Standing Up to the Rock [Hardcover]

T. Louise Freeman-Toole (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2001

There is a ranch that runs for several miles along the last free-flowing stretch of the Snake River. A beautiful but harsh environment, hellishly hot in the summer and cut off from the outside world for much of the winter, the area is also in the middle of two equally harsh controversies: one over the breaching of the dams on the lower Snake and the other concerning new land management plans in Hells Canyon. T. Louise Freeman-Toole, a sixth-generation Californian, moves to a small Idaho town, little suspecting how profoundly she will be affected by her new life and surroundings. Her frequent visits to the last homestead ranch on the middle Snake River and her friendship with the eighty-year-old ranch owner and his daughter lead her to discover the spirit of the West and her own place there.

 

With deft and evocative prose, Freeman-Toole takes us along as she and her son round up cattle, fix fences, hike, kayak, meet bears, elk, and sturgeon, and encounter rural traditions and values that force her to reexamine her own views on environmentalism, the treatment of animals, property rights, child rearing, and death. Whether investigating her family's roots in Los Angeles, exploring the threats that tourism, recreation, population growth, and sprawl pose for Hells Canyon, or chronicling her ten-year romance with the rugged and spectacular landscape, Freeman-Toole is an able guide to the fraught territory where old ways and new realities, fierce loyalties and political passions, and memory and longing uneasily meet.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

By cradling her otherwise commonplace family memoir within a poignant, reflective account of homestead survival and rugged individuality along the Snake River of Idaho, freelance writer Freeman-Toole invests it with a useful measure of regional appeal for readers interested in the psychic landscape of the wilderness Northwest. The most interesting bits of the book portray pioneering patriarch Dooley Burns, now in his 80s, his earthy, somewhat taciturn, always capable daughter, Liz, and their obviously cherished life running cattle on the last privately owned ranch in the river's tourist- and dam-besieged Hells Canyon region. Less compelling are the rather forced parallels the author draws between her own family's scattered roots and offshoots, and the much more settled history of the hardscrabble ranching holdouts, whose stubborn self-reliance epitomizes what old-time Idahoans celebrate as "standing up to the rock." Freeman-Toole's account of traveling with her dying father to visit his dead mother's Alaskan haunts is moving, and her ruminations on the differences between her California years and her near-decade immersion in Idaho's culture and environment are interesting enough. But when she describes daily life on the Burns ranch, the book truly comes into focus. Her learning curve as a pitch-in visitor to the ranch is steep; she herds cattle and witnesses branding, castration, often difficult births, sometimes messy deaths. Her reward: discovering the beauty at first masked by hellish summer heat and numbing winter isolation. 16 b&w photos.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Review

"A poignant, reflective account of homestead survival and rugged individuality along the Snake River of Idaho."—Publishers Weekly

(Publishers Weekly )

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 213 pages
• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press; First Edition edition (September 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0803220111
• ISBN-13: 978-0803220119
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,631,039 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Regional Appeal, July 29, 2002

By 

"kellytools" (Idaho) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Standing Up to the Rock (Hardcover)

This book will be of interest to natives of the Northwest, as an outsider assesses what it is about their culture that is worth embracing. It will be interesting to city folk to watch one of their own forsake the freeways and the smog of California for a green and peaceful place. During her ten-year indoctrination into the ways of the West, Freeman-Toole faces physical and emotional hardships with heroism and common sense. A first book by the author.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Moving, honest, well written book, July 3, 2002

By 

Charles M. Nobles (Tulsa, OK United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Standing Up to the Rock (Hardcover)

Many of the current books written about the West are by natives of the area that have typically lived on a family farm or ranch. They provide intimate details about working the land and lament the daily changes occurring in what many consider the last, best place to live in the United States.
Freemna-Toole is different. She is a sixth-generation Californian and comes to the last free-flowing stretch of the Snake River in Idaho not knowing the impact it would have on her life.
In lyrical, poignant prose she provides an intimate portrait into her search for her own place in the world. It has a profound effect on her life when she finds it in the new, and old, West. Little did she know that her friendship with the owner of the last homestead ranch on the middle Snake River would lead her to encounter the dilemmas facing both natives and newcomers alike in the West.
Her account of having to re-examine her views on environmentalism in light of rural traditions and values is worthy not only for its sensitivity but for its examination of an issue that is at the heart of one of the monunmental changes taking place in the West.
The unavoidable impact of tourism and recreation growth in a pristime and spectacular landscape is noted along with a recognition that is rarely seen in print from a lover of the area, namely that it may be than such tourism will serve to preserve some of the landscape that otherwise might be sacrificed on the altar of economic development.
I heard such an argument made by river guides on a recent trip down the Grand Canyon. They argued that while increased tourism unquestionably places great stresses on the environment, the same tourists, once exposed to such grandeur, are more likely to oppose proposals to develop, dam or clear cut such treasures. Thus, tourists may be the lesser of evils and easier to contain than the alternatives.
There are also chapters on the author's struggle between leaving her family roots in Los Angeles, with all the guilt and uncertainty that predictably creates, and struggling to understand the almost magical pull of the rural West. She writes about her introduction to traditions and a culture that view private property rights, politics, animal treatment, family loyalties and death in a manner that is radically different than the ones with which she is familiar.
Throughout the book are wonderful scenes and descriptions of her young son's introduction to a rural environment and the impact it has on his life.
The book is an excellent memoir about one woman's journey into an enviroment that is harsh, controversial, spectacular and, for an increasing number of people, the end of a long search for a special place that is as much about spirit as geography. A moving, honest, well-written book.