Adios Amigos: Tales of Sustenance and Purification in the American West, by Page Stegner, $24. Ever since Edward Abbey wrote “Desert Solitaire,” everybody who visits the rivers and canyonlands of the Southwest wants to put down the experience on paper. There are too many second-rate books filled with inadequate descriptions, thoughts on river running as religious experience and pleas for everybody else to stay away.
And then there is Page Stegner. He’s generally paired with his father in introductions, but since he is nearing 70, Stegner probably feels it’s time to dispense with that. (To his credit, he refers to his father not by name but as “my old man.”) More important, Stegner is a respected environmental writer in his own right, and “Adios Amigos” shows why.
This is a series of essays, several of them previously published, about Stegner’s experiences on the rivers of the Southwest — the Colorado, Dolores, Owyhee and others. They combine history and observations with the joy and sheer terror of river running, but there are also snatches of dry humor and a little philosophy.
The funniest of the lot is “Deep Ecology,” in which Stegner accompanies a group of environmental studies students down the Colorado. The group almost doesn’t launch when the students complain of the “nutritional adequacy” of the meals planned. They want to stop off in Bluff, Utah, to buy tofu. When Stegner tells them they can get protein from the beans he’s preparing, a woman he calls the “food Nazi” reads the label and complains the beans are cooked with pork. Instead of eating, she sits in the bushes and smokes.
Although they’ve read all the environmental books and are in love with the outdoors, they are a bust as campers. One refuses to wash dishes because he disapproves of the soap. Another objects to the portable toilets. And even after a group of drunken Indians litters a campsite, the group refers to Indians as the “original environmentalists.”
Of course, by the end, they are all a little wiser and less haughty — and happy to follow Stegner to his favorite restaurant for Navajo tacos.
Travels in the Greater Yellowstone, by Jack Turner, $25.95. “Greater Yellowstone has become a battleground that in the years to come will make the conflict over drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge seem like child’s play,” writes Jack Turner in “Travels in Greater Yellowstone.” Greater Yellowstone, he explains, is some 18 million acres, of which Yellowstone National Park is just 12 percent.
For the park’s ecosystem to remain viable, a much larger area is necessary, an area that is threatened with real estate and energy development, climate change and an ignorance of science. Only 18 percent of Americans believe evolution is “definitely true,” the author says.
In a dozen essays, Turner, a University of Colorado graduate who lives in Grand Teton National Park, takes readers on personal trips through the Greater Yellowstone area, its mountains and rivers. He writes about the solitude of the endless white winter near Jackson and the noise of a meeting between pro- and anti-wolf forces in Dubois.
In a piece on Christmas in Yellowstone, he tells of the tourists who complain of lack of television and Internet access. His solution to Yellowstone’s problems: “Close the park every year for six months. Every critter and chunk of land deserves a rest.”
The essays are controversial, but part observation, part history, part rant, they all are worth reading.
Backroads & Byways of Colorado: Drives, Day Trips & Weekend Excursions, by John Daters and Drea Knufken, $16.95. It’s great to read about forays down rivers and to mountain peaks, but most of us take more reasonable journeys, just the sort of treks included in “Backroads & Byways of Colorado.”
The book is a series of road trips, a dozen of them, such as the 131-mile Gold Belt Tour that takes in the Cripple Creek mining district, Royal Gorge and Phantom Canyon. There are trips over Mount Evans and Trail Ridge Road and even Mesa Verde.
The authors write extensively about each trip, including number of miles and the amount of time it takes to drive each route. There is information on history, tourist sites and wildlife, and long lists of where to stay and eat. This is no once-over-lightly list of Colorado attractions but a comprehensive guide to some of the state’s more popular destinations. And you can see them all from your car.
Sandra Dallas is a Denver novelist who writes a regular column on new regional nonfiction releases.
