The need to understand the landscape here goes far beyond a passing cerebral appreciation for the flora and fauna; you could run out of gas and water and have your eye sockets pecked out and tires stolen by vultures before the next truck comes along. Take a look at the fantastic account of the Donner party's 'cut-off' route through the east end of the Great Basin in 'Trial by Hunger' for an idea of what I mean. (To summarize: ignorance of Great Basin geography means snacking on each other's femurs by winter.)
"The making of such a map is an interesting process . . . fixing on a small sheet the results of laborious travel over waste regions, and giving to them an enduring place on the world's surface."
-- John Fremont, explorer of the Great Basin, mid 1800's
In William Fox's book 'Mapping the Empty: Eight Artists and Nevada', he addresses 'one of the oldest dichotomies in history, the tension between the organic shape of the natural world and the mathematical grid'. In the American West this can be charted beginning with Fremont's original maps of the area to Google Earth's view of straight roads bisecting and bending around landforms in the basin and range. Artists like Andy Goldsworthy have taken a different approach by constructing things out of the natural world that have some innate geometry to them that wasn't there before.
I think we should be very wary trusting current culture with our experience of anything, especially when it comes to that weirdo art crowd. Unfortunately we can't all be out all the time seeing all of this amazing stuff for ourselves, and need to trust something to show it to us, or at least tell us how we can make money from it. Catherine Norman (yes, we are related) in her thesis on Goldsworthy's earthworks notes that:
" . . . we can see a prevalence of the preconceived image of nature: a postcard of the Grand Canyon, perhaps, some view of sweeping land that our society claims is beautiful . . . interstate highways alert us with signs when we need to pull over for a scenic view. Culture has become in this way the mediator of nature, controlling our views of landscape and detaching us from actual experience with nature"
Land and life are intertwined -- we've relied upon it for sustenance and safety for millions of years, and it is only recently that we have put so many intermediaries between us that, unless you are one of the lucky few, it is outside our experience. The mediators we use can intentionally or otherwise put the human geometry on landscapes: often times photography and writing are the principle culprits. Historically, this translated experience has run the gamut of intended effect from its authors: over the last three hundred years alone the American West has been symbolized as the playground of the devil (early Puritan settlers), the divine (Muir, Thoreau), an adversary to be overcome (Remington, Hemmingway), a co-author in the human experience (Goldsworthy, Wright), and an entity possessing of it own value and rights (Adams, O'Keefe).
In rural Nevada it is impossible not to have some aspect of nature impact daily life. The consequences of ignorance usually aren't cannibalistic in the Donner-Party-Lets-Have-Hank-As-The-Appetizer sort of way, but dire nonetheless. Many of the professions out here depend on nature: ranching, farming, tourism and mining to name a few. The problem is that nature doesn't use the precise boundaries and words that we like to use, so we have to figure out how to translate between the wilderness and our needs. The town of Baker, NV, just outside Great Basin National Park is a case study in the 'tension between the organic shape of the natural world and the mathematical grid'.
To wit: the US Postal service is facing the need to cut costs, and proposes to do so by eliminating select rural post offices like the one in Baker, as well as the one in Garrison, UT, 10 miles away. That would mean that residents, some who rely on mail for medications and critical ranch supplies would have to drive 60 miles over two mountain passes to Ely, NV. Why not just consolidate the two post offices instead of eliminating both? Well, there happens to be a state line between them. Each post office is in a different administrative district, apparently neither of which is aware the other exists and coordination between the two is difficult at best. The imaginary, arbitrary, and very straight line down the middle of the Snake Valley separating Utah from Nevada seems not only not useful but it actively undermines the welfare of residents on both sides of it. (Yet at my house in Salt Lake the USPS dutifully delivers ads for plasma screen TV's 6 days a week to my front door, and there are 4 post offices within 10 miles).
We can't talk about abstract geometric boundaries and people without addressing water rights. Underground aquifers are like the US Olympic Hockey team: we all share them whether we like it or not, and our life depends on their health. My grandfather was a lifelong rancher in Waco, TX and I have clear memories of lively kitchen table discussions about water issues: who's got it, who wants it, who's wrecking it, and who's stealing it.
In this chunk of Nevada, the Southern Nevada Water Authority has been buying ranches in Spring Valley on the west side of the National Park and planning to tap the aquifer to supply Las Vegas with more golf courses and heart-shaped swimming pools 200 miles to the south. Yet this aquifer, like all good nature, doesn't care about property lines. It is intimately related to the ecosystem of GBNP as well as the water in the neighboring valleys which is critical to the farmers, ranchers, and anything else alive there. (The question of Las Vegas creating more swimming pools and golf courses is another discussion altogether, one I think would be solved most expeditiously by relocating the Nevada Nuclear Test Range into the lobby of the Luxor Casino. But I digress.)
The solution lies, I think, in how Fremont originally mapped and named the Great Basin. He describes its boundaries hydrologically, not politico-geographically. ("[the area] containing many lakes . . . with their own system of rivers and creeks, and which have no connection with the ocean or the great rivers which flow into it.") In addition, William Fox noted that:
"Just as each audience in the East [in the late 1800's] had its own distinct uses for the art of the great western expeditions -- from scientists requiring accuracy to developers seeking the reassuringly picturesque -- so the artists produced works in response to those needs."
Not that all of our state and county boundaries should be altered to reflect aquifers or even communities of people, but perhaps those nutty artists in our midst can use the 'organic shape of the natural world' to provide a better future for the American West.
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