Dr. Mary Cablk
Perspective
The Owens Valley and its story of thirst and water lust has long been familiar to me. As a graduate student-rock climber, I would leave the lush Cascades to explore sturdy cliffs and sparkling granite boulders in the Owens Valley. On one trip someone said, as we descended the Swall where Kendra Atleework grew up and describes beautifully in her memoir, “I wonder what this valley would look like if L.A. hadn’t taken all its water. How beautiful and green would it be?”
Later in life, after teaching seminars at the White Mountain Research Station just east of Bishop, my students and colleagues would float in the meandering current of the Owen’s River and discuss the ecological effects of downstream development; how people could reach hundreds of miles upstream and far out of sight. This is part of Atleework’s story.
Kendra Atleework weaves her upbringing on the bajadas of the Eastern Sierra – the mountain’s apron – in the context of family life in a small community and a harsh environment. My first impression was to settle in with this book and follow Atleework through the sagebrush trails of her life and her family’s paths and how she, they, relate to one of the most significant water wars in the west.
At college in the Midwest, having escaped the desert, the heartbreak of her family, ignorant that a wildfire has almost burned down their house, Atleework writes, “After all, I am always thinking of home.” Here she offers the idea that no matter where we go, what our life’s path turns out to be, we will always have a landscape to which we are tied. It’s up to us to decide how we feel about it. For me, growing up Navy, I had no tie to any place but instead learned to endure wherever I landed. I wish I could say “embrace” rather than “endure,” but it wasn’t until I grew roots in the American West that I felt I had finally found my place. My landscape.
Read this book to gain perspective on how we connect to each other, through time and over distance. It is a glimpse into the impersonal nature of nature and how humans try to navigate and sometimes simply survive where they live.
Mary Cablk, PhD has been faculty at DRI since 1999. A Navy brat, she grew roots upon landing in the American West, where the vast landscapes provided a nexus for study, adventure, and fed her passion for the outdoors. She cannot imagine living anywhere else.