsically linked to their natural surroundings. Clifford vividly captures the challenges of life along the Divide today through portraits of memorable characters: a ranching family whose isolated New Mexico homestead has become a mecca for illegal immigrants and drug smugglers; a sheep herder struggling to make a living tending his flock in the mountains above Vail, Colorado: an old mule packer who has spent years scouring the mountains of northwest Wyoming for the downed plane of his son; a Yellowstone Park ranger on a lone crusade to protect elk and grizzly bears from illegal hunters; and a group of Blackfeet Indians in northern Montana who are fearful that a wilderness sanctuary will be lost to oil and gas development. In each of their stories, the tide of change is looming as environmental, economic, social, and political forces threaten this uniquely unfettered population.

Clifford s participatory approach offers a haunting and immediate evocation of character and geography and an unsentimental eulogy to the people whose disappearance will sever a link with the defining American pioneer spirit. Set in a world of isolated ranches, trail camps, mountain bivouacs, and forgotten hamlets, The Backbone of the World highlights the frontier values that have both ennobled and degraded us, values that symbolize the last breath of our founding character.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Mythopolis

Once, finding a wilderness trailhead was like looking for the entrance to a secret passageway. You got there by following a homemade map that resembled a child's crayon drawing of barns, churches, and hay fields until you got to the end of a dirt track with weeds growing down the middle. You peered into a green wall of forest, searching for the spot where the trees parted and a wisp of a trail took off. For those of us who get slightly giddy at the idea of a weeklong trip into the wilderness, a proper trailhead can hold all of the pent-up excitement of New York Harbor or Grand Central Station in the grand old days of ocean crossings and transcontinental rail trips. Poised at the edge of the world, you waited for the snap of the conductor's watch and the lurch of the locomotive to bear you off to the exquisite unknown.

I'm looking for Turpin Meadows, a flat spot along the Buffalo River, in the upper left corner of Wyoming about eight miles southwest of the Continental Divide. Turpin Meadows is a popular trailhead and the gateway to the largest contiguous spread of wilderness in the lower forty-eight states. Drive into the parking lot, I was told, and search out a red Dodge pickup pulling a trailer full of mules, driven by an old coot wearing red suspenders. Those were my instructions for finding Dick Inberg, from Inberg himself.

I had not intended to start my journey on the Mexican border only to hopscotch 2,000 miles to northern Wyoming. But fate had intervened in the form of drought and forest fire, temporarily closing off a chunk of countryside in between, and so I was forced to go where nature permitted. The pattern would repeat itself. I'd go where I could: from New Mexico to Wyoming and back, then north to Colorado and Montana before doubling back again. I'd get used to it. I have always had a nomad's indifference to a well-planned future. I like waking up in unfamiliar places. I am a city dweller, a "dude" in the old-fashioned sense of the word. But as Oscar Wilde and Rudyard Kipling, among other famous dudes, discovered a long time ago when they toured the American West, city dwellers often have more in common with country folk than they realize. They are not risk averse. They thrive on the unexpected.

Bruce ward of the Continental Divide Trail Alliance told me about Dick Inberg. He said he had been roaming around the mountains of northwest Wyoming for a long time, and no one knew the territory better. For the past two summers, Inberg had been volunteering for the Alliance, working to complete a section of the Continental Divide Trail through the Teton Wilderness. He invited me to join him in exploring one of the few stretches of this country he had not seen--the lower reach of Two Ocean Plateau, a long barrier ridge that rises above timberline to just over 10,000 feet. He planned to go in from the south, just below Yellowstone Park. He suspected that the only trail that went up the plateau petered out on top amid glacial rubble and shallow tarns. "I want to go and find out just how lost you can get up there," he chuckled over the phone. "Sound like a good plan to you?"

Turpin Meadows is a large campground perched at the head of a narrow valley that leads into the Teton Wilderness. The afternoon I get there it is as busy as a truck stop on an interstate highway. I drive in circles, dizzied by the crush of vehicles and horse trailers and the steady drone of diesels and the thump-thump of generators. There are at least 100 people milling about. Some are camped here, as close to the wilderness as they can get and still live out of a motor home. Others are clients of commercial outfitters preparing to ride into the mountains. They stand by their horses, fiddling with unfamiliar trail garb, chaps, and spurs, applying sunscreen to children's faces, waiting for a signal to mount up. Some of the larger ones require assistance. The horses bear up stoically. They are already heavily laden, camera bags tied to saddle horns, folding chairs and fishing rods strapped to their flanks, and water bottles and sack lunches bulging out of saddlebags.

Ah, wilderness.

Eventually, I spot a large man wearing red suspenders. He is standing in one of the camping alcoves, having a furious argument with another, much smaller man. The two are standing toe to toe, snarling at each other like a pair of lunging dogs. Inberg, 6-foot, 4-inches, with a wide slab of a torso, towers over his pudgy antagonist, but the little fellow doesn't back off. He calls Inberg a scofflaw. Inberg calls him a puffed up little Hitler. They are arguing over a $5 admission fee, which Inberg doesn't think he should have to pay. The other man is the campground "host."

All the while, Inberg's wife, Judy, is pulling gently at her husband's sleeve and attempting to point out that the golden age card he thinks entitles him to free admission is not valid here.

"Dick, Dick, your card is only good at Department of Interior campgrounds. This camp is run by the Department of Agriculture."

There is a pause as Inberg looks at his wife and fingers his golden age card.

"OK, Adolph, I guess you win. Satisfied?"

"Not until I get your money," the little man says, but he is retreating now. "And not until I get his," he says, waving disdainfully in my direction.

Inberg, who appears invigorated by the fracas, extends a big paw in my direction and grins. He has a broad, coarse-featured face with liquid eyes, arching brows, and creases that make him seem like he is smiling, even when he isn't. He introduces his wife and suggests we go over to the corral and meet his mules.

"I want you to meet Stuart. You'll be riding Stuart. The two of you will be spending some time together, and it's a good idea for you to get to know each other. A mule needs to be talked to, see. Ya, he does."

At the corral I meet Trouble, Inberg's mule; Apollo and Hay Boy, two magnificently muscled pack animals; and Stuart, who looks morose and potbellied and reminds me of Eeyore, the dyspeptic donkey in Winnie-the-Pooh.

"The thing about a mule," Inberg says, "you can count on him for life. If he likes you. But if he don't, God help you."

"Hello, Stuart. How you doing? Looking forward to the trip?" I give his fat, sleek rump a friendly pat. He moves away.

At sixty-three Inberg has been riding his mules around the mountains for forty years. The son of a Finnish farmer, he grew up in a little town in northern Wisconsin where hunting and trapping were the normal pursuits of rural kids trying to earn pocket money. He came west in the 1950s, lured by a uranium boom, to prospect in the Gas Hills in central Wyoming. After a few years and not a whole lot of luck, he went into the land-surveying business. He married Judy and built a house in the irrigated farm country outside Riverton. In the early 1960s, he began exploring the Absaroka Mountains that fold around the southeast corner of Yellowstone Park. Over the years, these humpbacked massifs became Inberg's second home. At first, it was just a summer playground where he took his kids to hunt and fish. But in time the Absaroka formed the geography of his life.

He nearly died in an accident a few years ago on the Trident Plateau just east of Yellowstone Park. He still limps from the massive injuries. In his head, he carries around the map of a four-year-long search for his son Kirk, a wildlife biologist whose plane went down in the Absaroka in 1991.

Inberg has another life. He runs his own surveying company and is president of the Riverton Lions Club. But he says he is most comfortable in the mountains. He travels by himself most of the time, though he admits he has become cautious, maybe even a bit superstitious. He wears a belt and...

„Über diesen Titel“ kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Verlag
Broadway Books
Erscheinungsdatum
2002
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0767907019
ISBN 13 
9780767907019
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Auflage
1
Anzahl der Seiten
274
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Nicht verfügbar

Weitere beliebte Ausgaben desselben Titels

9780767907026: The Backbone of the World: A Portrait of the Vanishing West Along the Continental Divide

Vorgestellte Ausgabe

ISBN 10:  0767907027 ISBN 13:  9780767907026
Verlag: Crown, 2003
Softcover