American Places

[American Places] is a collection of thirteen essays, eight by [Wallace Stegner] and 4 by his son [Page Stegner] and one they wrote together. The essays celebrate the beauties of America, its varying geography and fascinating history. At the same time, they are heavily apologist, decrying the "conquering spirit" of the immigrants and their pillaging of the land and its resources. At first glance, Mr. Stegner and his son seem very similar in their attitude and environmentalism. I did note some interesting differences. Wallace writes in pictures. His prose is lyrical and evokes memories of place and a desire to see the things he has seen. While Wallace is a bit curmudgeonly and grumpily complains about the desecration of his beloved show more wildernesses, his love for the country shines through.
In the essay "The River", which made me want to embark on a river boat cruise immediately, Stegner writes:
Creator, destroyer, highway, sewer, the Mississippi is also a dream and a myth. For a time it imposed itself as a boundary across the flow of America's westward movement; briefly, it seemed a line at which settlement might stop, or at least pause. then almost at once its tributary the Missouri, and its tributary the Platte, led the nation on west. The Mississippi stayed put, generating its own north-south dream that was made immortal in [Huckleberry Finn]. Europe troubles the East Coast, Asia troubles the West, but nothing troubles the Mississippi.

Page writes a little less lyrically and a little more loosely, but still skillfully and with fondness for the American places. He discusses questions on both sides - whether it's possible to find a balance between growth and sustainability. In addition, he brings up some of the vital questions about the consequences of the social revolution of the 1960's and where it leaves things 25 years later.
In "Life Along the Fault Line", Page writes:
The concept of an individual's civil rights began to eclipse the assumption of community standards of behavior. Much of the new permissiveness was long overdue, and if it inspired people to go out and stump for everything from prison reform to nude sunbathing, the world was probably a better place for it. But for a few people it seems that public restraints were the only measure of personal restraint, and as the lid came off, some subtle, and finally not so subtle, changes began to occur... The "oppressed" had become the oppressors.
In "The Redwood Curtain", Page writes about the cultural divide he saw in Humboldt county. Loggers, whose life depends on the continuance of the lumber business and the younger "hipper" citizens who moved to the area to attend Humboldt University and liked it and stayed. It is the conflict between:
...growth is not necessarily progress, that less is often more... and the fact that (the loggers) are concerned with beans on the table and a roof over the kids' heads, not metaphysics.

"There It Is: Take It" had the most personal impact on me. This essay covers the history of the Los Angeles aqueduct and the federal government's (Teddy Roosevelt's) decision that "the interests of the few must unfortunately be disregarded in view of the infinitely greater interest to be served by putting the water in Los Angeles." The long term effects of this decision include the near emptying of Mono Lake, the drying up of springs and loss of native vegetation leading to dust storms, artesian wells drying and then the ground water at risk. The disregard of the needs of the Owens Valley and the long term effects on the entire ecosystem to feed the insatiable greed Los Angeles had for water was a subtext of my childhood. I grew up near Los Angeles. My water came on the aqueduct. Water conservation and drought, water rights and limitation of growth were subjects any kid over the age of 10 could discuss with some intelligence. "Save Mono Lake" bumper stickers were prevalent in the Bay area in the early 90's when we went to Berkeley for graduate school, and finally after more than a decade of litigation, Mono Lake and its tributaries were finally protected.
Here's the conflict. The water shouldn't have been given exclusively to Los Angeles. The resources of the Owens Valley and other parts of the west should not have been preempted by the needs of a population so far away that the consequences of their wanton use of water were invisible. I fully understand the objection of the citizens who sued to regain some of their water rights. On the other hand, those that lobby for the environment can do just as much damage, whether intentional or not. For an example, have a look at the water wars fought in Northern California over the last decade between farmers and environmentalists trying to save the delta smelt, a fish that will probably go extinct anyway. Is the loss of property and untold acres of fruit and nut trees worth it? And now that those orchards are gone and dry, and only empty, dusty fields remain, what will be the environmental impact of that? It's not zero.

Man, the great creator and destroyer of environments, is also part of what he creates or destroys, and rises and falls with it. In the West, water is life. From the very beginning, when people killed each other with shovels over the flow of a primitive ditch, down to the present, when cities kill each other for precisely the same reasons and with the same self-justifications, water is the basis for western growth, western industry, western communities.

As Page says, only a policy made with the wisdom of Solomon might be capable of both protecting rights of communities and conserving the country we love. show less