Into The West – part i.

[note: all photos are © 2008 Hart and Jayne Williams.]

The West in all its cluttered, rapine glory.

The West and I are so intertwined that I cannot speak of one without the other. I have lived my entire life in the West, save for two summers in Sudbury, Massachusetts and New Milford, Connecticut. Having just returned from trucking goods along the legendary Santa Fe to Oregon Trail (the fictional, ahistorical alternative route to the fictional, ahistorical Laramie, Wyoming to Santa Fe, New Mexico ‘trail’ that Jimmy Stewart took in 1955’s “The Man From Laramie”), it is apparent that the West is changing in a new and ugly direction, or, perhaps, the punchline to a long American expansion based on false premises is about to snap out with a giant exclamation point.

When you grow up in the mythic places of the SUV’s — and sometimes I think that every damned place I ever lived has been turned into an SUV by an asian auto company — you learn two myths, both of which are pet peeves to the contemplative Westerner:

1. That cowboys were the knights errant of a magical land of desolation, and that John Wayne played Amfortas, keeper of the Grail.

2. That rugged individuality and a laconic spirit made Gary Cooper its Parsifal.

This is sheerest bullshit. The West, as Wallace Stegner noted, has been characterized by the domination of large corporations, and Eastern landholders. Not by ‘rugged individualists.’ That’s only for the movies.

… we find Stegner exposing the myth of America’s west as a land of golden opportunity and fearless cowboys. It is a theme we find in many of his novels, along with a passionate appreciation of the western landscape. Indeed, Stegner’s most magnificent writing can be found in his descriptions of the mountain peaks, deep canyons, winding ravines, and vast stretches of plain and prairie. (Angle of Repose reading group guide, author unknown.)

In 1931, my grandfather, working as a cowboy in the depths of the Great Depression, was thrown by his horse into a barbed-wire fence, and died of infection from the cuts a few days later. THAT is the reality of cowboy life.

He died to feed an Eastern hunger for beef that created the great cattle drives to the railheads, Abilene, Ellsworth, Dodge City, and others on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe main line. Beef prices dictated by the great commodities traders of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, and brought to market on their railroads, like the Union Pacific, for which my maternal grandfather worked his entire life, and for which my father once set and put out fires for the steam engine boilers, and later replaced generator brushes in the diesel engines that replaced them.

My adoptive father was a Forest Service engineer, and surveyed, planned and oversaw the construction of National Forest roads, mostly so that lumber could be clearcut to feed the maw of the great construction machinery of the East coast. His grandfather had been a buffalo hunter on the AT&SF railroad, then took the job of marshal of railhead Ellsworth, Kansas (Bat Masterson had been his predecessor) and retired, unshot, in Ellsworth, long after “hell on wheels” had moved west to Dodge City and Marshal Dillon and Chester and Doc and Kitty tamed evil and sold Jello.

The West is, and remains, a third-world country within the US, with 85% of its land locked up by the Federal Government, and another 5% by Indian reservations, state parks and state lands.

The Official U.S. Atlas wall map (click to order)

Look at a map of the Western United States,  and think to yourself: Only 10% of this is private property. Only 10% of this desert — which used to be CALLED “The Great American Desert” in textbooks up through the early 20th Century   with an average annual rainfall of about 14 inches, and most of that in snow — only TEN PERCENT can be inhabited, assuming that there’s enough water to live.

The principal industries are all extractive, including tourism, which depends on extracting tourist dollars from increasingly skinny wallets.

But tell that to the McMansion Invasion.

And here …

And here …

Which leads to this …

The proliferation of housing in Santa Fe and Albuquerque is nothing short of astonishing. Especially considering that “industry” hasn’t risen in any sort of parallel manner.

Every back road (and I only take back roads in the West if I can help it) was filled with new construction, generally McMansions — upper-middle class to upper-class dwellings — encroaching on the increasingly scant farm and ranch lands. Worse, as with Los Angeles and Orange counties, the development invariably takes out the BEST arable lands for housing. So, the balance is tipping rapidly, each development takes hundreds of acres of food producing land out of production, and each family in that development requires THOUSANDS of acres of food production. (Something like 660 acres’ annual production for each person’s ‘forage’ in each one of those new houses, but don’t quote me on that.)

[Note: Few farms and ranches in Santa Fe were subject to development, but the photos of development are symptomatic of what's happening all over the West. But ranch and farm land is being converted at an accelerating rate in locales such as Grand Junction, Colorado, Kalispell, Montana, Twin Falls, Idaho, Star Valley, Wyoming, etc.]

In several places, you realized that these HAD to be second and vacation homes. There wasn’t sufficient industry (other than some desultory ranching) to support the glut of homes. These were far suburban commutes, at best, and retirement/vacation homes at worse and most likely.

The entire South End of Santa Fe has been overrun by housing development — even beyond what it had been before. The Turquoise Trail and the Galisteo Road were filled with expensive custom homes, hiding in the piñon and cholla cactus.

The (walking-stick) cholla cactus, once as much the signature of Santa Fe, New Mexico as the saguaro cactus was for Phoenix and Tucson, Arizona — and the whole West: the saguaro cactus is ubiquitous in Western souvenir iconography as are wagon trains and cowboys and indians and coyotes — is now all but exterminated within the city limits, but still prevalent in the remaining undeveloped areas around town. As the West slowly overfills with permanent Touristas. You can get a great bagel virtually anywhere in Santa Fe, but a good chilé rellino is tougher and tougher to find.

cholla, foreground; piñon pine, background; sagebrush and chamisa between

Albuquerque is rapidly turning into one long strip of interconnected suburbs. Outside of Grand Junction, Colorado, McMansions go up in the farm fields, near private airstrips. It is Sedonification, Aspenization, Californication (there used to be a Santa Fe billboard, circa 1972. on I-25 as you headed south to Albuquerque pleading “Don’t Californicate New Mexico! The billboard is long gone, as is the sentiment.). It is Missoulafication, Vailifying, and Pagosatization over-development: take the old Western rural assemblage of buildings, with a dozen gas-fired vehicles in a neat ghetto somewhere among them, and substitute a custom “ranch” house for every broken-down 1946 Buick and a strip-mall for every hay-barn.

Or, as you can see in the “Pagosa Fairy Ring” you strangle the central town with an encirclement of resort and golf communities, gated and exclusive, and McMansions for celebrities seeking bucolic privacy. Sun Valley, Idaho, and the Bitterroot Valley, Montana are the most prominent examples. See Hunter S. Thompson’s writings on the changes in Vail, Colorado over the years.

The Ten percent or less of the West that can be legally inhabited West of the front range of the Rockies is rapidly over-filling, and the water is stretched ever-thinner. Worse, we have entire cities — Las Vegas, Phoenix, Tucson — that would be fatal to a large number of people in summer without the massive electrical drain of air-conditioning.

The West faces a glut of human beings who seek the “wide open spaces” without realizing that the actual inhabitible portion of said WOS is going to be played out in very short order. Worse, resources of water and electricity are both vital AND at risk.

The West has long been dependent on the cycle of the old glaciers catching the winter snowfall, and slowly dispersing snowmelt through the summer. But that cycle is at risk as the ancient glaciers melt off completely. Bare rock on the peaks holds less snow, which melts more rapidly. Here’s Mt. Hood, which used to be covered year ’round. Note how the glaciers are receding. The same holds true for high ranges all over the West.

Mt. Hood this July

But that’s just the living conditions. The economic situation is far worse. Unless, of course, you want to go bowling and gambling:

‘Cities of Gold’ Casino … AND Bowling! Note vultures on wires.

More tomorrow in part ii.

Courage.

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