The Last Empty Places

by Peter Stark

  7. “Mc[lure]. was Sick. & discouraged” Menefee and Tiller, “Cut-Off Fever—Part IV,” p. 233.

  8. “Bright and early next morning we struck out” Ibid., pp. 244–45.

  9. “Oh what visions of Bred butter pies Cakes” Menefee and Tiller, “Cut-Off Fever—Part V,” p. 300.

  10. “I think I was never so glad to see any human” Ibid., p. 311.

  11. “[While it was] still in a state of pristine wildness” Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind, pp. 72–73, quoting a letter to Irving’s brother.

  12. “We send our youth abroad to grow luxurious and effeminate in Europe” Andrew Burstein, The Original Knickerbocker, quoting A Tour on the Prairies.

  13. The nervous, hyperintellectual Parkman Francis Parkman, The Oregon Trail(Wisconsin), p. 29a.

  14. In the spring of 1872, Dr. Glenn financed Pete French George Francis Brimlow, Harney County, Oregon, and Its Rangeland, p. 58.

  15. “I’ll fight any man” Ibid., p. 215.

  16. Titled “Long Drive for a Latte” map produced by InfoGraphics lab at Department of Geography, University of Oregon, Oregon Quarterly (Autumn 2007), p. 13.

  17. The Donner und Blitzen River Origin of name from website of Oregon Natural Desert Association at www.onda.org/.

  18. “This sudden plash into pure wildness” John Muir, The Story of My Boyhood and Youth, p. 63.

  19. “Come! Come, mother!” shouted Father Muir Ibid., pp. 205–6.

  20. Soon after Darwin, George Perkins Marsh Oelschlaeger, The Idea of Wilderness, pp. 106–8.

  21. “I don’t know anything about botany” Muir, The Story of My Boyhood and Youth, pp. 282–83.

  22. His first epic adventure was a draft dodge Stephen Fox, John Muir and His Legacy, pp. 42–43.

  23. “They were alone” Ibid., p. 43, quoting Muir’s account in Boston Recorder, Dec. 21, 1866.

  24. “the harmony, the oneness, of all the world’s life” Ibid., p. 38, quoting Muir’s autobiographical papers housed at the University of the Pacific.

  25. “[I am] a woman whose life seems always to be used up” Ibid., p. 47.

  26. “John Muir, Earth-Planet, Universe” Linnie Marsh Wolfe, Son of the Wilderness, p. 110.

  27. “oh! that is horribly unorthodox” Fox, John Muir and His Legacy, p. 52, quoting Muir’s journals.

  28. “Well, keep pouring in the quinine” Thurman Wilkins, John Muir: Apostle of Nature, p. 54.

  29. “The world, we are told, was made specially for man” Wolfe, Son of the Wilderness, p. 115.

  30. “Nature’s object in making animals and plants” Fox, John Muir and His Legacy, p. 53.

  31. “Creation,” as Fox puts it, “belonged” Ibid.

  32. “Where do you wish to go?” Wilkins, John Muir: Apostle of Nature, p. 57.

  33. He first gazed on the Sierra Nevada Mountains Frederick Turner, Rediscovering America, p. 164.

  34. somehow unworthy of such grandeur Ibid., p. 165.

  35. “preach Nature like an apostle” Ibid., p. 170.

  36. “We are now in the mountains” Ibid., pp. 172–73.

  37. On the full moon of April 3 Wilkins, John Muir: Apostle of Nature, pp. 76–77.

  38. “Do not thus drift away with the mob” Fox, John Muir and His Legacy, p. 5.

  39. “No, it would never do to lie in the night air” Wilkins, John Muir: Apostle of Nature, p. 78.

  40. “full of indoor philosophy” Fox, John Muir and His Legacy, p. 5, quoting Muir writing in Our National Parks (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1901).

  41. “Surely, then…one may be spared for” Wolfe, Son of the Wilderness, p. 144, quoting Muir’s autobiographical notebooks.

  42. “What I have nobody wants” Ibid., p. 153, quoting the autobiographical notebooks.

  43. “The earth as our common mother should belong to all the people” Ibid., p. 182, quoting Henry George’s 1871 pamphlet, Our Land and Land Policy.

  44. “We the undersigned claim this valley” Ibid., p. 184.

  45. “The Restoration Economy” This is also the title of a book by Storm Cunningham, The Restoration Economy: The Greatest New Growth Frontier (San Francisco: Barrett-Koehler Publishers, 2002).

  46. “I want you to know my John Muir” Wolfe, Son of the Wilderness, p. 174.

  47. “Solitude is a sublime mistress” Ibid., p. 199.

  48. “Instinct with deity” Ibid., p. 209, quoting Muir’s notes.

  49. “A ranch that needs and takes the sacrifice” Ibid., pp. 243–44.

  50. Muir was appalled Ibid., p. 245, citing Robert Underwood Johnson’s memoir, Remembered Yesterdays.

  51. “It was clear weather” Wilkins, John Muir: Apostle of Nature, pp. 215–17, quoting Roosevelt’s article “John Muir: An Appreciation,” in Outlook magazine, vol. 109 (Jan. 6, 1915).

  PART IV. THE HIGH, HAUNTED DESERT OF NEW MEXICO

  1. there could be valuable metals Franklin Jameson (gen. ed.), Frederick W. Hodge and Theodore H. Lewis (eds.) Spanish Explorers in the Southern United States, 1528–1543, p. 111. Cabeza de Vaca reports rumors of gold in other places in his Narrative and findings of turquoise and arrowheads of emerald (see ibid., p. 106). Also for Cabeza de Vaca’s rumored cities and gold to the north see George P. Hammond, Coronado’s Seven Cities, p. 4.

  2. Could he be taken to their chief? asked Cabeza de Vaca Jameson et al., Spanish Explorers, p. 112. For added details on Cabeza de Vaca’s meeting with the Spanish, see Rolena Adorno and Patrick Charles Pautz, Álvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca, vol. II, pp. 365–66. Also for a detailed treatment of Esteban and his role in the shipwrecked expedition and further explorations see Robert Goodwin, Crossing the Continent 1527–1540.

  3. The legend was well known in Spain at the time For more on the legend of the Seven Cities, see Goodwin, Crossing the Continent, p. 297.

  4. the viceroy offered to purchase the Moorish slave Ibid., pp. 300–301. Goodwin quotes a Spanish chronicler, Baltasar Obregón, on the offer to purchase Esteban and Dorantes’s refusal.

  5. “was endowed with all virtues” Adolph F. Bandelier, The Discovery of New Mexico by the Franciscan Monk, Friar Marcos de Niza in 1539, p. 69.

  6. “they will be punished and will receive no mercy” Ibid., pp 70–71.

  7. “…that it was thirty days’ travel” Ibid., p. 75.

  8. The chief said he knew these people and would kill them Ibid., pp. 86–89. Bandelier quotes the account Fray Marcos de Niza gives in his original “Relación.” Adorno (vol. 2, p. 422) cites other evidence and accounts disputing that Fray Marcos had made it as far north as “Cíbola,” as he claimed, and that Esteban was killed well south of the pueblo of Zuni.

  9. Esteban’s Indian messenger left the house to get a drink Account of the massacre from Bandelier, p. 87, and from Fray Marcos de Niza, “A Relation of the Reverend Father Fray” from “Marcos de Niza, Touching His Discovery of the Kingdom of Ceulo or Cíbola…” (originally written in 1539 and published in English in Principall Navigations, Voiages and Discoveries of the English Nation, ed. Richard Hakluyt (London: 1598–1600, 3rd vol., final edition). (Partial text available online at http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/subjects/eaw/essays/nizatext.html.)

  10. “With this and many other words I pacified them” Fray Marcos de Niza, “Relation.”

  11. “The [city] was so stirred by the news” Hammond, Coronado’s Seven Cities, p. 9.

  12. “the most brilliant company ever assembled in the Indies” quote from Castañeda in ibid., pp. 17–19. For many details of the Coronado expedition as recorded in documents of the time, see Richard Flint and Shirley Cushing Flint, Documents of the Coronado Expedition, 1539–1542. Among many other documents, this includes a “Muster Roll of the Expedition” that lists each member, and exactly what armaments and horses they brought with them. For example, “Juan Gallego [is taking] a [chain mail] vest, [chain mail] breeches, an elk hide jacket, a crossbow, other native and Castilian arms and armor, and seven horses” (p. 139).

  13. born of a landed Salama
nca family Hammond, Coronado’s Seven Cities, pp. 9–10.

  14. “In the end necessity, which is all powerful, made them skillful” Castañeda’s “Narrative” in Jameson et al., Spanish Explorers in the Southern United States, p. 295.

  15. “…and there they turned back, not finding anything important” Ibid., p. 296.

  16. “The following day they entered the settled land” Castañeda’s “Narrative” in Flint and Flint, Documents, p. 393. I use the Flint and Flint version of Castañeda’s “Narrative” here instead of the Jameson version because of the former’s precise translation of a very key passage.

  17. while “defiant” villagers Castañeda’s “Narrative” in Jameson et al., Spanish Explorers in the Southern United States, p. 300.

  18. Zuñi Indians in a settlement near today’s Zuni Pueblo For a fascinating account of life in Zuni at the time of Coronado’s arrival, see “Zuni on the Day the Men in Metal Arrived” by Edmund J. Ladd in Richard Flint and Shirley Cushing Flint (eds.), The Coronado Expedition to Tierra Nueva, pp. 225–33. A map of sixteenth-century Zuni appears on p. 230. The village that Coronado is believed to have entered was known as Hawikuh, also spelled “Hawikku.” See also Richard Flint, No Settlement, No Conquest, p. 97.

  19. dragged their commander to safety See Castañeda’s “Narrative.”

  20. “Wilderness areas are first of all a series of sanctuaries” Aldo Leopold, “Wilderness,” in A Sand County Almanac, pp. 270–71.

  21. This was the origin of the “seven cities” of Cíbola Flint, No Settlement, No Conquest, p. 97.

  22. “Fray Marcos has not told the truth” Hammond, Coronado’s Seven Cities, p. 35. Another translation of Coronado’s letter to Viceroy Mendoza appears in Flint and Flint, Documents, pp. 254–62.

  23. the Giralda bell tower of the great Cathedral of Seville Castañeda in Jameson et al., Spanish Explorers, p. 309.

  24. “throw a ball as high” Castañeda in ibid., p. 311.

  25. “[The Turk] told them so many and such great things” Castañeda in ibid., p. 313.

  26. “This began the want of confidence in the word of the Spaniards” Castañeda in ibid., p. 315.

  27. interpreted that to mean he should roast his two hundred Indian captives Castañeda in ibid., pp. 319–20.

  28. “big enough to absorb a two-weeks’ pack trip” Marybeth Lorbiecki, Aldo Leopold: A Fierce Green Fire, p. 90, quoting Leopold’s 1921 article in the Journal of Forestry.

  29. Dandified up in his newly purchased cowboy outfit Ibid., p. 40. A photo appears in this edition of Lorbiecki’s book showing Leopold in all his cowboy gear as a newly arrived forester in Arizona.

  30. “the fervor of a sawdust evangelist” Ibid., p. 39, quoting a characterization of Leopold by Leopold’s boss, Arthur Ringland.

  31. “Why damn their whining souls” Ibid., pp. 42–43, quoting a letter from Leopold to his sister.

  32. “In those days we had never heard of passing up a chance to kill a wolf” Aldo Leopold, “Thinking Like a Mountain,” in A Sand County Almanac, pp. 138–39.

  33. “These people sustain themselves entirely from the cattle [buffalo]…” Hammond, Coronado’s Seven Cities, pp. 62–63. This passage is originally from “La Relación Postrera de Cíbola,” written in the 1540s by Fray Toribio de Benavente, who apparently recorded other Spaniards’ eyewitness accounts of the customs of the Plains Indians. It is not clear just who these informants were. (A translation of his entire “Relacíon” appears in Flint and Flint, Documents, pp. 296–300.)

  34. They were very intelligent people Castañeda in Jameson et al., Spanish Explorers, p. 330.

  35. believed to be the Blanco Canyon area near Lubbock, Texas Possible locations of this Indian settlement visited by Coronado’s expedition are discussed in an essay by Joseph P. Sánchez, “A Historiography of the Route of the Expedition of Francisco Vásquez de Coronado: Río de Cicúye to Quivira,” in Richard Flint and Shirley Cushing Flint (eds.), The Coronado Expedition to Tierra Nueva. Also see, in the same volume, “Una Barranca Grande: Recent Archaeological Evidence and a Discussion of Its Place in the Coronado Route” by Donald J. Blakeslee, Richard Flint, and Jack T. Hughes. The latter essay cites “two pieces of chain mail” that were discovered in Blanco Canyon by ranchers in the 1950s and 1960s, as well as later discoveries of crossbow bolt heads (pp. 371–72).

  36. Coronado wanted to divide up the pile of robes as spoils Castañeda in Jameson et al., Spanish Explorers, p. 332.

  37. We call it the Arkansas River See Sánchez, “A Historiography of the Route,” in Flint and Flint, The Coronado Expedition to Tierra Nueva, pp. 296–97.

  38. “[This] laid him at the point of death” Castañeda in Jameson et al., Spanish Explorers, p. 368.

  39. He bore the terrible news Flint, No Settlement, No Conquest, p. 187.

  40. “…that he would become a powerful lord in distant lands” Castañeda in Jameson et al., Spanish Explorers, p. 369.

  41. He was carried part of the way on a litter Hammond, Coronado’s Seven Cities, p. 70.

  42. “From then on,” states Castañeda flatly, “he lost his reputation” Castañeda as translated in Flint and Flint, Documents, p. 430.

  43. Aldo Leopold read the just-published Our Vanishing Wildlife Lorbiecki, Aldo Leopold, p. 59.

  44. Wrote Teddy Roosevelt in a letter to Leopold Ibid., p. 74.

  45. “I do not know whether I have twenty days or twenty years” Ibid., pp. 73–74.

  46. “Destruction of the soil is the most fundamental kind of economic loss” Ibid., p. 88, quoting a speech Leopold gave at the University of Arizona, 1921.

  47. While fishing, Leopold admired the lack of telephone poles and automobile roads Ibid., pp. 83–84.

  48. heavy grazing and logging had wiped out the Blue River bottomlands for more detail on the dramatic transformation of the Blue River bottomlands by erosion, see Julianne Lutz Newton, Aldo Leopold’s Odyssey, pp. 55–57.

  49. “To cherish we must see and fondle” Lorbiecki, Aldo Leopold, p. 85, quoting “Marshland Elegy” in A Sand County Almanac.

  50. Leopold went out of his way to meet Carhart Ibid., pp. 84–86.

  51. “Sporting magazines are groping toward some logical reconciliation” Curt Meine and Richard L. Knight, The Essential Aldo Leopold, p. 36, quoting “The Wilderness and Its Place in Forest Recreational Policy” in Journal of Forestry (Nov. 1921).

  52. “[G]ame can be restored” Lorbiecki, Aldo Leopold, p. 117, quoting the Preface to Game Management.

  53. “We, Americans, have not yet experienced a bearless, wolfless, eagleless” Ibid., p. 134.

  54. The river’s waters ran clear between uneroded, mossy banks Susan Flader essay, “Aldo Leopold and the Evolution of a Land Ethic,” in Thomas Tanner (ed.), Aldo Leopold: The Man and His Legacy, p. 16.

  55. the population had suddenly soared in the decades after A.D.1050 Stephen Plog, Ancient Peoples of the American Southwest, p. 93.

  56. the first known white—a prospector named H. B. Ailman Laurence Parent, Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument, p. 11.

  EPILOGUE

  1. “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity” Leopold’s essay “The Land Ethic” in A Sand County Almanac, p. 262.

  2. “The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness” from John Muir’s “Journals,” available online at http://library.pacific.edu/ha/digital/muirjournals/muirjournals.asp. Muir’s biographer Linnie Marsh Wolfe also published a collection of these previously unpublished journals under the title John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir, ed. Linnie Marsh Wolfe (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1979).

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  GENERAL AND PROLOGUE

  Bevis, Richard. The Road to Egdon Heath: The Aesthetics of the Great in Nature (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1999).

  Callicott, J. Baird, and Michael P. Nelson (eds.). The Great New Wilderness Debate: An Expansive Collection of Writings Defining Wild
erness from John Muir to Gary Snyder (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1998).

  Nash, Roderick Frazier. Wilderness and the American Mind (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967; 4th ed., 2001).

  Newby, Eric. The World Atlas of Exploration (New York: Crescent Books, 1985).

  Oelschlaeger, Max. The Idea of Wilderness: From Prehistory to the Age of Ecology (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991).

  Royal Geographical Society. Oxford Atlas of Exploration (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).

  Stark, William F. Pine Lake (Sheboygan, Wis.: Zimmerman Press, 1984).

  Stromberg, Roland N. An Intellectual History of Modern Europe (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1975).

  Turner, Jack. The Abstract Wild (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1996).

  PART I. WHERE THE ACADIANS DISAPPEARED IN NORTHERN MAINE

  Bible, George P. An Historical Sketch of the Acadians, Their Deportation and Wanderings Together with a Consideration of the Historical Basis for Longfellow’s Poem Evangeline (Gretna, La.: Pelican Publishing Co., 1998; reprinted from an earlier edition).

  Denys, Nicolas. The Description and Natural History of the Coasts of North America (Acadia), trans. Willam F. Ganong (Toronto: Champlain Society, 1908), pp. 133–36.

  Faragher, John Mack. A Great and Noble Scheme: The Tragic Story of the Expulsion of the French Acadians from Their American Homeland (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2005).

  Hamlin, Helen. Nine Mile Bridge: Three Years in the Maine Woods (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1945; published with additional materials Yarmouth, Me: Islandport Press, 2005).

  Harding, Walter. The Days of Henry Thoreau (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1966).

  Lescarbot, Marc. The History of New France, trans. W. L. Grant, 3 vols. (1609; Toronto: Champlain Society, 1911).

  MacDonald, M. A. Fortune & La Tour : The Civil War in Acadia (Halifax: Nimbus Publishing, 2000).

  Parkman, Francis. Pioneers of France in the New World: France and England in North America (1865; Williamsport, Mass.: Corner House Publishers, 1970).