Review by Ed Quillen
Mountain Life – June 1995 – Colorado Central Magazine
A Wilder Life: Essays from Home
by Ken Wright
Published in 1995
by Kivakí Press
ISBN 1-882308-15-8
IN THIS COLLECTION of twenty-six essays by Durango writer Ken Wright, “wilder” refers to a category of people. “No word seems to encompass them although many words apply at different times, from ‘environmentalists’ to ‘rednecks’ to ‘Generation Xers’.”
According to Wright, they are “lovers of places, lovers of life, lovers of freedom,” but they’re “also fighters — defenders of the things and people they love, defenders of the ideals that fuel and guide their loves.”
Wright assumes his place among these “odd friends who don’t float the normal currents of society,” and shows us the world — ranging from our familiar Rockies to a honeymoon in the Okavango Delta of Africa — through the eyes of a wilder.
What do we see?
In “Ken’s Shortcuts,” there’s the bliss of wandering around back roads in an old pickup, no particular place to go and no estimated time of arrival anyway, relishing “the feel of wheel in hand and elbow hanging out the window” as he crosses “old neighborhoods … narrow valleys … forgotten passes,” with the delightful observation that “Driving will never be like walking, but when I drive … I want to feel like it took at least some time and effort to get somewhere.”
Another essay covers a related topic, one so politically incorrect that I’m surprised it appeared in print — the simple pleasures of lurching along such byways with a friend and a sixpack: “There is something about driving along backwoods roads … while in my truck I hold the wheel in one hand and a beer in another, occasionally sipping while listening to bluegrass or old country and western or just the sound of tires grinding gravel,” followed by a stop for cigars and admiration of the Milky Way above and the mesas, hills, and valleys below.
Considering the moral climate today, I’m surprised Wright didn’t insert a “Don’t try this at home” warning. But even so, he would undoubtedly affront many members of the ever more sanitized society of the Mountain West.
Wright’s essays are lyrical at times — perhaps too rhapsodic for a prosaic sort like me who never quite understood Annie Dillard’s appeal — but generally, he sticks to the ground, and offers some provocative speculations.
BEST AMONG THESE is “A Modest Proposal for the Interior West,” wherein he argues that a vast and expensive infrastructure should be dismantled so that people are free to live here at a human scale on the terms dictated by the landscape.
“So today we find the once-rural West trapped in a perpetual-motion machine: People are moving here in droves, and they are bringing with them their urban needs and expectations, and these people’s voting and buying power fuel ever more urban/suburban-style development, thus luring more of these people … Falling in love with the American West is like marrying someone with a terminal illness — the love is real and passionate and enriching, but you know the end is coming, too fast, and you have to watch the disease eat away at your lover’s health and beauty.”
Part of his solution: Keep the interior West “a challenging place to live” by limiting roads to what’s adequate for two-wheel drives in good weather. (Is it mere coincidence that, at the 1995 Headwaters Conference in Gunnison, a state economist noted that Colorado’s healthiest communities are its most isolated?)
Much as I enjoyed this collection, I found it annoying at times. Why can’t any Western nature writer manage to avoid the obligatory journey into the bowels of slickrock country in Utah? Does the ghost of Edward Abbey smite all those who fail to write of such journeys?
And why does he have to mention one of my favorite spots from my Kremmling days, Yarmony Mountain? Even worse, he goes into some detail about getting there. Doesn’t he know that we writers exploit the West as effectively, and perhaps cause even more lasting damage, than the jumbo drill, the steam shovel, and the gang saw — all combined — ever did?
Further, Wright often repeats that “Development is Forever.” It isn’t. Look around the forested slopes east of Leadville, rich in wildlife today, and compare the scene to photos taken a century ago — an industrial zone with scores of operating mines but no trees, and the wildlife confined to union warfare and Saturday night brawls.
His own observations contradict the claim that “Development is Forever.” He offers a compelling and detailed account of a canoe excursion in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and notes how one forest is recovering from its one-time use as an exclusive recreational enclave for timber barons.
He walks down old roads, abandoned for years, and “Without maintenance, the forest recovers on its own — lightning-struck trees fall across the roads, children of maples swarm up the roadsides, ferns and mosses and a remarkable variety of mushrooms coat the road surface. In another generation or two these roads will be barely visible, a memory.”
So development isn’t forever. It’s a phase. As mere mortals, we’re pretty arrogant if we think we can build anything that lasts forever. This made me want to board an old pickup, venture to Durango via back roads (Cochetopa-Los Pinos-Engineer seemed a good two-day travail), and get into an all-night beer-fueled argument with Ken Wright.
Which, of course, is precisely the response that good essays should provoke. A Wilder Life is a worthy companion that will sometimes have you shouting at the book. Moments later, you’ll be nodding, thinking “He’s right. I remember it that way, too.”
— Ed Quillen