Canyon Interludes: Between White Water and Red Rock by Paul W. Rea (review)

326 WAL 33(3) Fa l l 1998 Edward Abbey Prize for Ecofiction for his novel Language in the Blood, Nelson paints intense word landscapes that can obscure or accent intimate human emotions: “The sky without distance stretched beyond his vision, and timeless . The colors and shapes— mountains, cliffs, foothills, mesas, valleys— were disguises for what was hidden deeper” (118). Whether he is describing a road trip into the region, an excursion into the backcountry, or human encounters in Ouray or Telluride, Nelson is adept at melding the natural and human landscapes to reveal deeply hidden dilemmas under the disguises. I would be hard-pressed to judge one story or another as best in this col­ lection, but I do have a favorite. “A Way of Dying” is the story of William Bryce Talbot, who has lived so long alone in the mountains that “he no longer thought of himself with a name” (83). He came (a century late) to search for gold, but what he has found is natural abundance, a perfect bal­ ance in life and death: “In the mountains, there was no distance except through air. He rested in the natural changes” (88). In other stories, Nelson’s characters seek to achieve or maintain a similar kind of natural balance. In “Toward the Sun,” Niemann, obsessed with running in the mountains, follows a herd of elk into the wild while in “The Spirit of Animals,” Cacky, an Indian woman, thwarts the men’s hunt for elk. Nelson’s characters try to match their own lives to the environment. They cannot always measure up: instead, they live in liminal space between intense experiences with the natural place and the ordinary, self-defeating realities of everyday life. In “One Turned Wild,” Marshall’s ambivalence about his commitment to a place he loves and his dead-end highway job coalesce in his attempt to befriend a wild dog that proves to be a danger to his family. In “The Actress,” a paralegal vacationing at Telluride enjoys a fantasy weekend, acting out the part assigned her by a generous but enig­ matic host, and contemplates his offer to stay and continue her role in a place where “the mountains are beautiful. The meadows in the high coun­ try are green, such a brilliant green” (52). I read these stories in my own Colorado setting near Bailey where the sound of encroaching bulldozers preparing the way for trophy homes far too close to our cozy cabin makes even more poignant these richly veined and carefully quarried stories. Canyon Interludes: Between White Water and Red Rock. By Paul W. Rea. Salt Lake City. Signature Books, 1996. 280 pages, $14-95. Reviewed by Verne H user Albuquerque Academy Thirteen essays, a dozen short interludes, and a final lone rhapsody con­ stitute Canyon Interludes, in which naturalist Paul W. Rea re-creates his hik­ Book reviews 327 ing and river running experiences in the Four Corners states. Against a philosophical background that gives meaning to his exploits on the shoul­ ders of the seasons, usually early spring, Rea takes us with him on his excur­ sions: floating segments of the Colorado, Dolores, Green, and San Juan rivers; or hiking Canyonlands, Grand Gulch, Havasu Canyon, and Zion. Either he enjoys antipodal rowing and empty-trail hiking, or spring break is the only time he’s free enough to explore wilderness, for most of his trips occur in the off-season, especially during March and April. He bears lots of inclement weather— snowstorms, wind blasts, sleet, rain, hail, cold, and heat— along with flies, gnats, and mosquitoes as he runs the rivers of the Colorado Plateau and Dinosaur National Monument and hikes spec­ tacular canyons in the region. He also endures rodent predation on his food supply and experiences close encounters with a mountain lion and with Anasazi spirits, both frightening and thrilling to him. Eliciting other spirits from his eclectic reading— those of Edward Abbey, John Burroughs, John C. Van Dyke, Nikos Kazantakis, Joseph Wood Krutch, D. H. Lawrence, Aldo Leopold, Thomas Merton, Everett Ruess, Paul Shepard, Wallace Stegner, Henry David Thoreau, and many more— he writes in their vein, or to put it another way...