At Pyramid Lake by Bernard Mergen (review)

Situated not far from Reno, Pyramid Lake—the remnant of an ancient glacial lake called Lahontan—is a surreal oasis on the western edge of the Great Basin, a desert cousin to the alpine beauty of Lake Tahoe. In At Pyramid Lake, Bernard Mergen, professor emeritus of American studies at George Washington University, provides a comprehensive, sometimes personal, and always impassioned examination of this peculiar body of water, which derives its name from the large, 360-foot pyramidal limestone formation on one of its islands.

Mergen opens with an account of the Indians of the lake and proceeds in a roughly chronological direction, covering the arrival of white settlers into the area, water politics, conflicts involving multiple government agencies (both state and federal), environmental issues, media depictions of the lake, theatrics, and mysticism. Throughout, he is a thoughtful but passionate defender of the lake. On the question of the usage of water from the Truckee River, which feeds into Pyramid Lake, Mergen clearly favors the lake rather than the farmers, ranchers, and other interests in the nearby towns of Fernley and Fallon, which also rely on the water. Similarly, he depicts the lake’s Indians (Kuyuidokado, or “cui-ui eaters,” after a species of fish native to the lake) as protagonists in the lake’s history, management, and meaning: “The people and the fish are inextricable,” Mergen writes (9).

At Pyramid Lake is very much a Nevadan book (Mergen lived at the lake growing up), and the emotional and intellectual thread running through the text puts it in the same family as other Nevada books like Wilbur Shepperson’s East of Eden, West of Zion or perhaps even Frank Bergon’s Wild Game—books that have a deep affinity for the place but are tempered and deepened by a wry sense of humor and a hardscrabble sentimentality. For this reason portions of the book that might have dragged—the bits on the conflicts between the Bureau of Land Management and various other government agencies, for example—instead become subtly funny parables about misguided ambition, greed, and the consequences of bureaucracy.

But Mergen is at his best when he’s reflecting on the lake’s ineffable aspects, most notably in the later chapters, where he discusses artistic and spiritual engagement with the lake, including a powerful story in the epilogue told to journalist Frank McCulloch by an elderly Paiute man called Jigger Bob. Mergen’s coverage of the work of Walter Van Tilburg Clark, Idah Meacham Strobridge, Robert Dawson, and other artists is particularly effective, as is his chapter-long discussion of The Misfits, which he argues is “the great film about the myths of the West that have shaped many of the interpretations of Pyramid Lake” (244). Mergen writes in the epilogue that he “cannot claim to have found the meaning of Pyramid Lake” (260), but his book certainly can lay claim to providing the deepest and most thorough treatment ever of this liquid and mercurial jewel in the western desert.