Amazon.com Review
Montana journalist Benjamin Long's retracing of the Lewis and Clark expedition is an American elegy. Long calls his mode of exploration "backtracking"--the opposite of following. "If you follow," an old trapper once explained to the author, "the animal is just reacting to your presence, trying to avoid you. Backtracking, you study the evidence as the animal laid it down." Armed with such knowledge and "weary of careers that found us impounded in our cubicles," Long and his wife quit their jobs, sell the house, and embark on their own Corps of Rediscovery in an old Subaru, hoping to uncover some sort of truth about the Western territory nearly two centuries after America's most famous explorers. That truth, sadly, is mostly about loss.
"Of all the passages from the journals of Lewis and Clark," writes Long in the introduction, "the ones that fueled my imagination-fire were those with images of wilderness and wildlife." In this spirit, each subsequent chapter of Backtracking is devoted to a life form that Lewis and Clark encountered on their two-year odyssey. On the Great Plains, Long pays a visit to beleaguered prairie-dog towns, whose residents intrigued Clark enough that he sent one on a long trip back East, where it "lived out the rest of its days in a Philadelphia museum." Like Old West ghost towns, the legendary prairie-dog towns have seen their citizenry dwindle to bust--from an estimated five billion residents to perhaps three million--bringing an entire ecosystem to near-collapse. Another mammal Lewis and Clark could hardly avoid was the grizzly bear, with Lewis famously recording, "I must confess I do not like the gentleman and had reather [sic] fight two Indians than one bear." Long and his wife, however, must detour away from the original trail with a team of wildlife biologists since "the bears can no longer be found anywhere along the explorers' four-thousand-mile route." And so on, with American bison, Westslope cutthroat trout, sharptail grouse, wolves, and more vanished. If this all sounds a bit depressing, at least Long proves an informed and companionable guide along the way. Much has changed in the 200 years since Jefferson first commissioned Lewis and Clark to investigate the newly bought Louisiana Purchase. What hasn't abated is the desire to seek out America's remote natural riches. --Langdon Cook
Reviewed with John Holt's Coyote Nowhere.
Holt and Long, two Montana writers who set out to find America's Old West buried beneath its twenty-first-century trappings, have produced remarkably entertaining books, effectively combining memoir, travelogue, and history.Holt, the author of 13 previous books (mostly about fishing in Montana), set out with his partner, photographer Ginny Diers, to peel back the modern age and reveal the remnants of the Old West. He found what he was looking for in the lives of a handful of ranchers, Native Americans, and fisherman, all of whom are living like their ancestors might have lived a century and a half ago. He constantly contrasts the West he loves with the West being invaded by vacationers, recreational-vehicle owners, and others who seem determined to destroy what precious little remains of the glorious Wild West. This is a moving book and a heartfelt plea to keep the West alive. Although perhaps not quite so aggressive (Holt's prose is full of scathing remarks about people who thoughtlessly trample over the remnants of the Old West), Long's book is just as passionate. A former newspaper journalist who specialized in natural history and environmental issues related to the western states, Long took to the road with his wife, Karen Nichols (who, like Holt's companion, is a photographer), to retrace the steps of Lewis and Clark from the Missouri River to the Pacific. Like Holt, Long wanted to rediscover the past, to recapture the excitement Lewis and Clark must have felt when they saw grizzlies and beautiful vistas and tall, ancient trees for the first time.These books, separately or together, are sure to appeal to readers with an interest in travel or the American West. David Pitt
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