Street Librarian

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Outside my window the jagged tops of the Swan Range appear blue, a few miles away. Up close they look otherwise, green, white, violet, yellow, scarlet, and pink with blossoms. Adjacent to these wild gardens, fields of snow linger, even in August. Climbing here, at a certain elevation near and above the tree line, human matters recede in importance. Here dwell higher gods, ones with no pity, bringers of lightning, fire, and avalanche. The gentle curves seen from a distance are actually sharp angles.

I'm grateful to begin to know such a grand, majestic, stark, and possibly unforgiving place. Ravens live here, thank gawd. Mountain bluebirds, too. Every place is a source of something, but these wise rocks signal an even earlier, more primordial start. Just beyond them lies our home.

What have I been reading here in Montana, besides the clouds and the Daily Inter Lake? Guidebooks, mostly, to aid in differentiation of species-of lousewort, lupine, penstemon, and paintbrush-and to remind me that the fringed white flowers I saw yesterday are called fringed grass-of-Parnassus (Parnassia fimbriata). I've also been reading real estate ads (an exercise in reading between the lines); Peter Kropotkin's Mutual Aid; Tim O'Brien's novel Going After Cacciato; the diaries of Norton Pearl, who was a ranger at Glacier National Park in 1912 and 1913; and Kelseya, the newsletter of the Montana Native Plant Society.

Although this is the final Street Librarian column, a look at this issue's masthead will show that I'm staying involved as a contributing editor. I will continue to write for the magazine, but I'm happy to turn over Utne librarian duties to Danielle Maestretti. Watch for a successor to Street Librarian in a future issue of Utne Reader. Meanwhile, check out Utne.com for From the Stacks, a weekly review of what's new and most cogent from the independent press.

Further Reading

Three more recommendations:

The Road-RIPorter is the quarterly publication of Missoula-based Wildlands CPR, an organization working to prevent 'off-road vehicle abuse of public lands' and promoting 'wildland restoration, road removal, and the prevention of wildland road construction.' The Spring 2006 issue reports on the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act that allows federal agencies to charge de facto entrance fees to enter public land, looks with a skeptical eye at road-building in Alaska, and summarizes scientific literature on 'off-road vehicle emissions and their effects on human health.' The organizers of Wildlands CPR seem upfront about their agenda, but how does that jibe with a name change from Wildlands Center for Preventing Roads? $30 membership from Box 7516, Missoula, MT 59807; www.wildlandscpr.org.

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