Book Report: Blue Desert

61. Charles Bowden, Blue Desert (1986) (12/4/21)

I bought this book in Tucson in 1994 but had not read it until just now. Consisting of twelve short essays and fourteen mini-profiles distributed among three parts—"Beasts," "Players," and "Deserts"—it provides a deeply intelligent, unsentimental and yet invested view of the "Sunbelt" and its environs, specifically Bowden's home territory of Arizona, where he worked for years as a journalist. Throughout the book, Bowden comes back to the land, in all its harsh beauty, though he is also fascinated by the kaleidoscope that is humanity. 

The section on beasts focuses on several endangered animals: Mexican bats, pronghorn antelopes, desert tortoises, and a native fish, the Yaqui topminnow. In his discussion of these creatures, he weaves in history and science, underscoring the ways in which the life of the planet—or of this patch of the planet—falls victim to the capriciousness and greed of humankind, even as many seek to protect and preserve.

In "Players," Bowden profiles four individuals: a man of Mexican background whose people came to the area around Tucson when that city was just a scrape in the sand; a Papago Indian whose ancestral land near Phoenix is being scrutinized by developers; Dave Foreman, founder of EarthFirst!, who shows up at Glen Canyon Dam to protest a visit by then–interior secretary James Watt; and a "company man" living in the dying copper town of Ajo. 

Finally, "Deserts" describes life and death as it can play out in the Sonora Desert. Human life and death, that is. In two of those pieces, Bowden walks across the land, reconstructing the journeys of ancient inhabitants, the Monhollan, and of modern-day mojados, or "wetbacks." The last essay reminded me of Luis Alberto Urrea's The Devil's Highway, and it didn't surprise me to learn (in an NPR tribute to Bowden upon his death in 2014) that the two men were friends. Bowden was also part of Ed Abbey's circle. He went on to become known for his scrutiny of drug cartels and the thorny issue of cross-border immigration.

In the chapter on antelopes, Bowden describes accompanying researchers who are trying to learn more about a very small herd that lives on Air Force lands. The essay ends thus, when they have succeeded in netting one of the animals via helicopter:

Huge spikes drink the beast's blood, a thermometer is rammed up its ass and a white radio collar snapped on the neck. The antelope is blindfolded to calm it and this spares us the wild look in its eyes. The animal writhes and the body temperature, normally 98 or 99, jumps to 104. We all jockey in and touch. We cannot resist.
     There are four or five billion of us, a couple of dozen of them. Everyone must touch.
     For years there has been speculation that the pronghorn are mute. They are not.
     A deep rattling moan escapes the animal and the warm desert air suddenly chills. No one can mistake the message of the sound, the grieving powering it.
     A kind of collision between cultures has taken place. Huge machines that fly at eighty miles per hour and drink more than seventy gallons an hour have snared an organism that has raced at fifty miles per hour for millions of years.
     The sound keeps coming and coming. We have violated some deep important thing and we cannot doubt this fact.

There is a sad and clear-eyed perspective to these essays. Here is another extract, this from one of the "Deserts" pieces:

The past, the wilderness, the sting of thirst, the grip of hunger have become an exotic in my world and in my life. I think back to Secretary James Watt at Glen Canyon Dam so easily celebrating the big cement block choking the river. And Dave Foreman of EarthFirst! trying by language to conjure up a world that has dropped below our horizons.
     "We have the vision." I hear Foreman roaring. "We have the daring. . . . We will see Glen Canyon alive and free, flowing and green in our lifetimes because we can do what we will to do.
     "The other thing is we've got the ethic, we've got the courage
. . . to put our bodies between what we love and the agents of destruction."
     No we don't.
     We are beginning to realize what we have lost with our wonderful inventions and our monstrous new powers. We are becoming more and more aware that our civilization destroys the foundations that support it by devouring the earth and the things of the earth.
     But we don't have the courage to back away, to stop, to restrain ourselves. I know I don't.
     It is just that finally I know, I truly know, that my world cannot last and this dry, hard ground around my camp can and will. So I visit the past to taste the deeper present and prospect the inevitable future.

I don't know if I will seek out more of Bowden's books—I already have too many waiting for me!—but I am glad (if that's the right word for such a sober book) I read this one.