COWBOY, PROFESSOR, WRITER, AND GEORGE R. STEWART SCHOLAR: PAUL F. STARRS

A few posts ago, I included a link to Dr. Paul F. Starrs’s fine essay/review of the George R. Stewart biography. (In case you missed it, here’s a pdf download link  STARRS-2015-rev essay SCOTT, bio of Geo Stewart (AAGRvBks)

A distinguished author, geographer, and scholar, he’s won every award the University of Nevada, Reno, offers for scholars and teachers, been a senior Fulbright Scholar, and won many national teaching and geography awards. Starrs just stepped down as Chair of the Department of Geography.

He can also throw the houlihan

Starrs was one of the few applicants accepted by Deep Springs College in 1975. (Around 400 apply; 13 are chosen.) Located in an isolated valley near the eastern border of central California, the College is a tiny two-year institution founded and funded by one of the pioneers of the transmission of AC electrical power, L.L. Nunn. Once enrolled, students are expected not only to achieve academic excellence; they must also govern the institution. Students also run its adjoining cattle ranch and farm to help support the college. When the ranch and farm are included, Deep Springs has the largest “campus” of higher learning on Earth. According to Wikipedia, The New Yorker describes the educational program as “a mix of Christian mysticism, imperialist elitism, Boy Scout-like abstinence, and Progressive era learning-by-doing, with an emphasis on leadership training and the formation of strong character.”

Deep Springs Students on a Cattle Drive

With an extraordinary natural setting – hot springs, faults, desert playas, huge mountain ranges – Deep Springs sensitizes its students to the Earth. As an isolated human community, with the remains of an historic mining community nearby, Native American cultures in the area, the small towns and highway culture along US 395 to the west and the cities of Reno and Las Vegas to the east, south, and north, it is also in a region which exemplifies the principal concerns of geography – the relationships of humans to the land – in settings that range from isolated rural to large urban communities.

Starrs spent a few years cowboying after Deep Springs. He finished his education at the University of California, earning an M.A. and PhD in Geography at Berkeley.

Cowboy Paul

Appointed an Assistant Professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, in 1992, he quickly moved up into the highest ranks. He is now Regents and Foundation Professor of Geography, a high honor. Bilingual, he’s also held posts in Spain at the University of Salamanca and the Universidad of Córdoba.

He’s a brilliant scholar, with interests in many areas of geography. Currently he’s researching agriculture and land use change in California, the use of historic maps to reveal the exploitation of the environment, comparative frontier history, the geography of cattle ranching, and geography in popular culture, including music and film. Among other things.

Starrs is also a writer. One of his latest books, A Field Guide to California Agriculture, which he wrote in partnership with colleague Peter Goin, has been called a classic guide to the roadside agriculture of this state. Like Stewart’s books, it is a work of precision scholarship of the highest standard and a useful and readable work for a general audience.

I met Paul Starrs when Jack Stewart, distinguished Nevada geologist (and George R. Stewart’s son) called to ask if I could do a presentation about George Stewart’s life, work, and ideas, for Starrs’s Graduate Colloquium at UNR. Of course, I was honored, and agreed.

(The story of that adventure is worth telling. It was March; and to get to Reno I’d need to cross one of the legendary high mountain passes in the Sierra – and one of the snowiest – Donner Pass, made legend by George R. Stewart in Ordeal By Hunger. I decided to drive to Davis, California, stay at a friend’s house and take the train. At the last minute, though, he withdrew the invitation, so I had to book a motel instead. Nonplussed, I almost missed the talk.  On the way back to Davis, the westbound Zephyr was delayed more than 5 hours. That meant another night in a motel. Fortunately the generous honorarium covered all the unexpected costs. It was an honor to talk about George R. Stewart at the University with the second largest collection of Stewart material, in the country he loved, with a distinguished scholar and award-winning teacher who admires Stewart’s work.)

Starrs has long been interested in Stewart, which is fitting for someone educated at Berkeley in geography and holding a professorship at Reno. Berkeley was Stewart’s home – he was an English Professor there – and also the home of the best geography department in the country in the early-to-mid twentieth century. Reno is surrounded by “Stewart Country”: Donner Pass, Donner Lake, the Black Rock Desert. The California Trail and historic U.S. 40 pass through Reno. Thanks to Special Collections’ Librarian Ken Carpenter, the Knowledge Center at Reno has the second largest collection of George R. Stewart material on Earth (after the Bancroft Library in Berkeley).

Starrs teaches Stewart. He also contributes to the increasing body of work about Stewart and his writing. In 2005, for example, Starrs and colleague Peter Goin – Goin is Chair of the Reno Art Department and a distinguished photographer – published a book about the place Stewart called “Sheep Rock”: Starrs and Goin, Black Rock. It is an interdisciplinary, in-depth look at the place where Stewart set his most elaborate geographic (or ecological) novel. Starrs describes it as “a loving look at how a place can be conveyed not just through words, but also through photographs, historical maps, and newly-done cartography.”

Any fan of George R. Stewart’s work is encouraged to read the Black Rock book. And to keep the work of Paul Starrs on their radar screen. He’s completing a new book about the geography of film noir and just starting an historical novel about sheep herders in 1600s Spain. “Think Lonesome Dove meets Don Quixote in the Iberian Peninsula,” writes Starrs. “There’s a potential there for an interesting read.”

Dr. Paul F. Starrs and his Favorite Subject, Earth

A Decade of Western History

After his foray to Gettysburg, Stewart returned to the country he loved, and knew best – Donner Pass, the Central Sierra Nevada, and the Bay Area.  During the 1960s he would write one short book and one long book about the Westward Movement:  Donner Pass And Those Who Crossed It; and The California Trail.

Donner Pass, like his short book about Thomes, was a special limited-run book.  Printed by Bill Lane of Sunset Magazine for the California Historical Society, it was a kind of a Stewart potpourri about Donner Pass.  There were chapters about the first wagon train to get over the Pass – the Stevens Party – and the Donner Party.  Those chapters were a re-write of what he’d already put into his children’s book about Moses Schallenberger and his ground-breaking book Ordeal By Hunger.  There were chapters about the building and operating history of the transcontinental railroad, a new subject for GRS.  He included a short history of highways over the Pass.  At the end, there were brief essays about place names, geology, and local plants and animals.  The place name essay was classic GRS.  The natural history essays were atypical for him – he usually wove that information into his longer works – but they were much in keeping with the time.  1960 brought the beginning of the Environmental Movement, with its focus on protecting other species; and  California travelers on Highways like US 40 were beginning to carry guidebooks that described the natural and human history of what they were passing through.

That’s really what Donner Pass seems to be – a guidebook for the auto traveler.  It’s short enough so that the “navigator” in a vehicle can read the sections aloud for the driver and other passengers; and in the best environmental sense it is designed to increase awareness of history and the natural world.  The hardbound edition might not be carried along in a car, but the paper-back edition, with its eye-catching use of color on the cover, surely would be.

You can buy either version at a very reasonable price, and they’re still good guides if you drive old U.S. 40 over Donner Pass.  The old highway, when it’s open in spring, summer, and fall, is a pleasant alternative to I 80.

For decades, Stewart had been fascinated by the westward movement to California.  His research for Ordeal By Hunger took him to many of the sites connected with the Donner Party’s trip from Michigan to California.  In the west, at least, he drove or even hiked many rough, isolated miles of the Trail. (One of those explorations, in the late 30’s, first brought him to the place he would immortalize in Sheep Rock.)  The Anna Evenson Stewart Family Photo Collection includes a color photo of Stewart and a colleague, miles from nowhere on an old section of wagon road, with Stewart leaning on his luxurious Citroen sedan – which he probably bought since a driver could easily adjust the ground clearance on the car.

Stewart also did literary research and interviews.  The Bancroft has one of the finest – if not the finest – collection of diaries and journals from those who made the overland trip before the railroads.  Stewart made good use of that resource.  He even had the chance to interview some of the elderly who had made the trip – notably, the legendary Ina Coolbrith.  Coolbrith was the first Poet Laureate of California, guided Jack London through the books of the Oakland Library, and otherwise helped create a literature of California.  The story of her entry into California, in the arms of Wagon Train Scout James Beckwourth, is one of the enduring and endearing stories of the Westward Movement.  Stewart interviewed her just before her death.

When all was said and done, George Stewart put his decades of research into a book.  The California Trail:  An Epic With Many Heroes  In its several hundred well-illustrated pages, Stewart presents a detailed but interesting history of that great American story, from the first crossings by foot, through the last year with good statistics, 1857. The California Trail is still considered the best book on the emigrant movement into California by overland wagon train.

He worked on his book at the same time his old friend and fellow author Wallace Stegner was writing a book about the Mormon Trail for the same series.  In a wonderful letter, Stegner, who was teaching at Stanford, suggested that since the two men were writing books about the trails on two sides of the Platte River (The Mormon Trail was on one side, the California Trail on the other) they should get together and discuss the books (presumably over drinks and  barbequed burgers).

The book has been reprinted, and is still widely-available.  I’d recommend you look for a first edition – sometimes cheaper than the paperback reprint.  The cover illustrated is for the paperback.

Superfetation – FOUR books in Two Years.

George R. Stewart told his oral history interview, Suzanne Riess, that he practiced superfetation, like a rabbit.  Rabbits begin a new litter while an earlier one is still in the womb.  In Stewart’s case, he was researching one or more books while he was writing another book or two – and teaching, and living.

Between U.S. 40 and N.A. 1, for example, Stewart wrote four books.  One was based on talks he presented in Athens while he was a Fulbright Scholar; the second was a a small work about the first wagon party to make it through to California; the third, his only book for children; the fourth, his last novel.

American Ways of Life was the book based on his talks in Athens.  (“American,” in the case of this book, meant United States American.)  Stewart presented the essence of the way Americans lived in the post-World War II era in several chapters:   habits of eating, dressing, drinking, celebrating holidays, religion – even sex.  For American readers, it was a good overview of what we share as a national culture.  For foreign readers, especially those doing business with Americans, or traveling here,  the book was an invaluable guide to American dos and don’ts.  It’s not one of his best-known, or most readable books; but it is a fine window into its era.

By the early 50s, Stewart was researching the Westward Movement over the California Trail.  In his usual passion for field research, he traveled much of the original trail accompanied by historians or geographers. (He first encountered the place he named “Sheep Rock” on one of his trail expeditions.) He also consulted books – especially the manuscripts of the pioneers which are held by the Bancroft Library.   The one that particularly caught his eye was the oral history of Moses Schallenberger, a 18 year old boy who was a member of the first expedition to bring their wagons all the way to California – the Stevens Party.  Schallenberger’s story was an especially gripping one – he was left alone near Donner Pass for 3 months, in a rough cabin, during a cold and seemingly endless winter.  The two men who had volunteered to stay with him, and who had helped build a cabin at what is now known as Donner Lake, decided to head over the Pass.  Moses was too weak to keep up with them – and in one of the great and moving moments of the Westward Migration, he encouraged them to leave him and head for the safety of the Sacramento Valley; and they, heading down the trail, turned and waved and said “Goodby Mose.”  He survived, though, and was rescued.  (The next year, that cabin would be used by the Breens, members of the ill-fated Donner Party.) Stewart turned this story into a small book printed by the University rather than a trade publisher.  Then, thinking it over, he realized that with a teen-aged hero, it would make a perfect children’s book.

Stewart had written nothing for children.  But he taught himself how to write for younger readers, who have more limited vocabularies than adult readers.  The result was By Covered Wagon to California. The book was published in the popular Landmark Series – Number 42 – and enjoyed great success.  It was republished 33 years later, in 1987, as The Pioneers Go West.

His Fulbright year in Greece gave Stewart the chance to research the history of Greek City-States in their original settings.  Since his mother had taught him how to read Greek when he was still in high school, Stewart could easily read the histories and manuscripts of ancient Greece.  It gave him the idea for what would be his last novel, The Years of the City. 

One of Stewart’s literary devices was the use of non-human characters as the protagonists of his novels.  By the mid-1950s he’d used a storm, a fire, a place – and in Earth Abides – the ecosystem as protagonist.  In this novel, the protagonist was an ancient Greek City state, the fictional Phrax.

The novel opens with the founding of Phrax by a boatload of colonists which includes a child who is the only survivor of the sack of another city.  During the early years of Phrax, the city grows into a strong community of ethical, hard-working people.  Citizens  successfully defeat an enemy known as The Horde, in what might be called the city’s high-water mark.

Then, the city’s inhabitants sink slowly into laziness, selfishness, and materialism.  The old values are forgotten.  They are now ripe for conquest – and it comes, at first, from within.  A contractor creates terrorist acts and blames them on “terrorists.”  The “old money” gives control of Phrax to the contractor and his thugs, and sinks slowly into softness and decadence.  When The Horde attacks again, the people of Phrax are not strong enough to defeat them.  The city is sacked and burned to the ground, to pass into (fictional) history.  The only survivor is a small boy who manages to hide on one of the town’s ships – and thus, the story has come full circle.

The book was not a success.  Although Stewart felt its length was to blame I think it more likely that the dark descriptions of the decadence of the city and the contractor’s use of “terrorists” to  make the people fearful hit too close to home.  As it does, and it should, today, as once again we hear of “terrorists,” and contractors benefit mightily from the wars that follow.

George R. Stewart’s Ordeal By Hunger — First Whole Earth work

(PLEASE NOTE:  For some reason, WordPress is not inserting paragraph breaks in part of this post.  Please read it with that understanding.  Thanks, DMS.)

 

I believe George R. Stewart’s Ordeal By Hunger was the most important book of the twentieth century.

The book is the history of one of the great calamities of the Westward movement, the stuff of nightmares:  The story of the Donner Party.

The Donner Party, from an eastern ecosystem, made the mistake of listening to trail salesman Lansford W. Hastings.  Hastings’ “shortcut”  delayed the Party and the worst winter in many years pinned them down at what is now called Donner Lake, just below what is now known as Donner Pass.    Rescue parties tried to bring food in and survivors out, but the harsh winter meant that they would have limited success.  Members of the Donner Party tried to escape by climbing through the deep snow over the 7000+ foot pass, but most were forced back by weather and deep snow.  Eventually, their food gone, those at the camps by the lake, and some of those stranded by snow on their way to Sutter’s Fort were forced to eat human flesh.  Those acts of necessary cannibalism insured that the story of the Donner Party would become a major part of the story of the Westward Movement, and the settlement of California, even though it was actually a small blip on the historic record.

One of the survivors, Virginia Reed, summed it up in a letter to a relative written a year later:

I have not wrote to you half the trouble we have had but I have wrote enough to let you know that you don’t know what trouble is. But thank God we have all got through and the only family that did not eat human flesh. We have left everything but I don’t care for that. We have got through with our lives but Don’t let this letter dishearten anybody. Never take no cutoffs and hurry along as fast as you can.

“Never take no cutoffs and hurry along as fast as you can” is one of the great lessons of the Westward Movement.

But that’s not the reason I believe this history is critical to understanding our time.  It’s the two epiphanies Stewart had while working on the book, which he wrote into it.

Books  write themselves, even though authors do the hard slogging of getting things down on paper.  Stewart had a dickens of a time trying to put the book together.   There was the long trek across the plains, through the Rockies and the Wasatch, and over the deserts; there was the barrier of the Sierra Nevada (the name means “Snowy Mountains, which should have been a warning); there were the two winter camps; there were the various parties of emigrants braving the Sierra Nevada, seeking safety; there were the several parties of rescuers braving those same storms as they headed into the Sierra Nevada — the story was all over the map of eastern central California.

That gave Stewart an idea — he’d map the story.  Stewart loved maps, and he loved to make maps.  So they were the perfect tool to help him put the story together.  As he mapped out the various events, he realized that he could use a technique of English to make the story compelling:  He would follow one group until there was a critical moment, and then move to another group, similarly following them to a  crisis, and then return to the first group to reveal how things had worked out.  So readers would turn the pages quickly, eager to see what would happen next to each of the groups.

But mapping showed Stewart something much more important:  The importance of the geography of the story in its eventual outcome.  As Stewart put it, in the book, “It should be obvious to the reader that I consider the land to be a character in the work.”  That simple statement, and the understanding it contains, reveal one of the great moments in western thought.  Shakespeare told readers that the world is simply a stage for humans to act on.  Stewart is telling his readers – us – that Shakespeare is wrong.  The world – Earth, and its ecosystems – “The land” – is the principal player in any human drama.  It is a remarkable vision, and it prepared readers for the great paradigm shift of the twentieth century, the idea that an ecological view of the world is the correct one.

What defeated the Donners, and defined the character of the human players in this tale, was their ignorance of ecosystems.  They were easterners, and had no sense of the ecological reality of deserts or high  “Snowy Mountains.”

Once he’d come to understand the ecological viewpoint, the idea that the land is a character, Stewart seems to have decided to emphasize that in the beginning of the book.   Most histories of this type would begin with the party starting their ill-fated journey west, or with an overview of the Westward Movement up to that.  But Stewart begins with an unprecedented look at northern Nevada and eastern California from the perspective of space.

To observe the scene of this story, the reader must for a moment imagine himself …raised in space some hundreds of miles above a spot near the center of the state of Nevada.  …Far to his left, westward, the onlooker from the sky just catches the glint of the Pacific Ocean; far to his right, on the eastern horizon, high peaks of the Rockies forming the Continental Divide cut off his view.  Between horizons lie thirteen degrees of longitude, a thousand miles from east to west…

He continues, describing the Earth from space so accurately that features in Astronaut photos of the area can easily be identified.

Stewart did this, mind you, 24 years before anyone actually saw that view.  But in writing the Astronaut’s perspective into the opening of the work, he was making the point that all human experience took place in small ecological microcosms in that huge macrocosm of Earth.   Now, of course, we have moved away from Earth, and the idea is not unusual.  But he was the first to define our stories as Earth stories, and Earth ecosystem stories.  A quarter of a century before humans actually saw the view, and began to speak of “Earth,” he was preparing us.

In writing the book, Stewart developed two remarkable ideas.

The Whole Earth concept – the idea that Earth  from afar is small and beautiful; and from the surface a complex ecological and geographic system; and which defines the actions of all life, including human life – can be said to be the defining idea of the twentieth century So that century should be known as the first Whole Earth century.  It was the time when we began to see ourselves as a raft of life on a very special place in the universe, and it was the first time humans  did so.   Ordeal By Hunger, the first Whole Earth book, prepared us for this great change in our understanding.

For the first time in human experience, a book was written which educated its readers to the understanding that Earth and its ecosystems are the principle protagonists in any human drama.

Once he’d experienced the Whole Earth epiphany, and shared it with readers, Stewart would continue writing books around that truth.  Over the next decade or so, he would invent a “literature of the land.”  He would invent the Whole Earth novel, and the ecological novel, and would refine them until he created his masterwork, Earth Abides.  In doing this work, he would build upon this most important of twentieth century books, the first book to see and share the Whole Earth idea.  Thus, George R. Stewart would shape the twentieth century.