Customer Reviews

River of Traps: A New Mexico Mountain Life

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

River of Traps is not your typical conservation book. This is a drama, provided to the reader in subtle, sweeping prose and powerful photography by the co-authors.

This book is about transitions: young adults, coming of age in world still not comfortable with the overwhelming changes wrought by the turbulent 60s; the politics of water in the southwest; and the transition of a wizened native seer who knows he only has so much time left to impart the wisdom he has gained from his life in the native land he loves.

Never overwritten, but requiring a fair amount of patience, I highly recommend this non-fiction account of three young adults coming into their own, in a new world, only partly of their making.

Four and a half stars.

This is a fluid and absorbing book. Each chapter/vignette builds carefully upon the preceding one. The author's knowledge of the Southwest and its intertwined cultures and his affection for the land and his friends makes this a powerful read. Anyone interested in the Southwest, biography and/or photography should read this. It's wonderful!

DuBuys' and Harris' friendship with Jacobo Romero was an education for their minds and spirits and they share what they learned in this elegant volume. New Mexicans are hard to write about, because they use language more directly, to a different purpose, than most other Americans. It's difficult to tell a New Mexican's story, because it's hard to use a New Mexican's language. DuBuys has stood in a neutral place to see himself, his friend Alex Harris, their women, and his friend Jacobo Romero, his wife, and others, and to tell a story that is from the heart without being romanticized, that shares what he learned with striking generosity. The pictures are beautiful--the landscape of New Mexican people is even more stirring than the landscape of New Mexican land.

A captivating read, a joy, a lovely picture book. You will fall in love with this book... You will not be able to help yourself.

This is the second time I purchase this book. I gave the first one to a favorite brother-in-law-author not realizing how much I missed the ability to go back and re-read passages whenever I wanted. I can now do so, however my new River of Traps is already on loan to a friend! Asi es la vida. I live close to the River of Traps and treasure deBuys ability to so exquisitely write about these places that mean so much to me.

RIVER OF TRAPS is a collaborative tribute by William deBuys (text) and Alex Harris (photographs) to a friend and neighbor and to a mountain valley and village where they lived for some years. "River of Traps" is a translation of the "Rio de las Trampas," a mountain stream which flows off Trampas Peak, north of Santa Fe, New Mexico, and by the village of El Valle on its descent to the Rio Grande. But much more than a book about the Rio de las Trampas, this is a book about village life of the Hispanic "Nortenos" in Northern New Mexico and one Norteno in particular, Jacobo Romero. Romero was 78 in 1975, when deBuys and Harris, not long out of college and refugees from the societal upheaval of the Vietnam and Nixon years, settled in remote El Valle and tried their hands at small-scale mountain farming while they also pursued their respective careers as a writer and a photographer. Jacobo Romero was their neighbor, and he became their friend and their principal guide to the life of the Nortenos.

DeBuys and Harris did not set out to create a book about Romero until after he died (around 1986 at the age of 87). In the words of Barbara Kingsolver in her "New York Times" review of the book, "Because it was assembled after the fact, their portrait of him has a pleasantly jumpy, associative structure, like human memory, and is blessedly free of the self-consciousness of a premeditated 'memoir.'" The book is a moving and affectionate portrayal of an anonymous (outside his family and village) but quietly noble man. And it also is a wonderful portayal of the life of the Hispanos of Northern New Mexico, one of the many, and one of the oldest, small distinct cultural groups scattered throughout this country.

RIVER OF TRAPS is as good an introduction to Northern New Mexico as I know, to be recommended -- along with Stanley Crawford's "Mayordomo" and deBuys' own "Enchantment and Exploration" -- to anyone interested in the area. But RIVER OF TRAPS transcends the category of "regional book." Ultimately, it is a book about humanity and living on this earth simply and with determination, grace, and dignity.