Customer Reviews

Wind River Wilderness

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Ronald H. Chilcote, the editor, has combined the work of several photographers and writers. The result is a "coffee table" book of large size, glossy pages, and eye-catching appeal throughout. The photos are beautiful. There is hardly a photo in the entire book that is less pleasing than the others. It is heartening to know that a group of photographers within such a specialized area all have such excellent eyes for beauty and technical skill.

The author tells us at the outset that this is an environmentally conscious effort intended to help protect a fragile and treasured area. Indeed, it is well worth protecting. I am familiar with parts of the Wind River Range and this book touches on much more. Indeed, given Wyoming's record of putting business and development above environment, there is great reason for concern. At the moment, our nation is embarking on a program of developing independence from foreign oil and turning to alternative sources of energy. The Wind River area has great potential for exploitation: geothermal, hydro, wind and petroleum products. It is close to huge coal deposits where the production of electricity is already a great source of air pollution. Wyoming is already arguably the leading energy-producing state and great expansion is planned.

Wyoming is equally dedicated to exploiting its wildlife resources. Elk are fed artificially during the winter and the state does what it can to limit predators so that income from hunting can be maximized.

The text in the book is split into two parts. The first is a collection of essays on various aspects of the Wind River Mountain Range. This is followed by testimonials from individuals interested in conserving the quality of the area. Both parts are wonderfully illustrated with photographs.

As with any collection of authors, a reader will find some that they prefer and some that they don't. Much of the text is both informative and well written, although one or two fall short. Even though I have great respect for Gretel Ehrlich as a nature writer, I wish Mr. Chilcote had chosen a different piece to lead off this book than hers.

On the other hand, the message written by the late Otis Carney goes to the heart of understanding many of the issues this book addresses: Listen to his words.

"`You cannot sell the earth on which the people walk.' Crazy Horse is reputed to have said that. I think of him when I walk along the Green River. It meanders timelessly through the meadows on our ranch. `Oh, yes,' a great-grandson of Crazy Horse told me, `that was our ground, we Lakota people. Though it was distant from our ancestral lands, we often hunted and camped on the Green. We followed the buffalo there.' Obvious that they would - this area was then and to a degree still is a game paradise. At one time or another, many Indian nations were here: Shoshone, Arapaho, Ute, Cheyenne. So whose earth do I walk on now? It's a loop of river, perhaps eighty acres in size. When we first came to our ranch, forty-some years ago, we were all into productivity. Get rid of the damn willows on that loop and make it into an irrigated hay meadow, a product we could sell by stuffing it into our cows. So we went for it. With groaning diesel belly dumps, we cut away four feet of topsoil and leveled the place. You know what we found, four feet down? A large Indian camp, tepee rings, stone scraping tools, and, in the fire pits, sagebrush still green. How many centuries did it take to build up four feet of topsoil? What have we destroyed by selling this earth?

"Twenty-five years later, we let an oil company come in. Hell, we welcomed them. Again, something out of the earth to sell. A half-mile from the loop where the Indians camped, they hit a gas pocket so big it almost blew up the rig. We know the rest of the story. Sublette County, all these loops and mesas, is one of the greatest gas fields in the world. And of course we'll get that gas. Our nation needs it. Fuel our homes, our lifestyles, and our wars.

"But if progress or need or greed has forced us to sell this earth, perhaps we should remember Crazy Horse's warning. The past is not for sale and dare not be plundered.

"Mineral development, with wise and compassionate planning, can coexist with heritage, beauty, and wildlife. It's up to us, the inheritors, to hold the feet of our corporations and government to a new kind of green-sagebrush fire. The earth is nobody's bottom line to suffer from rapacious `get it all at once' industrial thinking. Restrict your methods of extraction, space out your earth holes, mitigate your damage by sequencing your gas hunting in new fields over a long period of time. And after you've pumped out and sold what you need, move on. We'll bury you under the topsoil of memory so that we, the people, can again have our sacred earth where we will forever walk."

Everyone reading this review has a stake in protecting the Wind River area; and each of us should be doing our part to advocate its protection. The area covered in this book includes both public and private land. Many of the book's contributors live and own land there. Certainly, the public land belongs to all of us. In many ways we all have an interest in the private land as well; we enjoy its beauty along with the rest and the private land contains the potential to degrade the entire area through development. There is a bit of a contradiction here. The residents who contributed to this book want to protect the land for themselves; most of the threat to them comes from their neighbors and their state government. For the rest of us, protecting the resource makes us both allies and competitors with those conservation minded residents. The fact remains, that if the developers and resource exploiters have their way, we all lose.

In some people's minds, few coffee-table books should ever get a top-rated review. However, the excellence of the photographs, the publishing quality, and the importance of the environmental message makes it impossible to give this book anything less.

I am quite awed by the magnitude if this project. It is a beautiful and moving tribute to that gorgeous wilderness and the thoughts of the people who speak to it are eloquent. The Red Desert pictures are a surprise to me. All the pictures speak for themselves and I only wish that the people who need and should see this magnificent book will. I do so hope that it will have the affect that everyone involved with it longs for. Congratulations to the editor, Ronald H. Chilcote, all the contributors and to the Laguna Wilderness Press for such a superb publication. It is a true work of art.