Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 4, 1995 TAG: 9506030008
SECTION: BOOK PAGE: F-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Reviewed by AMY CROUSE-POWERS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
M.R. Montgomery takes us on a meandering journey along the rivers and streams of what he refers to as the "new West."
Lamenting the alteration of the West, Montgomery cites a range of disastrous environmental policies west of the Mississippi over the past 150 years. Ruminating in the language of the avid angler, Montgomery turns his attention to rivers and streams to illustrate the problems caused by what he calls "the preservation and re-creation of the wilderness." Preservation efforts of the federal government, he notes, are uninformed and often backward; he calls the federal government's Bureau of Land Management "an oxymoron to rival 'military intelligence.'''
The book chronicles Montgomery's travels throughout the West in search of cutthroat trout, aboriginal fish which are his "symbol of the surviving wilderness." Again and again he finds that these trout have been squeezed out by the species that Departments of Wildlife have introduced in the name of progress.
To the less pure, to those interested simply in fishing for trout, the introduced species provide exciting sport because of their larger sizes and elusiveness. To Montgomery, however, they represent a "biological abomination," and one of the major problems with the United States' vision of wilderness management. He writes, "Controlled water and stocked fish have nothing uniquely western about them. Things out of place are curious but not satisfying."
Montgomery has a good grasp of the parallels between the manipulation of language and the manipulation of nonhuman nature for the benefit of human beings. He frequently talks about the euphemisms that the government employs to slake its conscience when writing reports on streams that have been allowed to be ruined by unrestricted human intervention. Fisheries call poisoning out and re-stocking streams "renovation."
One of the single most calamitous influences in the West, and the one that Montgomery seems to run into the most, is the proliferation of cattle. Herders in the West allow their cows to roam free during the summer months. These cows are lazy beings, according to Montgomery, who would rather stand in a stream and chew on whatever might be immediately available than to graze on meadow grasses.
The result is that the ecosystems (a word to which the author seems to have a strange aversion) of the streams are permanently altered to the point of being destroyed. And, to his personal dismay, he points out, "It is an admirable trait of all the aboriginal interior cutthroats that they can take anything nature hands out except an excess of cows."
Despite his environmental commentary, however, Montgomery's philosophy doesn't seem to go beyond what causes, for him, personal moral indignation. Although the author seeks to preserve the wilderness, he is unable to break free of the American proprietary vision of the natural world. For instance, at one point in the book, Montgomery recalls fishing at a pristine place he calls "Paradise" high on an Oregon mountain.
At this peaceful moment, his thoughts and language curiously turn to ownership; he writes, ``I have been on most of the big rivers of the West and never saw a better one, and never, ever, one that I could call my own.''
"Many Rivers To Cross" is about preservation of wilderness. But it is more about preserving a particular vision of what Montgomery cherishes. This book shouldn't be read as a holistic environmental text; it should be taken for what it is: the ruminations of a fisherman.
Montgomery loves the West, and he loves to fish. He writes, "It is the same with fish and other wild things: there are places where some belong and others do not, and we should travel toward them, not expect them to come to us." Montgomery makes the trip, and brings the West to us with this vivid account of his journeys.
Amy Crouse-Powers is a graduate student at Radford University.
by CNB