In Condor Country by David Darlington (review)

82 Western American Literature onous. as we often provincial Americans suppose. They’re dotted with settle­ ments of Ukranians, Icelanders, Mennonites, Hutterites, even with a colony of black migrants from Oklahoma. In exchange for the openness of our initial blush, Mark Abley enlightens us. The writer “rediscovers” the region, poking into its nooks and crannies, passing on tidbits of history, and ushering into print people who have made their peace with themselves and the land. Abley’s personal approach to the landscape takes certain risks. The travels lack coherence, the encounters are episodic; at times we wonder if the author is more interested in himself than in his subject. But rarely are such features drawbacks here. If much of Beyond Forget is about the author, Abley has much to offer in this department. “I grew up lost,” he admits, a statement less self-indulgent than factual when it comes to footloose North Americans. Yet “Departure is the mother of hope,” and Abley turns his loneliness to advantage. He assuages it with the observations of a man made keen by hunger. PETER WILD Tucson, Arizona In Condor Country. By David Darlington. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Com­ pany, 1987. 242 pages, $15.95.) When I was a boy, mydad would occasionally return from a dayof gather­ ing oil samples in the desert west of Bakersfield and tell me he had glimpsed a condor. He said they were huge and that they never moved their wings. I never saw one myself, but their presence was an important part of growing up there. We knew that the great birds were there, just over the horizon, links to primordial wilderness, and we felt that their continued existence somehow protected us from becoming too civilized. Now they are gone and so is part of us. In fact, we are all condors—a species endangered by the continuing deterioration of our habitat. That is the premise of this compelling book, and author David Darlington’s exploration of a remote region of California—the hills and canyons bordering the southwest corner of the Great Central Valley —offers a genuine sense of the place, as well as revelations of the human insensitivity and selfishness that doomed the great scavengers. Darlington explores condor country with 80-year-old cattle rancher Eben McMillan, a self-taught environmentalist who might have been invented by Edward Abbey. He is feisty, smart and pragmatic, conditioned by the tough Carrizo Plains and Coast Ranges where he grew up. He does not fool himself, nor ishe easily fooled. On habitat alteration, for example, he observes: “Look­ ing around here today, you’d probably say ninety-nine percent of the ‘native’ Reviews 83 vegetation was wild oats or foxtail. But there’s not a native plant in sight right now. The old government surveyors used to see antelope and elk through here, and the vegetation was always bunch grass. It was here until around 1915 or 1925, and it just disappeared. As a young fella I saw this happen.” On wildlife: “We don’t understand animal reactions because we’re civil­ ized—we’ve lost our feeling for those emotions. . . . The way to take care of wildlife is to take care of the environment.” Darlington himself writes powerfully of the environment. Abjuring the captive-bird program that recently removed the last living condors from the wild, he urges in the tradition of Aldo Leopold that land be viewed as a com­ munity—“. . . an animal is first and foremost an expression of its ecosystem; removed from its natural habitat, it literally ceases to be that animal—it is merely a collection of genes in a cage.” Darlington offers strong evidence supporting his premise, concluding, “By extension and no great stretch of the imagination, the entire planet is condor country.” This is an important book. GERALD HASLAM Sonoma State University The Vanishing White Man. By Stan Steiner. (Norman: University of Okla­ homa Press, 1987. 322 pages, $10.95.) Randolph Bourne, a political theorist, earlier this century excoriated American and European militarism with the sarcastic chant, “War is the health of the state.” Bourne alluded to the fact that although Americans adamantly believe themselves the most moral and peaceful of people...