Adios Amigos: Tales of Sustenance and Purification in the American West (review)

Page Stegner's collection of essays about western folklore and ecological conservation in the American West looks and sounds like something his father, Wallace Stegner, might have written: another Beyond the Hundredth Meridian (1954), perhaps, or an echo of The Sound of Mountain Water (1969). And although Stegner does at times tread disarmingly close to his father's work—repeating and reinforcing rather than amplifying and reinventing—time and again his voice resonates with a humor that is at once erudite and pithy, and decidedly Page Stegner.

Consider, for example, his first encounter with a river-rafting guide in July of 1981, the introduction to a Grand Canyon trip that catalyzes a lifelong passion. Initially Stegner is ambivalent about what is to come:

But then I stepped out of my car at Lee's Ferry and encountered up close and personal my first bona fide river guide, and oh, my Lord, what a Herculean figure that statuary cut, so lean and mean, so monumental, so heroic, six-pack abs and forearms like Westphalian hams, golden curls atop a soy sauce tan. He strode across that boat ramp in nothing but his wraparound shades, flip-flops and Patagonia Baggers, trailing a faded life jacket behind him with a Gerber River Shorty survival knife affixed to its shoulder pad, pausing now and then to gaze with complete nonchalance out across the roiling waters.

(xii)

One paragraph later, Stegner has decided what he wants to be when he grows up: "I found a suitably worn life jacket at a rummage sale and strapped a Gerber Shorty to the shoulder pad, and sallied forth to commence my career as an heroic, monumental, Herculean figure (minus the six-pack abs, I regret to say)" (xiii).

Or consider a moment when Stegner is recounting a rafting expedition down the Colorado River and notes that the journals of John Wesley Powell, the western geologist immortalized in Beyond the Hundredth Meridian, neglect to mention the Anasazi ruins high above the river at Nankoweap Canyon. The paragraphs prior neatly echo what his father might have written: smooth prose that both describes the beauty of the West and laments the damage wrought by increasing populations and unthinking politicians. Stegner continues, for a moment, in that vein, then slips again into his own signature bawdy humor:

Even though carbon-14 testing of figurines found in a number of archaeological sites indicates that the Grand Canyon was inhabited as far back as four thousand years ago, the Pueblo period of Anasazi culture (of which these granaries are a part) dates from AD 750 to about AD 1100. By 1150, most likely as a consequence of prolonged drought, Nankoweap, along with all other sites in the Grand Canyon, had been abandoned. Now it is one of the premier photo-op day hikes for all river trips and always invokes the same question from each sweat-drenched, heart-pounding hiker who has just made the long, steep climb from the river to inspect it. "I wonder why the effing Indians built it so damn far up."

(38–39)

Another trademark that separates the writing of Page Stegner from that of his father is his use of river rafting, hiking, and camping as tools to draw us through the various landscapes he intends to explore. From his first jocular inclinations toward rafting that appear in the preface of Adios Amigos to a final chapter titled "The Jewel of Colorado" that takes us to the remains of Glen Canyon's Lake Powell, Stegner is not just describing a landscape or pondering a loss; he is living it, experiencing it firsthand, and drawing us readers ever deeper into the beauty and the political mire of ecological conservationism.

And yet, despite his admirable ability to write with a unique blend of grace and bar room humor, Stegner keeps pulling us back to the ideals of his father. In a chapter titled "The Bright Edge of the...