Crucible for Conservation: The Creation of Grand Teton National Park by Robert W. Righter (review)

162 Western American Literature pitfalls, this is analogous to a cowhand chasing a calf across sage-concealed arroyos and gopher holes. He’ll either catch the critter or have a memorable wreck. Ulph’s handling of these problems is deft: he neither polishes the cowboys nor denies his own intellect and the resultant combination rings true. This is a painstakingly honest version of the West. A lot of the savor of The Fiddleback comes from the juxtaposition of delicacy and roughness. The reader isled, not forced, to explore the relation of meaning and context in a way that leads to a fuller sense of what it is to be a person in a place, in this case a cowboy in Nevada. A capsule version of this contrast is found in the dedication: In keeping with subsequent non-conformities, I am making use of an inane rite by discharging a debt to the characters in this book whose identities I have appropriated without their knowledge. I am rendering you crazy bastards immortal! Hasta la vista. Ulph has recognized, as have others who incorporate a higher education with a love for hard work on the land, that the oft-remarked crudity of cowboy language doesn’t necessarily imply a corresponding crudeness of mind or emo­ tion. Cowboy jargon, in its context, issimply appropriate, while the uninitiated may find it as impenetrable, even nonsensical, as a Zen koan. Around a camp­ fire on a fall gather or in a wind-buffeted line camp, it is the way in which one speaks. The grandeur missing in published versions is evident when one is conscious of the loom ofunpeopled mountains, of the dark sweep of desert that seems to go on to the edge of the world. With the awesome spaces and myster­ ies of the West as backdrop, a certain humility in expression is richly justified. In the midst of all the verbiage that has been generated in search of the cowboy, this book stands out. While it acknowledges many literary debts, the substance of it comes from Ulph’s life and from the lives of the cowboys with whom he lived and worked. In it he provides, with irony, grace and humor, an equivalent of a lady homesteader’s answer to her child’s naive question: “Ma, do cowboys eat grass?” “No, dear. They’re human.” C. L. RAWLINS, Boulder, Wyoming Crucible for Conservation: The Creation of Grand Teton National Park. By Robert W. Righter. (Boulder: Colorado Associated University Press, 1982. 192 pages, $5.95.) “Beauty will not come at the call of a legislature,” Emerson wrote. “It will come, as always, unannounced, and spring up between the feet of brave and earnest men.” Reviews 163 Brave and earnest men are the heart of this history of Grand Teton National Park: Horace Albright, John D. and Laurance Rockefeller, Harold Ickes, persisting across a quarter-century in a project to preserve beauty which not only failed to come at the call of a legislature, but was repeatedly rejected by Congress, the State of Wyoming, and the loudest voices of Jackson Hole itself. Robert Righter tells the tale in thorough detail, and a combination of his­ torical objectivity mixed with deep approval for the Park tempers his narrative. Commencing with the inevitable summary of Wyoming prehistory and John Colter’s unfathomable travels, he frames the central story with a rough sketch of the development of the conservation ethic in America. The opening generalities are a bit cursory, but Righter gets into a smoother stride when he takes up the specifics of the Grand Teton story. The basic outline is com­ mon knowledge: In 1927 John D. Rockefeller, having been introduced to the Teton coun­ try by Horace Albright of the Park Service, undertook a bold program of purchasing ranches on the flatlands of Jackson Hole, to protect the foreground of the Teton Range and the annual migration route of the Yellowstone elk from development. Congress, true to Emerson’sprophecy, dallied for a dozen years without accepting Rockefeller’sgift offer. Finally, Franklin D. Roosevelt, urged by Interior Secretary Harold Ickes, proclaimed a National Monument to protect the area in 1943. The Wyoming Congressional delegation, true to...