The Backbone of the World: A Portrait of a Vanishing Way of Life Along the Continental Divide [Hardcover]

Frank Clifford (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 14, 2002

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Somewhere in the middle of America, far from the tourist-welcoming beaches of Los Angeles and buildings of New York, lies a land set back in time. Clifford, the environment editor of the Los Angeles Times, explores that land, the place where nature separates America the Pacific from America the Atlantic, the great wilderness known as the Continental Divide. Clifford seeks to dwell in the Continental Divide, to live and breathe its prejudices and people, to report on a Western way of life forgotten by most of the West. The author writes in stark, unadorned prose a style befitting the ways of life and people he describes. Yet despite his sympathies with the few remaining cowboys and his efforts to help steer cattle or hunt coyotes, he always seems to be left on the outside of the action, a city boy looking in at these rural folk. And this alienation, conveyed in unconventionally barren language, ends up marring the book rather than making it. Despite the abundantly esoteric subject matter, the country folk Clifford encounters remain stereotypes (a token cowboy, an old recluse, rich urbanites looking for adventure), and both his descriptions and his rendering of dialogue do little more than sketch two-dimensional outlines of human existence, a rugged way of life in a wilderness that few know still exists.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

In his first book, Clifford, a journalist for over 30 years and currently the environmental news editor of the Los Angeles Times, writes about ten encounters with people who by choice continue to live in the stark wilderness found along the Continental Divide. By living several days with a shepherd in Colorado, the Blackfeet in Montana, cattle ranchers in Wyoming and New Mexico, a park ranger in the remote part of Yellowstone National Park, and others residing along the divide, Clifford is able to describe to the reader how and why these people choose to live in this wilderness. In each instance, their struggle is not only with nature but with the government officials, commercial interests, environmentalists, and tourists who constantly encroach on their way of life. The lack of maps is this book's only drawback. An excellent supplement to the guides available on hiking the Continental Divide, this book also stands alone as an introduction to the issues facing this remote region of the West. Recommended for public and academic libraries. John McCormick, New Hampshire State Lib., Concord
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Broadway; 1 edition (May 14, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0767907019
• ISBN-13: 978-0767907019
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #925,263 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars the passing of the last American wilderness, September 20, 2002

By 

Ronald Scheer "rockysquirrel" (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Backbone of the World: A Portrait of a Vanishing Way of Life Along the Continental Divide (Hardcover)

I like a book that takes my assumptions about something and turns most of them upside down, and this book did that. To begin with, even though I had heard most of a radio interview with the author, I was expecting a book mostly about hiking the Rocky Mountains. Instead "Backbone of the World" is about a series of encounters with people who live and work along the Continental Divide. And Clifford uses these encounters to discuss the competing points of view of those with an interest in what's left of America's wilderness areas -- environmentalists, housing developers, ranchers, cowboys, sheep herders, national park service rangers, wildlife preservationists, back country outfitters, hunters, Native Americans, game wardens, hangers on in dying company towns, and the owners and employees of the mining, logging, and energy industries.

As a journalist for the Los Angeles Times, Clifford has his preferences about the fate of the wilderness, but he allows his subjects to speak for themselves without passing judgment on them. To that extent, the book is not a polemic but an array of human opinions nearly as sweeping as the mountain and desert vistas that are the subject of this book. He goes on horseback into the mountains of northern Montana with Blackfeet Indians. He spends time with a sheep herder in Colorado, who is barely scraping by. He is the guest of two ranch owners, riding along on a cattle drive in Wyoming and helping with a round-up in New Mexico, in the arid high country along the Mexican border. He goes coyote hunting with an ailing and broken former uranium mining worker in Wyoming. He visits a park ranger in Yellowstone, who spends his days busting illegal hunters. And he accompanies an environmental activist as they pony trek into the mountains of Alberta.

And as the people he interviews speak, you learn of the impact of humans on the wilderness -- overgrazing, destruction of habitat, the invasion of roads and all-terrain vehicles, the decimation of wildlife populations, the spread of urban sprawl, the expansion of the recreation industry, the hunting camps where big city executives can shoot game that have been lured off public lands with conveniently located salt licks. And over and again, there is the theme of a ravaged landscape, diminished by clear-cutting, exhausted mines, and aggressive drilling for oil and gas. At this level, the book is a quiet litany for the destruction of everything wild, pristine, and beautiful.

All this may sound like a depressing read, but I enjoyed Clifford's accounts of encounters with the people who inhabit this region. He puts a human face on the economic, environmentalist, and conservationist forces in contention over the fate of what once was a vast wilderness. The 8-page bibliography at the end of the book is evidence of his long and thoughtful study of his subject. And his writing is that of an observant journalist. The people and places he describes come alive, and like viewing an excellent documentary film, you come away with an appreciation for the complexity of the issues, a sense of having witnessed them firsthand, and your own assumptions turned upside down.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I was pleasantly enlightened, October 19, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The Backbone of the World: A Portrait of a Vanishing Way of Life Along the Continental Divide (Hardcover)

I was given this book by a friend. It was a surprise from the beginning to the end. I can't recommend this book enough. I live in the Rocky Mountains and see what is happening all around me in the "Last Best Place." I expected the environmental writer from the LA Times to write this book with a prejudiced point of view and?probably my own point of view. Instead it was so insightful, to so many different walks of life and belief systems that I was amazed in every chapter. I work for the park service and read the chapter on "Action Jackson" with great interest and know about the conflicts of that situation and still Mr. Clifford amazed me with his sensitivity to the people involved. This book, for the first time made me see the way people of many different backgrounds from mine view the wilderness, not necessarily all bad, not necessarily all destructive, just different. The author is a teacher of tolerance and we all need more of that in this time and in this world. I cannot recommend this book any more highly. I will buy it and give it to many people. I was inspired to not give up the fight to save the American west. Thankyou Frank Clifford.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Reporter gets embedded in the Rockies, August 31, 2003

By 

Philip Carl "EcoAngler" (Half Moon Bay, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Backbone of the World: A Portrait of a Vanishing Way of Life Along the Continental Divide (Hardcover)

Clifford is a journalist and it shines through in this book. His observations are clear and unbiased. In fact, there are few stories where he's not riding a horse, sitting in a pick-up truck or walking with an outfitter or cowboy. The stories jump all over the map along the Continental Divide of the United States. One moment you're taken for a morning coyote hunt outside of Jeffrey City, WY and the next plunged into a gathering on the Blackfeet Reservation.

The geography he travels is seen through the eyes of the long time residents who are rooted in the land. Their fortune at the mercy of the natural forces that get bigger, stronger, and more unpredictable the deeper you go into the terrain. The natural forces of weather and wildlife are but one part of the picture that Clifford paints. What makes this book unique is the author's ability to put each story in a larger context.

For the Western United States that larger context is... change. Sensing this change, Clifford takes us to meet people that are fighting to hold-on to a uniquely Western life-style. A life-style as honest and straightforward as the writing in this book.