Living Water by David Cavagnaro (review)

74 Western American Literature Living Water. Photographs by Ernest Braun, Words by David Cavagnaro. (Palo Alto: American West Publishing Company, 1971. 184 pages, 97 color photographs, $13.95.) The various sections of this book give us the basis of its structure: “In the Beginning” ; “Among the Peaks” ; “ Beside the Stream” ; “In the Meadow”; “Down the River”. In the preface the authors characterize the book as “a statement of how we view the delicate, living fabric which envelops our globe, and how we view ourselves as human beings.” The ‘I’ of the narrator is vague enough to be both men, and to be the reader, also, following water from life at its source down to the river and civilization. Thus, high in the mountains the glaciers stir “a part of me beyond memory which knew about [them].” The narrative becomes a parenthesis for information on glaciers, on life in various zones, all simplified but with­ out distortion. The warmth of a sleeping bag leads the narrator to thoughts of the alliance of heat and moisture — fire and water — in the metabolic process. The sensations of a furious winter storm provide an opportunity to explain the origin and activity of glaciers. Though water is the source and symbol of life, the book concentrates on graphic, minutely detailed accounts of that life. A pika at work amid minute alpine flowers; the teeming life within a fallen tree trunk. “The meadow, for me, is a symbol of all relationships in nature, the story of ecology in a richly bound edition.” Ecology. This passage reminds us that only recently the term had a precise denotation until necessity forced upon it the connotations of a battle cry. The authors’ insistence on the multiplicity and diversity of forms of life suggests that ancient principle of plenitude: Nature’s (or the Creator’s) abhorrence of a vacuum, with the resultant fullness of created life. However, it is man who creates the tension in the narrative. Man, civilized and there­ fore alien. On the warmth of summer in the high country, “It may only seem so to us because we view the world from the peculiar place of being human.” The authors do not shout their thesis; concentration on the delicate intricacies of life emphasizes it. The final chapter, “Down the River”, de­ scribes the building of a dam, its disastrous effects on the life that had existed. The authors conclude, “We cannot find our total sustenance in the moun­ tains. What we can find, however, is our true source in the web of life.” If Cavagnaro’s words are effective (and affective), so, too, are Braun’s photos. Detailed, reflecting the timelessness of many of their subjects (one senses the patience involved with pained admiration), they fuse admirably with the text. There is detailed technical information on each photograph. Traditionally, a review ends with a summary sentence of evaluation: This book should be required but liesurely reading for all future developers of our environment; that is, for all of us. J o h n B o n i, Colorado State University ...