Books - March 2009
Reviewed This Month:• Otero Mesa |
Guest Review by Jeff Berg
Environment
Otero Mesa: Preserving America's Wildest Grassland
By Greg McNamee, Photographs by Stephen Strom and Stephen Capra
University of New Mexico Press
92 pages, cloth, $24.95
Last year, an unusually wet summer brought flourishing grasses, wildflowers, and a seldom-seen assortment of pesky bugs to life in southern New Mexico’s typically arid landscape. But this lush abundance always exists on Otero Mesa, the Chihuahuan Desert’s largest natural grasslands—and one of its last.
From Greg McNamee’s graceful, enlightening tribute to Otero Mesa, about 90 miles east of Las Cruces, a reader can learn of the beauty of the 1.2 million acres encompassed by the mesa, and the perils that threaten them. Long coveted by extraction industries, in particular those that pursue oil and natural gas, Otero Mesa has become a battleground between those interests and a refreshingly unusual group of allies: environmentalists, sports enthusiasts, and ranchers. Although some drilling leases have been granted for the mesa, a number of legal fights and citizen movements, along with efforts from political allies such as New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson (who wrote the book’s foreword), have temporarily halted any large-scale drilling. Hunting opportunities are abundant for those so inclined (and licensed).
Recently, it was discovered that Otero Mesa sits atop reserves of potable water that could potentially serve thousands of people for as long as 100 years. McNamee vividly describes the remarkable beauty of the area, which is home to a wide range of mammals, from bobcat to badger; is a resting or homing place for over 200 species of migrating and resident birds, including raptors such as the rare aplomado falcon; and is a shelter for the state’s largest herd of pronghorn antelope. He also offers a detailed history of the introduction of bipeds to the area, some factual, some surmised, all interesting and vivid. The hundreds of petroglyphs on Alamo Mountain attest to the presence of American Indians long ago; later, explorers tromped through on their way to places offering more obvious riches, and cattlemen have ranched on the mesa for generations.
Tucson-based McNamee’s writings have well prepared him for a subject as volatile as Otero Mesa. His previous books have covered topics including wolves, saguaro cactus (the tall, gangly ones that don’t grow in New Mexico), and the Gila River, part of which snakes its way through the state. The book is peppered with beautiful photos of the mesa and its wildlife, and sadder images of the destruction wrought by current oil-drilling operations. The result of a collaboration between Stephen Strom, a former research astronomer, and Stephen Capra, the executive director of the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance, the photos add substance to McNamee’s descriptions of a place that remains isolated from most of the world.
John Russell Bartlett, who surveyed the area in 1852, dismissed Otero Mesa: “As far as the eye can reach, stretches one unbroken waste, barren, wild, and worthless.” Attentive readers of this short but finely written and beautifully photographed book will not find it difficult to dismiss those comments.
Jeff Berg is a Las Cruces-based freelance writer who recycles everything—even publications that print his work.
Book Briefs by Ashley M. Biggers
Children
Hanging with Bats: Ecobats, Vampires, and Movie Stars
By Karen Taschek
University of New Mexico
96 pages, cloth, $16.95
From Dracula to Batman, the mythical lore of bats is often more familiar than the reality of this fascinating species. Hanging with Bats separates fact from fiction with detailed descriptions, photographs, and drawings of bats from the harmless—and huge—flying fox, to the oft-maligned vampire bat.
In this interesting and accessible book, you and your young reader will learn about the animals’ natural habitats and diets, and the physiological process of echolocation. Corrales resident and author Karen Taschek is an editor for World of Wonder, the children’s science series of UNM Press, of which this book is a volume. The first chapter describes Carlsbad Caverns National Park and its most famous residents, so be sure to pick up Hanging with Bats before your next trip there. For children age eight and older.
History
Before Santa Fe: Archaeology of the City Different
By Jason S. Shapiro
Museum of New Mexico
256 pages, cloth, $39.95
As the 400th anniversary of the City Different’s founding approaches, author Jason S. Shapiro cracks open the vaults of archaeological findings about Santa Fe’s history and summarizes them for the layperson. A Santa Fe resident and professor of archaeology at the College of Santa Fe and Santa Fe Community College, Shapiro explores 12,000 years of the city’s history through the tools, pottery, and adobe structures of the peoples who lived here, from the Paleoindians and Pueblo occupation to the Spanish Entrada.
He notes, in the introduction, “In a sense, archaeologists are storytellers. We take bits and pieces of what people have left behind and weave them into narratives that try to explain the ‘once upon a times’ of those who lived before us.” Although surprisingly accessible for a book of its kind, this book is still mostly intended for serious students of the history of the Southwest and those passionate about the region’s archaeology.
Graven Images
By Mike Sutin
Sunstone Press
96 pages, paper, $16.95
“To be a sane, plain-speaking poet in these absurd times ought to be okay. Ah! For the contemplative life,” notes author Mike Sutin in his preface to this volume of poems. Sutin, a commercial lawyer in Santa Fe, sandwiches his collection between two sections: “Goddess-Women,” in which he explores the feminine ability to give life; and “God-Men,” about men’s warrior instincts. At times, he lauds his subjects; at others, he disparages them. Throughout these introspective musings, Sutin consistently recognizes humanity’s frailty and propensity to cause its own destruction through self-love and self-deception. Graven Images won a 2008 New Mexico Book Award in the category of Poetry.
The Galisteo EscarpmentBy Douglas Atwill
Sunstone Press
148 pages, paper, $19.95
Douglas Atwill’s first novel reads much like his description of the steps of creating a plein-air painting: It begins with broad strokes, as the plot follows painter Neil Bronson from France to a teaching position at a Santa Fe art school, where he struggles to win over the students. Then Atwill fills in fine details: Bronson’s friendships and romances, his struggle to pursue landscape painting against the art world’s preference for abstraction, and his ever-growing love for the multicolored mesas of Galisteo. Atwill presents this intimate view of an artist’s life as only another artist can.
Working out of his studio on Canyon Road in Santa Fe, Atwill paints acrylics of escarpments—including the image of Galisteo that graces the book’s cover—and the lush wildflower patches of his backyard garden. The Galisteo Escarpment was a 2008 New Mexico Book Award finalist.
History
Patterns of Exchange: Navajo Weavers and Traders
By Teresa J. Wilkins
University of Oklahoma Press
231 pages, cloth, $34.95
Teresa J. Wilkins traces the ties between late-19th-century merchants like John Lorenzo Hubbell and the Navajo weavers with whom he traded. She avoids mutually exclusive categorizations of the groups as good or evil, instead investigating how their cultures adapted to each other. As becomes clear throughout Patterns of Exchange, this relationship has been a guiding force in the styles of the Navajo weavings still being crafted today. Academic in approach and tone—Wilkins is an associate professor of anthropology at the University of New Mexico in Gallup—the book is nonetheless an engaging look at the symbiotic relationship between the trading posts and the Navajo. Patterns of Exchange earned a 2008 New Mexico Book Award for Best Multicultural Subject.
The Road from La CuevaBy Sheila Ortego
Sunstone Press
144 pages, cloth, $26.95
The fire in the marriage of protagonist Ana Howland has gone out—or was it ever there in the first place? At the novel’s start, Ana begins to feel the burning pangs of suffocation caused by her controlling husband, but she hasn’t yet found the strength to escape, and dreads the perilous trip down the muddy, twisting road to her home in the small northern New Mexican village of La Cueva. But throughout the course of this novel, the same road that has led her to despair is also her lifeline. In this story of self-discovery, author Sheila Ortego, who is the president of Santa Fe Community College, gently and artistically probes the heartbreaks and triumphs along one woman’s journey to independence. The Road from La Cueva was honored as the Best Book from a First-Time Author at the 2008 New Mexico Book Awards.
Outdoors
¡Gila Libre!: New Mexico's Last Wild River
By M.H. Salmon
Unviersity of New Mexico Press
127 pages, paper, $19.95
¡Gila Libre! relates the unlikely history of the geographic anomaly that is southwestern New Mexico’s Gila River—which, as author and former East Coaster M. H. Salmon describes his first sight of it, is really more of a stream—and the ecologically diverse wilderness surrounding it. Of course, the river’s history has been shaped inextricably by the region’s inhabitants, from the mounted Apache warriors and rough-and-tumble mountain men of the past to the rapacious developers of today. The book details each group’s influence on the region, and, in its only attempt at projecting the river’s future, takes particular issue with the development plans of a federal water project that threatened the Gila’s status as New Mexico’s last remaining wild (i.e., unchanneled) river. A former forester and avid fisherman who now lives in Silver City, Salmon provides a glimpse of his connection to the river in a chapter devoted to his family’s recreational adventures fishing it, and watching birds along its banks. This is a conversational read.
Children
A Summer's Trade: Shíigo Na’iini’
By Deborah W. Trotter, Illustrated by Irving Toddy, Diné Translation by Lorraine Begay Manavi
Salina Bookshelf
32 pages, cloth, $17.95
In this endearing tale, Tony, a young Navajo boy, spends his summers working in a Gallup trading post, saving money to buy a leather saddle. When Tony’s uncle breaks his leg and his grandmother sells her most beloved possession, a turquoise bracelet she’s worn since childhood, Tony must chose between helping his family and buying the saddle. Author Deborah W. Trotter’s writing has a gentle dignity, and expresses a devotion to community that rings true throughout this tale. The rich colors and details of the dramatic images by award-winning Navajo illustrator Irving Toddy perfectly complement the story, and the book is bilingual: The story is told in Diné as well. Recommended for children ages 7 to 10.
History
Pueblos, Spaniards, and the Kingdom of New Mexico
By John L. Kessell
University of Oklahoma Press
232 pages, cloth, $24.95
In the first narrative history of this time period, author John L. Kessell sets aside stereotypes of the Native American Eden that many presume to have existed in New Mexico before the arrival of the Spanish, as well as the legends of Spanish explorers’ cruelty to those natives, to create a balanced picture of the tenuous relationships between these groups. Kessell focuses on the groups’ similarities, in particular the shared poverty that led each to increasingly rely on the other. In addition to documenting the lives of such leaders as conquistador Don Juan de Oñate, he weaves in illuminating narratives of colonists, traders, and Indian partisans. This is an engaging book for those seeking fresh insights about the period leading up to the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, and the interdependent groups whose relationship shaped the culture of present-day New Mexico. Kessell, professor emeritus of history at the University of New Mexico, specializes in the Spanish colonial period and has written several books about the era, including Spain in the Southwest: A Narrative History of Colonial New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, and California.
