Spring 2006 - the Wyoming State Library

Transcription

Library
Wyoming
Spring 2006
Roundup
Outdoors
C.J. Box
Jim Zumbo
Mardy Murie
Wyoming Library Roundup • Spring 2006
Don’t fence them in
When those wide open spaces around Jackson seem a
a love of wildlife and of the Teton Valley area. In 1977,
little more open, you might want to thank volunteers
Chuck began teaching ornithology for seven summers at
Carol and Chuck Schneebeck, who coordinate fence
the Audubon Ecology Camp of the West in the Torrey
removal for the Jackson Hole Wildlife Foundation.
Valley near Dubois. While Chuck taught, Carol managed
“These are all fences that were either abandoned from
the camp’s small library and their two pre-school
old grazing allotments or old ranches that no longer
sons. Both boys went on to work for environmental
have cattle,” Chuck explained. No longer needed, the
organizations: the eldest, Carl, for Bluewater Network
fences fall into
and Casey for
disrepair.
The Nature
Wildlife
Conservancy.
attempting
Their
to go over or
volunteering
through them
extends to
can get injured
many other
or even die
projects and
when they
organizations,
get cut or
including one
entangled. “It’s
near and dear
not good for
to Carol’s
the wildlife, by
heart: The
any means,” he
Teton County
said.
Library. She’s
The program
President of
has removed
the Friends of
96 miles of
the Library
fence in the
Board,
Teton Valley
working
total; about
hard to
55 of those
strengthen the
were under the
organization.
Carol and Chuck Schneebeck are winding the wire along with friends and their dog
Schneebecks’
She’s
also
Buster - a search & rescue dog.
watch. All
a docent at
the wire is recycled – some for scrap, some for art.
the National Museum of Wildlife Art and a literacy
They work with the Foundation and numerous other
tutor. Among Chuck’s many activities, he’s President
agencies to target migration routes and areas with high
of Wyoming K-9 Search and Rescue; their dog, Buster,
concentrations of wildlife.
is both a rescue dog and the unofficial fence removal
Carol and Chuck coordinate efforts of 80 local
mascot.
volunteers. In addition, other organizations bring in
Whether opening migration routes or opening minds
volunteers – including troubled teens and kids from
through books, you’ll find the Schneebecks hard at work
impoverished areas of the inner cities.
giving back to their adopted community.
“It was really fun to watch them get into it,” Chuck said
Organizations that have helped fence removal include Bridger-Teton
of one of these groups. “It was hard, dirty work. We were
National
Forest District, Becket Valley YMCA from Massachusetts,
working in a burn area that was just nasty, and the kids
Grand
Teton
National Park, Interagency Fire Crew, Jackson Hole
were excited about it, they were fun to be with. It was
Conservation
Alliance, National Elk Refuge, Red Top Meadows
good for all of us. So a lot of things happen other than
Residential
Treatment
Center, Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, Utah
just fence coming down.”
Conservation Corps and Wyoming Game and Fish.
Retired educators, Carol and Chuck have long shared
5
Library
Wyoming
Spring 2006
Roundup
Wyoming State Librarian,
Lesley Boughton. ............................3
Jay Lawson
Game & Fish’s chief warden.......................4
table of contents
Mysteries born in Wyoming
C.J. Box.......................................5
Past, Present and Future
Yellowstone Research Library......9
17
Wyoming’s famous hunter
.................................11
Jim Zumbo
She found her dog, horse and cowboyHelen Higby...................................14
22
Wilderness is personal to
. ............................17
Mardy Murie
Leadership in the Wild —
...............................................20
NOLS
Draper Museum........................22
Exploring nature’s boundaries
..............................23
Ted Kerasote
Toppan Rare Books Library. ....25
Bookshelf for Wyoming Readers....27
National Museum of
Wildlife Art.....................................................30
Top: C.J. Box at a book signing in Lyman. Middle: Mardy and Olaus Murie,
photo courtesy of Murie Center Archives. Bottom: Interactive trail of the Greater
Yellowstone Ecosystem - Draper Museum of Natural History - Buffalo Bill Historical Center, Cody, Wyoming (BBHC photo by Sean Campbell)
Artichoke Elk
2 pounds elk steak
Milk to cover steaks
Flour to coat steaks
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1/4 teaspoon garlic salt
4 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 lemon
1 cup white wine
1/2 cup marinated artichoke hearts,
chopped
Cut elk steaks into serving sized pieces.
Pound each filet until it is about twice
its original size. Place meat in shallow
bowl, and add enough milk just to
cover steaks. Soak steaks in milk for 15
minutes. Drain milk and dredge meat
in mixture of flour, salt, pepper, and
garlic salt. Heat oil in skillet, add steaks
and cook on one side until brown.
After turning steaks to cook the other
side, squeeze the juice of one lemon
over the meat as it continues to cook
another couple of minutes. Add the
white wine, cover and simmer another
2 to 4 minutes. Add the artichoke
hearts, cover and simmer another 1 to
2 minutes until artichokes are heated
through. Serve at once. Serves 6.
This recipe is compliments of Jim
Zumbo, see article
on page 11. You
can find more
of Jim Zumbo’s
recipes in his
book, Amazing
Venison
Recipes or
online at www.
jimzumbo.com.
photo courtesy Thomas Kelsey, The
Outdoor Channel
Library
Wyoming
Roundup
Official publication of the
Wyoming State Library,
the Wyoming Library Association,
and the Wyoming Center for the Book
Volume 48, Number 2, Spring 2006
ISSN: 0043-9738
Tina Lackey
Editor and Designer
Susan Vittitow
Assistant Editor and Writer
Wyoming State Library
Publications and Marketing Office
2301 Capitol Avenue, Cheyenne, WY 82002
307-777-6338
Cover photo: Wildflowers in Yellowstone National Park,
courtesy of Wyoming Tourism.
Wyoming Library Roundup is published quarterly by the
Wyoming Library Association and the Wyoming State
Library. All rights reserved. Contents of this magazine
may not be reproduced without the express permission of
the publishers.
The Wyoming Library Roundup is produced in part with Library Services and Technology Act federal funds
awarded to the Wyoming State Library from the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
lesley boughton, wyoming state librarian
On an overcast and cold Sunday morning in early
March I was driving from my home in Glendo
to town to get my paper. As I came around the
reservoir, I noticed eagles roosting in trees near the
road. I pulled over and counted 17 bald eagles. Awe
inspiring!
Sometimes, at dusk, I watch deer move down Elk
Horn creek. And often, on cold, clear nights, I
hear coyotes howling and yelping very close to my
home. Spellbinding!
Lesley Bou
ghton’s gra
nddaughte
Boughton,
r, Kayla
after her e
lk hunt la
st
O
ctober.
Have you ever driven to Jackson along Highway
26 and seen the Tetons after you crossed Togwotee Pass? Have you
been to Lake Marie? Seen the wagon ruts on the Oregon Trail at Guernsey? Breathtaking!
Some time ago, when I was the director of the Platte County Library in Wheatland, some folks
from the American Library Association in Chicago came to visit. They had driven up from
Denver after 5:00 p.m. and could not get over how dark it was from Cheyenne to Wheatland. Not
a single traffic light and very few highway lights in 70 miles. “The stars,” they said. “There are so
many stars!”
This issue of the Wyoming Library Roundup gets to the heart of why we love Wyoming.
Those of us lucky to live here share the beauty of our surroundings and sometimes the harshness
of the environment. We drive long distances to support our children in myriad school activities;
our “neighborhood” is 97,000 square miles. Former governor Milward Simpson is credited with
the observation that “Wyoming is a small town with a long main street” and he was right.
For a “small town” we have marvelous libraries and museums that collect, organize and provide
access to information about and images of the outdoors.
I do not hunt or fish. But my children and my grandchildren do. I hope Jim Zumbo (see story
on page 11) enjoys the picture I chose to accompany this letter. My granddaughter, Kayla, is a 15
year old, green eyed, blond, passionate hunter. Here she is with the elk she shot last October near
Glendo. It scored 340 on the Boone and Crockett Score Chart of North American Big Game.
You can get their Records of North American Big Game at the library.
Lesley Boughton,
Wyoming State Librarian
3
jay lawson, wyoming game and fish department
4
I am often asked what led to my interest in the outdoors and a career
in wildlife management. The answer is two-fold. First, it was my
good fortune to grow up in central Wyoming during the 1950s and
60s. This was the finest outdoor setting one could ask for; I was exposed to wildlife and wild lands on virtually a daily basis. Secondly,
I discovered a collection of books on natural history, hunting,
fishing and outdoor adventure at the Natrona County Public
Library while in grade school. By high school, I had read every
volume cover to cover—the better ones twice.
Camping, fishing, and hunting sparked a fascination with nature
and also ushered in my avid reading of natural science and outdoor books. The knowledge gained through this reading would serve me
well through the years of formal education and even to this day in my capacity as a wildlife
professional.
Our public and private libraries reflect Wyoming’s outdoor heritage, with respectable
collections of outdoor-related books found in even the smallest communities with even
more available through interlibrary loan. The majority of residents participate in outdoor
activities—so it is little wonder we delve into the books when one can’t actually be there.
There are also many special collections of outdoor literature throughout the state. The
Toppan Collection, which I wrote about for this issue, is a treasure trove of such material.
Other examples are the Rocky Mountain Herbarium Library at the University of
Wyoming, the McCracken Research Library at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center, the
Heritage and Research Center Library in Yellowstone National Park, as well as many
others too numerous to list here.
All of these wonderful libraries and book collections help foster an appreciation for
Wyoming’s intrinsic qualities - the mountains, prairies and high deserts that surround us
every day. They also perpetuate our outdoor traditions and preserve the history of those
outdoor men and women who created them.
To ensure future generations spend time in the open and value the natural environment of
Wyoming, we must expose them to it firsthand, hence the wildlife agency mantra, “Take a
Kid Fishing.” But we must also introduce them to the exceptional outdoor writing that is
housed in our libraries.
Jay Lawson
Chief, Wildlife Division
Wyoming Game & Fish
Mysteries born in Wyoming
C.J. Box
C.J. Box always read everything he could find that was written
about or set in Wyoming but none of them told the story he wanted to tell.
“Although a lot of it was really well written, it never seemed like the portrayal was
from the inside-out, from people who lived here,” he said. “What I wanted to do was
put my stamp on a story that was more about the real Wyoming I knew growing
up than the one I was reading about.”
Box did this with stunning success
in 2001 with his award-winning
debut novel, Open Season. Set in
Wyoming and featuring game warden
Joe Pickett as its protagonist, Open
Season was a New York Times
Notable Book of 2001 and was
named by The Chicago Tribune as
one of the ten best mysteries of the
year.
It wasn’t bad for a book that no one
wanted.
“It had languished for about four
and a half years with an agent in
New York who said that nobody was
interested in that kind of book,” Box
said. “He would say it’s not really a
mystery, it’s sort of environmental,
it’s set in Wyoming – nobody’s
interested in that.”
When his agent essentially told him,
“Don’t call me, I’ll call you,” Box
didn’t – for two years. Finally, at a
writers’ conference in Denver, he
discovered his agent had been dead
for a year.
Understandably, his expectations
were modest when it finally did go
to print. “I thought it might be of
interest in the Rocky Mountain West
because it was very local,” he said.
Instead, the book launched a series
of Joe Pickett mystery novels: Savage
Run, Winterkill, Trophy Hunt and
Out of Range. Five years later, Box’s
sixth Pickett novel, In Plain Sight,
has just been released and the seventh
book is in the works. His work has
been translated into 12 languages.
5
Box is a Wyoming native and an
avid outdoorsman who has hunted,
fished, hiked, ridden and skied
throughout the West. He and his
wife, Laurie, co-own an international
tourism marketing business that
promotes destinations in Wyoming,
Montana, Idaho and the Dakotas.
They live outside Cheyenne with
their three daughters.
He began his career as a journalist.
He edited the school newspaper at
Kelly Walsh High School in Casper,
where he grew up. He earned his
degree in mass communication from
Denver University, where he began
writing fiction on the side. After
college, he returned to Wyoming to
work as a newspaper reporter at the
Saratoga Sun in Carbon County.
“My first job interview was
actually in a boat,” he said of
his Saratoga experience. “The
publisher, Dick Perue, picked me
up, or I drove, and we got in the
boat and went down the river and
drank beer. By the end of that,
I would have paid him to work
there. It was really pretty clever,
because he paid nothing, but that was
just such a nice thing after living in
Denver for four years.”
After living and working in
Saratoga for three and a half years,
Box moved to Cheyenne, where
he worked for the American
Automobile Association (AAA),
contracting with local tow truck
drivers for emergency road service.
The job took him to every small
town in Wyoming twice a year, and
he drove every paved stretch of road
in the state.
“But also, that was really interesting
meeting some of those guys,” he
said. “That was real rough, kind of
blue-collar stuff. I remember finding
the tow truck driver in Ten Sleep
as he was butchering an antelope in
his garage that he’d poached and he
thought I was with the Game and
Fish, because no one else would show
up then.”
Sixteen years ago, Box and his wife,
Laurie, started Rocky Mountain
International (RMI), a marketing
firm that promotes inbound tourism
from Europe and Scandinavia. They
have five employees in Cheyenne and
seven contractors overseas.
It was while he was reporting in
Saratoga that Box began drafting
Open Season. The Joe Pickett
character started taking shape – an
honorable man, devoted to his wife
and daughters, who gets swept up in
larger events when a local poacher
turns up murdered on his woodpile.
“Even though it’s fiction, whenever
it’s on a real subject I try to make it as
accurate as possible, whether it’s cattle
mutilations or coal bed methane or
whatever, I don’t want anybody to read
those and say, ‘That’s not right.’”
6
Box wasn’t trying to write a mystery,
though – he was trying to write an
issue.
“There is a murder in it – there’s
several of them – but to me it was
more about the Endangered Species
Act and how really well-meaning
legislation can go screwy on the
ground where it really takes place.
It was classified as a mystery, but to
me, it was more about ‘small town,
big laws’ than it was about solving a
mystery or a plot. Each book to me
is about something, and then I figure
out how to work a plot into it. I
don’t want to just write whodunits.”
After tangling with the Endangered
Species Act in the first book, Joe
Pickett wound up investigating the
mysterious deaths of ecoterrorists
in Savage Run dealing with militant
survivalists in Winterkill, and coping
with both a friend’s suicide and
animal rights activists in Out of
Range. It wasn’t until Trophy Hunt,
where Pickett encountered cattle
mutilations, that Box intentionally
wrote the book as a mystery,
planting clues for the reader to puzzle
out.
“But then again, the mystery really
isn’t solved in that one, because in
the end, there’s no way to really
solve the cattle mutilations thing.
That’s left open, which some
readers didn’t like, but I wasn’t
going to solve it. I don’t know what
happened.”
One of the great appeals of Box’s
books is the character of Joe
Pickett, described by Booklist as “a
Gary Cooper for our time.” In the
first draft, Pickett was a sheriff, not
a game warden.
“I didn’t know much about
sheriffs and those I’d met I didn’t
like,” Box said. “Then it was going
to be a small-town journalist, but
that didn’t work, because I wanted
him to be able to carry a gun. He
had to fight back, not just write
about it. At the time, I was doing
ride-alongs with the local game
warden in Saratoga and I saw what a
perfect fit that was.
“Wyoming game wardens have
these huge territories. They don’t
have back-up. They’re on their own
– they’re real Lone Rangers out
there. Everybody they encounter is
armed, and usually back-up is too far
away, so they have to deal with it.
So I thought this is the perfect kind
of protagonist for this book, because
he would be involved in the resource
stuff as well as the law enforcement.
Box said several game wardens are
convinced that the character is based
on them, “And their wives are, too.
So I think I really got that character
right. He has a lot of foibles. He’s
not perfect, he makes mistakes. He
makes a lot of mistakes. I think he’s
very human in a way. But the game
wardens in the field like him.”
Not surprisingly, Joe Pickett has
made a few enemies along the way,
and one comes to call in In Plain
Sight in the midst of a local battle
over a ranch empire. Word has it that
Pickett will move from the fictional
town of Twelve Sleep to Yellowstone
and get a new job in the seventh
novel.
“I don’t like series where nothing
ever changes, where horrendous
things happen in book four, and in
book five they’re never referenced
and everybody’s the same and they
haven’t aged a year,” Box said. “I
don’t like that, so in mine everybody
gets a year older, including the kids,
and because of all these things Joe
Pickett has gone through, he’s getting
a little harder-edged, getting a little
more cynical. It’s changed with each
one – everybody has.”
Box wrote three complete novel
manuscripts before he wrote Open
Season. None has been published,
although he did go back through
them and mine them for material for
the Joe Pickett series.
“If I could have chosen to get
a book published straight out of
college, I would have done that,” he
said, “but it was also good that that
didn’t happen, that I was nearly 40
when it did,
because now I
can really enjoy
it and don’t
think it’s my
due. I think
everything that
happens is just
really cool and is
sort of frosting
as opposed to,
‘I earned it. I
deserved it.’”
He said journalism strengthened
his fiction. “If I were to give advice
to a writer, I’d say a journalism
background is better than a creative
writing background, because a
journalism background forces some
C.J. Box
with his
horses at
his home
near
Cheyenne.
photo by
Roger
Carey
discipline in how to write a story.
There’s no difference between an
opening line and a killer lead in a
feature story. I find that a lot of
the writers that I like to read have
journalism backgrounds, not creative
writing backgrounds, because they’re
telling stories and they’re giving you
information as well as the plot. It’s
not as self-indulgent as a creative
writing background.”
Journalism also taught him how to
research: “Even though it’s fiction,
whenever it’s on a real subject I try
to make it as accurate as possible,
whether it’s cattle mutilations or
coal bed methane or whatever, I
“Librarians are real cheerleaders when they
find something that they like. They’re
like independent bookstores. It’s
word of mouth; they tell people to
read these books, and they do.”
don’t want anybody
to read those and say,
‘That’s not right.’”
Most times, he said he gets it right,
but like Joe Pickett, he flubs it
occasionally. A few readers seem to
scour the text for real and imagined
mistakes. “The biggest nitpickers
of all are gun nuts. Those are the
ones that really adamantly take
offense if I’ve got a .308 Winchester
Magnum, but it should be a .300
Winchester Magnum. That really
just makes them mad. I talk to some
writers – Harlan Coben is a big, bestseller, New Jersey guy, and he was
talking about that. He doesn’t know
anything about guns. He tried to put
different kinds of guns and weapons
in his story, and he’d always get them
wrong, and people would always yell
at him, so now he just writes, ‘He
picked up a gun. He shot the gun. He
put the gun back.’ He never gets into
any specifics.”
While turning out a book a year,
Box remains active in the family
business. He spends his mornings
writing at his home in Cheyenne,
in a quiet room with a view of a
window well. Afternoons, he
heads into town to
the office.
“I can’t
really write
well in the
afternoon
anyway,”
he said.
Above: Buttons made to promote the One
Book, One Community event in Uinta
County featuring C.J. Box’s book, Winterkill.
7
C.J. Box at a seminar in the South of
France, 2004
“It’s pretty good
to get out of
this basement
and go to work
somewhere. I
know I’d get
weird if I just
stayed here all the
time. I’ve talked
to too many
writers who do
that.”
He also gets
out and about,
promoting his
work and taking
part in book events. Among his
many appearances, he visited Uinta
County February 23 and 24 to cap
off the local “One Community,
One Book” celebration. A “One
Book” event encourages everyone in
the community to read and discuss
the same book – in this case, Box’s
Winterkill. The Uinta County
Library Foundation purchased
hundreds of copies of the book and
distributed them freely. In addition
to traditional book groups, diners
at local restaurants and bars found
discussion questions at their tables,
and computer junkies could use an
online forum.
“They really got everybody
enthusiastic about it,” he said. “It
was just overwhelming to be in a
community where everybody’s read
the book.”
An avid reader, Box has supported
Wyoming libraries by donating
characters to fundraising silent
auctions – the donor’s name goes in
the book, but only Box gets to decide
what happens to their character
in the story. He recently donated
450 hardback mystery books to the
Laramie County Library System that
he received when he was a 2005 judge
8
for the Edgar Award.
“I’ve always used libraries,” he
said. “Growing up in Casper, I was
always at the library. That’s where
I learned to read different kinds of
books. I remember every place I
lived, that’s one of the first places I’d
try to establish myself: in Lander, in
Saratoga, which had a tiny library at
the time.
“What I found is how unbelievably
supportive Wyoming libraries have
been of my books – invited me to
talk, and always had the books there.
Librarians are real cheerleaders when
they find something that they like.
They’re like independent bookstores.
It’s word of mouth; they tell people
to read these books, and they do.”
He added, “Wyoming embraces
their writers and it’s almost like kind
of a southern tradition in a way.
We’re a small population, but they
really read everything. Old guys in
the YMCA will have just read the
new Mark Spragg book because it’s
set here, and they do that with mine.
It just amazes me how literate and
how much the state is really into it.”
Upcoming Wyoming
appearances by C.J. Box
C.J. Box is kicking off a national
book tour in May to promote his
sixth Joe Pickett novel, In Plain
Sight. See him at these Wyoming
locations
• Laramie: Chickering
Bookstore, 11 a.m. May 20
• Cheyenne: City News
Bookstore, 2 p.m. May 21
• Casper: Ralph’s Books, May 22
(Time TBA)
• Sheridan: The Book Shop,
6:30 p.m., May 24
• Cody: Western Writers of
America conference, June 15-18
(More info: www.westernwriters.org)
• Pinedale: Sublette County
Library, 7 p.m., Sept. 7
• Casper College: Equality State
Book Festival, Oct. 19-21
(More info: www.equalitystatebookfest.com)
Photo of bison looking
into the Yellowstone
Research Library
courtesy Yellowstone
National Park, Museum
Collection. Photographer: Bridgette Case.
Yellowstone
Research Library
Past, Present and Future
Just before the break of dawn, two librarians cautiously open their
doors. They look right, then left, checking to see if the large shadows
outside are anything other than cars. If the path is clear, they start down
the hill, on their way to work in Yellowstone National Park.
In the winter, we (the two
librarians) arrive in the dark and
leave before sunset. Through the
library windows, we watch the sun
dawn slowly across the landscape and
then slip quietly into the mountains.
We have seen elk, pronghorn, and
bison graze on the grassy hill across
the road. Ravens and hawks often dip
in front of the local school, located
next door. Snow and rain sometimes
sweep toward us over the mountains.
Other days, the clouds meander
slowly across the landscape, never
quite reaching the Gardiner Valley.
The sound of rain on the glass of the
dome overhead is soothing on a hot
summer’s day.
In the summer of 2004, the library
moved (with the museum and
archives) from the basement of the
Albright Visitor Center. Formerly
located in Mammoth Hot Springs,
the library is now on the second floor
of the Heritage and Research Center
(HRC), five miles north. Instead of
looking up at the feet and legs of
passing visitors, people at the library
now look out at a vast expanse of
mountains and can even catch a
glimpse of the Roosevelt Arch. The
reference desk, located behind a glass
wall on the lobby of the second floor,
faces out toward the floor-to-ceiling
windows of the entranceway to views
that are truly spectacular.
With a situation like ours, it is
not hard to empathize with the
wonderment of the first visitors to
Yellowstone Park. These travelers
were used to the bustling cities with
crowded streets. Here, fresh air and
open spaces were marred only by
the occasional passing animal. While
visitors probably felt jaded by the
entertainments offered in the East,
the wonders here were natural and
unique. Yellowstone offered (and still
provides) distractions like nothing
travelers could see anywhere else in
the world.
9
This was a place that, not being a
viable plot of land for farming and
not being conducive to development,
was set aside for the enjoyment of
the people. It was to be a pristine
paradise where Easterners could
come to gape at the beautiful
canyons, the roaring waterfalls, and
the majestic geysers. Yellowstone
was a spot that a newly emerging
country could compare to the
great architectural history of its
forefathers. It helped to create a sense
of national pride.
Unfortunately, not all of the
first visitors found as much peace
as we experience here today. In
several journals from the library
collection, visitors bemoan the fact
that the park does not live up to
the advertisements promised by the
railroads. The inconveniences of
reality far outweighed the promised
romance. Pervasive dust and lack of
accommodations, combined with
geysers and animals that did not
perform on command, caused some
people to regard Yellowstone with
ill-favor.
However, there are just as many
people who write of the wonder they
found in this place. Those who were
lucky enough to see geysers such
as Beehive and Geyser wax lyrical
about what they have seen. Some
visitors were amazed at the chance to
have seen such animals as wild bison
and fearsome bears. When many
of these early visitors went home,
their accounts were often written
up in local newspapers, sharing their
experiences with those who had
stayed at home.
Even though the park was
considered by many to be “the
wilderness,” that didn’t mean that
certain expectations were dropped.
One such expectation included
constant entertainment. Many
people were happy with watching
the bears and geysers or with dancing
in the halls or sitting by the fire.
Others were grateful for the chance
to do something more edifying.
10
A small army library was formed,
early in the park’s history. In 1904,
Alfred Talbot Richardson noted in
a traveler’s report, “under Major
Chittenden’s supervision there
has also been gathered at engineer
headquarters in the last two years, a
library, as full as it could be made, of
Park literature, including magazine
articles and newspaper clippings,
as well as books – a thing of which
many an interested visitor has felt the
lack in the past.”
In 1933, the creation of the
Yellowstone Library and Museum
Association (today, the Yellowstone
Association) helped the library to
grow further. Funds were made
available for new acquisitions, as well
as the hiring of library staff. The
connections between the Yellowstone
Association and the library continue.
Many of the classes offered at the
Yellowstone Institute wander the
great outdoors, and then come to
the Heritage and Research Center to
experience some of the culture and to
read books we have on the topic.
At the same time the Yellowstone
Association was being established,
the basement of the visitor’s center
was excavated to make room for
the library and museum collections.
It has been available to park
employees and visitors since that
time. However, the collection has
expanded considerably from the
original shelf.
The library still collects park
literature, magazine articles and
newspaper clippings in addition
to books. Our collection is made
up entirely of items relating to
Yellowstone Park, its hallowed
history as well as the geography,
geology, flora and fauna found within
its borders. Even with hundreds of
new items published every year,
we manage to collect most of the
materials published about the park.
Collections at the Yellowstone
Research Library help researchers
and the public connect with the
world outside. Access to specific
information on everything from
bison to the bacteria that live in
thermal areas is available here. We
don’t claim to have every item
written about Yellowstone National
Park, but we don’t give up hope that
we will one day have them all. Until
then, we continue to work with the
(still extensive) collection that we
have now.
The new HRC provides plenty
of space for these materials. We
now have a large reading room,
with very comfortable furniture,
courtesy of the Yellowstone Park
Foundation. There is plenty of
room for our stacks as well as the
vertical files. There is plenty of room
for researchers to move through
the collection without having to
maneuver around the staff who had
desks located in the stacks. There are
large tables with room to spread out
as well as carrels for more private
study.
Visitors today experience both
the wonder and frustration that
early travelers felt. Many of the
same geysers still play. People still
come to look at the animals which
wander free. While some of the
inconveniences, such as that of dusty
roads, are no longer an issue, they
have generally been replaced by other
difficulties such as bear jams and
overcrowded parking lots.
The Yellowstone library collection
provides a glimpse into the outdoor
world of Yellowstone. At the same
time, we create a bridge to the past.
Materials here span the entire written
history of the park. Every day, when
the two librarians leave the Research
Library, they are proud to know that
they have helped patrons discover a
little bit more about the wonderful
slice of Nature that is Yellowstone
National Park.
-Jessica Gerdes, Yellowstone librarian since June, 2005.
Jackie Jerla,
Yellowstone librarian since August, 2003.
9
Jim Zumbo
A Living Legend
Photo by Thomas Kelsey,
The Outdoor Channel.
Jim Zumbo writes about cooking and hunting the West, choosing to live where he
says is the best place for hunters in the U.S. — Wyoming.
Jim Zumbo has been entertaining and educating sportsmen for years as Hunting
Editor of Outdoor Life magazine. In addition to his skills as a book author and cooking
expert, Jim’s pretty handy with a rifle, hunting his way through life with the trophies
to prove it. He has written 23 books, has been a lecturer on big game hunting for
25 years and is now hosting a year-round TV show, “Jim Zumbo Outdoors,” on the
Outdoor Channel.
What in your life led you
to be an outdoor writer?
When I was a kid, I was raised
in the East, and I had parents and
family that were very much involved
in hunting with the family, even
though we were from New York.
So from early on I had mentors and
I always liked to read when I was
a kid. The library was my favorite
spot. I couldn’t get enough stories
about animals and the outdoors. So
English was my best subject in school
for some strange reason. I went on
to a junior college to study forestry.
I wrote a story about an old, elusive
deer that was published in a small
college paper. I went out West to
Utah State and somehow I got a
position with the university paper
as the outdoor editor, but in the
meantime I had gotten two degrees
in forestry and wildlife and went on
with a fifteen year career with the
government. But all that time I was
writing because I loved to do it and it
paid money. It was a win-win. I was
able to use my spare time to make
some income for the family.
11
Libraries were a part of
your childhood?
Very much so, I can name a dozen
books right now that I read as a kid.
One was Maverick the Beaver and I
think I read every Paul Bunyan book
there was. There was another book
about otters and another one about
waterfowl, pretty much just fiction
animal books. Those really turned
me on to reading. I really liked to
read about the early explorers. I
always liked the adventure stuff. I
always thought I was born 100 years
too late.
How did you choose to
live in Wyoming?
That’s easy. When I came out West
in 1960, I was on a bus coming from
New York State to Utah to finish
my bachelor’s degree. I remember
looking out the window in this
bus, and I had been riding for like
60 hours and it was early in the
morning, just breaking daylight
and I looked out the tinted window
and I realized we were no longer in
12
Nebraska. No more corn, no more
alfalfa, just buttes and desert and
sagebrush and funny looking animals
that I assumed must have been
antelope. And I was about 19 or 20
years old and I told myself, I’m going
to live in this state someday.
How I actually got here, I went
to Utah to get my degree and had a
fifteen year career in the government
and went back East at West Point
for eight years in the military
department. I ran the hunting and
fishing department. I worked in
Utah as a wildlife biologist and I
got a job offer in 1978 to work for
Outdoor Life full-time.
So I gave up 15 years of government
as a wildlife biologist. It was a time
with my family when the kids
were just right to move, so being a
full-time writer now, all I needed
was a typewriter (this was before
computers) and a telephone and a
mailbox. So I said, where do I want
to live? I decided it was going to
absolutely be Wyoming and Cody
was my far-away first choice because
I have hunted every state, all fifty
states and all over the world and to
me, this is the best big game hunting
there is anywhere, of any area. Also,
being close to Yellowstone Park,
I live in the mountains here, here
west of Cody, I’m 25 miles from the
park and I do a lot of photography.
And right now there’s bighorn
sheep on the highways and elk in
the backyard. It is THE place to
live as far as I’m concerned. But
Wyoming as a state is also the best
place to be, the politics here for
game management and hunting are
number one with no close second.
The game department here is doing
a great job. We have the best quality
hunting and fishing and outdoor
potential of any state in the west.
What has been your most
rewarding experience as
a writer?
My best experiences as a writer are
when I have been able to sway public
opinion toward some conservation
battle or battle where outdoor people
Jim Zumbo with a contest winner. Photo by
Thomas Kelsey, The Outdoor Channel.
benefit. Other rewards have been
when I have taken my kids hunting
or fishing for the first time. I once
took my wife and my two youngest
kids across Canada in a motorhome
on a fishing trip from the Pacific
Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean on a
story for an RV magazine. Moments
like that create the most memories.
I’ve also been responsible for
catching a murderer who killed two
game wardens because my story had
his picture in the article and he was
recognized. There’s just been a lot of
things that come to mind when I’m
asked that. People often ask, “What’s
your favorite stories?” It’s really hard
to say, but generally it’s hunting
with family and friends and fishing
and just being outdoors and having
that bond.
How and why did you
make the transition to
television?
Well, to tell you the truth, I had
done everything else. I don’t want
to sound arrogant or vain, but I’ve
been the hunting editor for Outdoor
Life and with the magazine for 27
years. Outdoor Life is the biggest
hunting magazine in the world, I
write a monthly column, and I’ve
written 23 books. I’ve done a lot
of videos, I do speaking tours and
seminars all over the country. The
one thing I had not done and wanted
to was maybe TV and I was dragged
kicking and screaming by the guys
at The Outdoor Channel. I really
didn’t want to do it because I didn’t
know much from the production
standpoint. We sat down after many
years of discussion and many years of
me being very elusive and we came
to terms and I have my own show
which is going on its fourth year.
To tell you the truth, television is
not fun from the hunting standpoint.
I’ve got a cameraman five feet away
from me 24/7. I can’t get away
from the guy. That’s his job. It is
no longer a real, realistic hunt; it’s a
performance, because I can’t pull the
trigger unless he tells me to. And we
try very hard to get all the footage
before and after the hunt. We have
to do some recreates, and then come
the graphics and the music and the
editing and back and forth, my
production guys live in Missoula,
MT and we are constantly FedExing
and emailing back and forth, so it’s
a major, major deal. But saying that,
when it finally airs, I’m proud of it.
In the show, I’ve noticed
you’re very passionate
about showing that you
eat what you hunt.
That’s exactly right, you go hunting
and by golly, why not show the
rewards of the hunt because that
brings it full circle. When I was
working with guys at The Outdoor
Channel, I said, I want my show to
be different. I don’t want it to be just
killing stuff and shooting stuff, I want
to tell a story, I want the local culture,
I want traditions. So, for example,
when I went to Botswana, in Africa,
we did a three part episode series of
the people in the villages and their
fight with AIDS. And how everything
we shot we brought into the people.
We brought them clothing, sleeping
bags, and got into their lives and told
that story. On another episode, or
series of episodes, we were up in the
Arctic with the Eskimos, just last year,
in fact that just aired recently. We
talked about the Eskimos and how we
speared fish and their hardships and
how they dry their meat and their
fish. It tells a story. I want to get into
the environment of the place where
I’m at.
What are your
expectations for the
future of hunting in
places like Wyoming and
the West?
Let me rub my crystal ball here,
and I’ll tell you… I think the biggest
threats to hunting don’t necessarily
come from animal rights people
or anti-hunters. Of course they
are very active, they are very well
funded. They have some very smart
attorneys. They attack hunting by
litigation and legislation and ballot
box management. Yes, that is a
formidable group that you need to
be aware of.
But for me, the biggest danger to
hunting is the fact that statistically
the average age of the American
hunter is getting older. And what
that means is that there’s less
recruitment. There are fewer kids
hunting. And that’s easy to figure
out. We are moving from a rural
society to an urban society. Heck,
when I was a kid, there was no
internet, there were no malls, and
we just went outdoors and enjoyed
it. Now kids have so many things
to do. Everything considered, we
have fewer kids out there and that, I
think, is a big danger.
On the brighter side, there are
more women hunting than ever
before. That’s documented, and
that’s not a surprise either, women
are doing a lot more stuff that men
used to years ago. And I really
welcome that. I see more and more
gals who are passionate hunters.
That kind of takes away from us
guys are out here being heroes and
being he-men and guzzling down
beer, because when you see a 17year-old, blue-eyed, blond girl out
there with her friends hunting,
you can’t really make that claim.
But as far as hunting in Wyoming,
if hunting ever stops in the U.S.,
Wyoming would be the last state
where it stopped.
Wyoming is such an outdoororiented state. I think this is the best
state to live in as far as someone who
loves the outdoors. People come
here because they love the outdoors,
for the most part. So, it’s different. I
love the fact that there’s more mule
deer than people in Wyoming.
13
Helen Higby-
She found her dog, horse and
cowboy in Wyoming
Helen Higby was not the first
woman to climb the Grand Teton.
She was, however, the first woman
to stand on its 13,772-foot summit in
the dead of winter, Jan. 4, 1974.
Her husband, Larry, stood by
her side. The Higbys were part of
a National Outdoor Leadership
School (NOLS) expedition, led
by Paul Petzold. Two women on
the expedition, both experienced
14
climbers, had already attempted the
summit and failed, one hitting bad
weather and one succumbing to
altitude sickness.
“People say, ‘How did you do
that?’” Higby said. “Heck, if you’d
had Larry Higby behind you poking
you in the butt with an ice ax, you
would have made it, too.”
Today, Helen is retired after many
years of working in Wyoming
libraries. She lives at the home in
Lander that she and Larry once
shared and raises the “mostly
Morgan” horses they bred. Larry died
in March 2004 from injuries sustained
in an automobile accident.
She still considers her landmark
winter ascent as a fluke, and typically
downplays it. “I don’t consider
myself a climber,” she said. “Nobody
else does either, for that matter.”
Higby grew up in New York State.
“I went to college in New York
City and hated every minute of it,”
she said. She majored in geology,
because it got her out of the city
and into the outdoors and the West.
Sometimes, just in her mind, as
when in the classroom things like the
Grand Canyon and Devils Gap. were
discussed
“I’m going to tell you something.
People think it’s cute, but it
isn’t intended to be cute; it’s as
fundamentally honest as I know
how to say it. From the time I was
about ten years old, I wanted a dog
and a horse and a cowboy. And I got
everything I wanted. I don’t mean a
drugstore cowboy, and I don’t even
mean a rodeo cowboy. You don’t
find a true cowboy in New York
State. As soon as I was in control of
my own destiny, I was in Denver,
and then I was in Wyoming.”
After graduating from college, she
took a NOLS course in August, 1968.
“It was the perfect therapy,” she
said. “Instead of wanting to be dead,
I wanted to be alive. And instead of
being in a claustrophobic city, I could
see for dozens of miles.”
After finishing that first course, she
decided to go on a winter climb of
the Grand Teton over New Years
1969. The weather that year didn’t
allow anyone to reach the summit.
It was on that trip when she met
her “cowboy”- Larry Higby. Larry
was an outdoorsman - expeditioner,
hunter, mountaineer - who was
instrumental in the founding of
NOLS. The two were married Jan.
23, 1971.
“Best thing I ever did. For 33 years
and two months, we had the kind
of marriage most people only dream
of,” Higby said.
“The man exuded confidence.
He was experienced, not just in
mountaineering, but in essentially
anything that had to do with
outdoors. Safety was intuitive. He
didn’t have to think about being
safe. He did what it took to be safe.
He knew how to be comfortable in
the out of doors. Larry would build
a comfortable camp. Whatever the
setting, whatever the equipment,
he would do what it took to make
things comfortable.”
To make things more comfortable
on the next winter ascent of the
Grand (1969-70), Larry Higby
convinced NOLS founder, Paul
Petzold, to use snow caves instead of
tents.
Higby said the snow caves were an
improvement over tents. “People
think that they would be just awful,
so cold and claustrophobic. I’m a
little surprised that I didn’t find
them claustrophobic, Temperaturewise, you have to keep it below
freezing, because if you don’t, they
start to melt and drip on you, and
you certainly don’t want that. So
the temperature outside can be
whatever, and the wind can be
howling, and you get inside the snow
cave and you’re warm, for being on
a mountain on the winter, and it’s
completely quiet. You don’t have to
listen to the wind.”
On her second winter ascent, Helen
Higby and Larry’s daughter Alison
made it to the high saddle, at 13,000
feet. On that trip, Higby said, “We
had some spectacular visual delights.
There was a plane from some TV
station in Idaho circling. The fellow
took some pictures, so we actually
had some aerial photos of the group
of us on the high saddle. The clouds
were below us, but it was kind of
hazy even up to where we were.
We could stand there and wave our
arms and see our shadows out in the
haze. It was fantastically wonderful.
Alison and I were indeed the first
women to make it to the high saddle
in the winter, so that was kind of
neat.”
Earlier on that trip, below the
low saddle (11,000 feet), Larry was
carving out a labyrinth of snow caves
“It kept about four or five or six of us
busy scooping the snow away that he
was chipping off. And all of a sudden,
we just hollered at him, ‘Come out!
Come out! You must come out!’”
Grumbling a bit, Larry emerged and
all of them basked in alpenglow.
“Lots of people talk about alpenglow.
They think it’s when it’s dusk and
the sky is that kind of salmonpeach color,” Higby said. “Well,
that isn’t alpenglow. Alpenglow
is when all of the ice crystals in
the air are reflecting or refracting
orange, and the air is orange. And
that sounds preposterous, but that
is true alpenglow. A person is IN it.
And that, that has to be maybe the
most spectacular visual experience
I’ve ever had. I’m falling far short of
describing it. When I say orange, it’s
not the orange that you get out of the
Crayola box. It is sunset orange, is
the only way I can think to describe
it.”
On the 1973-74 winter climb of
the Grand Teton, “There was a fair
amount of rivalry about who was
going to be the first woman to the
top,” Higby said. “I thought it’d be
a fun thing if I were, but I wasn’t
spending any adrenalin on it.”
Two women - both experienced
climbers - tried and failed to reach
the summit. “A summit assault in the
winter is not like driving up to the
base of El Capitan and climbing up,”
Higby said. “The gear you have to
carry, the clothing you have to carry.
The wind is a factor. Coupled with
the temperature, you have the wind
chill. Avalanche is a factor. So it’s
several quantums more dangerous.”
Because of the gear needed, a winter
ascent also requires more team
support than a summer attempt.
“You would be foolish in the
ultimate to attempt a winter climb
on your own. So, as soon as you start
adding more people, it becomes more
complicated.”
The day of their ascent, Helen and
Larry woke early and burrowed out
of their snow cave that had drifted
shut. They climbed to the low saddle,
where they met with other members
of the expedition.
“We
socialized for
a little while
and then
decided if we
were going to
make it to the
summit, we’d
better get on
our way. It
went along
successfully
and the
weather was
good. The
one thing
that was hard for me - I’m not real
tall. My legs do reach the ground, but
I’m still not very tall. And the guys
that had gone ahead had kicked the
steps into the snow, and they were
tall, so the steps were vertically, they
challenged me.” She laughed, “I was
literally ‘vertically-challenged.’”
At the high saddle, there was a
mix-up in communications as to
whether the Higbys should attempt
the summit or climb back down.
The forward climbing group left the
“protection”- the pitons and other
climbing gear - in place, and the two
headed for the top.
“The scariest part of that climb was
what is called ‘The Crawl,’” Higby
said. “It’s on the North face, and if
you can visualize going across the top
of a roof, you’ve got one knee on one
side, and one knee on the other and
one hand on one side and one hand
on the other, and you’re really very
secure. You’d have to work at falling.
“The difference between crawling
on a roof and crawling on ‘The
Crawl’ on the Grand is that on your
right side, there’s a cleft in the wall.
So there’s a “roof” above you and at
the far end of this, you have to really
get down on your belly and simply
wiggle along. The scary part is that
it’s a 3,000 foot drop on your left
side, it’s pretty close to sheer, and
you can indeed see down 3,000 feet.”
Helen and Larry Higby cooking over a
campfire on a dry desert “lake” bed.
15
Larry kept telling her to look down
the drop, but she refused. “You can
order your climbing partner or your
spouse to do a lot of things, but
you can’t order them to focus on
something they don’t want to focus
on.
“Up to this point, there were
a couple of ‘gulpy’ places. The
technically difficult part of it is at
the end of the Crawl. When you
can stand up, you have to lean back
a little bit out over this 3,000-foot
precipice to grab your handhold to
get you up to the next place. And
that - that was definitely a gulp.”
Once through the Crawl, they
headed for the Chimney. “It’s a
vertical area that is three-sided. You
put your back against one side, and
your hands and your feet against the
other and you just keep scooching
yourself up. I guess some people
found that difficult, but I didn’t.
Guess I’ve got enough weight on
my lower back to give me lots of
“purchase” holding power?
“Once you get through the Crawl
you’re going to make it unless some
horrible weather condition blows
in. Even then, it’s better to go to the
top, because coming down, you don’t
have to go through The Crawl, you
can do a rappel.” After the Chimney,
she said, “Some of what you have to
go through is a fairly steep pitch, and
you do want to pay attention because
you don’t want to go sliding off into
Idaho. But it’s not difficult, and you
just sort of keep walking until you
get to the top.
“Once you get to the top, you have
a 360-degree view, which wherever
you are is a magnificent thing to
have, but having a 360-degree view
on the top of the Grand Teton is a
lifetime experience.”
Rather than crawl back, the group
took the easier 140-foot rappel back
down. “The last 30 feet is free,” she
said. “You’re just dangling there in
the air. The wind was blowing and
at that point in my life I was light
enough that the wind blew me off
course. The guys at the bottom had
16
to grab the end of the rope and pull
me back.”
It took a couple of days for the
expedition to get back down to
Teton Park. “Paul [Petzoldt] was
trying to get all the publicity he
could for NOLS, so there were
reporters and quite a few people at
the park headquarters. Publicity is
not my thing,” Higby said. “Really
the best thing about getting down
I was able to go in the women’s
restroom and sponge off a little bit
and put some clean clothes on. Boy
that felt wonderful.”
After her climb, Helen returned
to her job at the Fremont County
Library, where she worked from
1971 to 1983. She earned her master’s
degree from the University of Denver
School of Librarianship in 1980
She served as Library Development
Officer at the Wyoming State Library
from 1983 to 1986, before becoming
director of the Sweetwater County
Library System.
When Helen retired from her work
as a librarian on Oct. 1, 2001, she and
Larry rode horseback more than 100
miles from the main library in Green
River to their home in Lander.
“Almost the whole way we were
going, we could see Sweetwater Gap,
which is where we were going to
cross the Winds and get into Fremont
County,” she said. “Larry kept
pointing at it and saying ‘There it
is, there’s where we’re going, there’s
where we’re going.’ I think the part
that I loved the most was when we
came to the sand dunes, which would
be southeast of Farson. The horses
loved it and we just galloped and
galloped across the dunes. It was the
greatest fun.
“We took a week. We laughed at
ourselves for taking that long because
if we’d been serious, we probably
could have done it in three days. But
what was the point? The point was
to make a transition, to spend some
time with each other doing what we
loved to do. It couldn’t have been
better.”
The 1973-74 trip was the last winter
climb up the Grand Teton for the
Higbys. They did climb it two or
three times, as well as a few other
peaks in the summer. They spent a
lot of time outdoors in the mountains
and wilderness, gradually migrating
from backpacking to horsepacking.
Helen considered herself more of
an expeditioner than a climber, and
Larry, “Oh man, if you’d asked Larry
what he was, he probably would
have told you ‘A hunter.’ Because
come hunting season, everything else
went by the wayside and we went
hunting. Believe me, some of those
hunting expeditions were definitely
expeditions. In the snow, in the cold,
many miles, many hours from what
Larry called civilization.”
“He would just get so excited when
he’d see animals - elk or deer or even
antelope on the plains or oh my
gosh, badgers. If he saw a badger, it
didn’t matter if he was driving or
horseback or whatever, he’d bail off
and go chasing that badger. He’d say,
‘People ask how far do you chase a
badger? Well, you chase the badger
until the badger gets tired of it and
starts chasing you.’ Animal life just
gave him a high.”
Love of the outdoors was a
fundamental attitude they shared.
“When you’re in the mountains, or
on the desert for that matter, and the
area that you can see is measured in
miles rather than feet or even yards,
and the miles are significant, it makes
my soul expand,” she said. “Now
how’s that for corny? But I’m sitting
here, and that’s what I’m feeling.
That’s the big picture.”
“But the small things are also
magnificent. You get up into the high
mountains and the alpine flowers are
tiny, but it’s as if they still have the
same amount of pigment in them.
Their size is so reduced that that
pigment is concentrated. The alpine
forget-me-nots, there’s an alpine
paintbrush and there’s a ground
cover called mountain heath, and it’s
sort of a heather, and that’s - if Larry
and I have a flower, that’s it.”
“For Mardy Murie,
wilderness is personal”
I
f one person was the heart of the American conservation movement in the 20th
century, it was Margaret “Mardy” Murie. She died at her home in Moose, Wyo. in
2003 at the age of 101.
Mardy was part of one of the country’s foremost conservationist families. Her
husband, Olaus, was director of the Wilderness Society from 1945 until his death in
1963. Olaus’s brother, Adolph, was known for his pioneering research on predators
in national parks, particularly in Alaska. His wife, Louise, traveled with him and
was involved with conservation efforts.
Yet, somehow it was Mardy’s voice that became best-known and best-loved.
When President Lyndon Johnson signed the Wilderness Act in 1964, Mardy
Murie stood by his side. Her work had also helped bring about the creation of the
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. In 1998, President Bill Clinton awarded her the
Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.
Photos courtesy Murie Center Archives.
The Murie Center Archives
A small cabin in the Murie Ranch complex houses a small, but
unique, collection of materials about American conservationists
Adolph, Olaus and Mardy Murie.
The collection fills a room perhaps 20 feet by 30 feet. It includes
many of Mardy Murie’s personal papers, photographs and
scrapbooks, donated by her family after her death in 2003. The
Archives has the Muries’ personal library of books on natural history,
wildlife biology, Alaska and the Arctic, and all of their speeches and
writings. They also have a collection of books from environmental
philosopher Paul Shepard, donated by his widow.
The Murie Center Archives is still in its infancy. Linda Franklin, director
of archives, said that work has only recently begun on organizing and
cataloging materials to make them available for research. She hopes
to have materials accessible later this year.
“This is sort of a new thing,” Franklin said. “The basic intention is to
have a central place where people can come and research and read
more about the Muries and their lives,”
What are already available are the photographs: Mardy’s childhood,
Mardy’s and Olaus’s famous 1924 dogsled honeymoon, their growing
family in Jackson Hole. “Then lots of photos starting more in the 50s
and 60s, which was really the heyday for the Muries and their life as
activists,” Franklin said.
Archival holdings aren’t limited to just “official” missives, or even
limited to paper and books. Franklin said they have files of “special
letters” – such as an encouraging letter from one of the nation’s best
bird artists to a young Olaus Murie. There are the “fan letters” from
people whose lives were touched by the Muries.
There are the courtship letters between Olaus and Mardy in the
1920s. “That’s just really interesting to see how much they shared their
world view and like values – and also, they were both so poetic. They
were both eloquent writers,” Franklin said.
“We also have some objects, or artifacts from their lives. They went
on a famous expedition in 1956 to arctic Alaska that directly led to
the establishment of the Arctic National Wildlife Range in 1960. So we
have things like their old canvas and wood backpacks from 1956. We
have things from their home. We have the typewriters that Mardy used
– when she was Olaus’ assistant
and secretary during their 40 years
together. So we have this variety of
historical objects that also have to
be inventoried and cataloged.”
The Murie Center mission is to
inspire mindful action on behalf
of wild nature. “The Muries were
really pioneer conservationists,
but they also spoke from the
heart about conservation issues,”
Franklin said. As the archives take
shape, she added, it will make the
Muries’ legacy more accessible to
all kinds of people.
Wyoming
Roundup
Spring 2006
18 Wyoming
Library Library
Roundup
• Spring•2006
Today, the nonprofit Murie Center
operates out of the Murie Ranch, the
cluster of cabins just inside Grand
Teton National Park that was once
home to the Murie families. On
February 21, 2006, it was designated
a National Historic Landmark – one
of fewer than 2,500 properties so
designated. The Center’s mission is
to continue the family’s legacy by
inspiring people to act mindfully on
behalf of wild nature.
Mardy’s life and work have
been captured in Arctic Dance,
a documentary co-produced by
Jackson, Wyo. filmmakers Bonnie
Kreps and Charles Craighead. The
film was seen on public television
stations throughout the country
during pledge week. Kreps and
Craighead also created a companion
book (see review p. 27).
“She had a special quality that
endeared her to people whether they
agreed with her or not,” said Kreps.
“She came from the heart, she knew
her stuff and she spoke with a kind of
maternal conviction, without putting
people who didn’t agree with her in
any kind of difficult position.”
Born in Seattle in 1902, Margaret
Elizabeth Thomas grew up in
Fairbanks, Alaska, where she met her
husband, wildlife researcher Olaus
Murie. The two married in 1924.
Their honeymoon was one of Olaus’s
field research trips – 550 miles by
dogsled in winter through northern
Alaska, an adventure Mardy would
recount in her book Two in the Far
North.
The cover of Arctic Dance, shows
Mardy as a beaming newlywed in
trail furs. Her mother’s friends called
it the “funny trousseau.” Even in
Fairbanks, it was a bit unusual.
Olaus’s work brought the couple
and their young family to Wyoming
to study the Jackson Hole elk herd
in 1927. In 1945, he left government
service to become the first director of
the Wilderness Society. In 1946, both
Murie families purchased the former
STS Ranch, a dude ranch, and made
Mardy and Olaus
Murie, both
committed to
saving the wilderness. Photo
courtesy Murie
Center
it both their home and a hub for the
American conservation movement.
From those first research trips,
Mardy worked by Olaus’s side,
supporting his work. After his death,
she continued advocating on behalf
of wilderness.
“She was genuine,” said Craighead.
“She had been to all of those places
that she was trying to save. She
had lived in the wilderness. Her
whole early life was based on that
wilderness. There was no way the
politicians could argue with her.
They couldn’t say she didn’t know
what she was talking about.”
Both Kreps and Craighead said
the highlight of filming was when
naturalist and author Terry Tempest
Williams spoke with Mardy Murie
with the cameras rolling. “I would
not call it an interview, that is a very
intimate dialogue they had,” Kreps
said. Craighead said the two were the
“same person, different generations.”
The closeness is apparent on film – it
feels like sitting in on two friends
chatting, rather than watching a
biography.
The film took nearly 10 years to
make. Craighead said one snag was
that initially, they looked for a
broadcast venue, but none wanted
to remain true to the story. “In their
proposed scripts, basically they wrote
her out of her own story. There was
one in particular which turned into
famous people that knew Mardy.
They wanted
lots of action;
their idea of
the Arctic
thing was
helicopters
and snarling
huskies and
that whole
thing.”
A second hold-up was that Mardy
Murie may have slowed down with
age, but she never really stopped.
“She kept doing things,” Kreps said,
“and it was the one and only story of
her life, so there’s no way we could
just shut down when she was still
going off to Washington D.C. to get
the Medal of Freedom.”
Kreps had a personal connection.
She lived on the Murie Ranch for 12
years.
One of Mardy’s gifts was that she
brought a consideration for human
needs and emotion to the debate
over conservation. “She established
the fact that conservation and
preservation of wilderness weren’t
just a political process,” Craighead
said. “She realized that there was
a personality to the land and an
emotional attachment that people
had and needed. I think it made
people realize there was a human side
to all of these places.”
Always eloquent, one of Mardy
Murie’s most famous and telling
statements came in the 1970s when
she was speaking before Congress
on the Alaska Lands Act. She
first quoted the mountaineer Sir
Edmund Hillary. At a hearing in
New Zealand, Hillary said, “They
accuse me of being emotional about
this. I want to ask, what’s wrong
with a little emotion?” Mardy Murie
continued in that vein:
“I am here before you today,
gentlemen, as an emotional
woman… I am only trying here
to tell you why I, an emotional
woman, but a woman familiar
with Alaska, think they should all
in their innocence and beauty be
cherished… Newton Drury, when
he was Director of the National
Park Service, said: ‘Surely the
great United States of America is
not so poor we cannot afford to
have these places, not so rich that
we do without them.’”
Brooke Williams, director of the
Murie Center, said, “To me, emotion
became, at that moment, a dimension
of the wildlands issue that had been
ignored or considered too ‘soft’ for
discussions of this type.” He believes
Mardy Murie’s words that day
inspired many people – including
his wife, Terry Tempest Williams
– to know that “heart” belonged in
environmental activism.
“Nature is not something to which
a connection is optional,” Williams
said, “but is an integral and therefore
essential part of our lives.”
Behind the emotion, Mardy Murie’s
achievements came from humility
and hard work. Both Kreps and
Craighead said they hoped people
who see Arctic Dance understand
how one ordinary life, built around
commitment, can make a difference.
“She was just a normal person who
ended up doing these extraordinary
things because she was persistent and
she believed in what she was doing,”
Craighead said. “She went out and
she worked hard and she did all the
little things: she wrote the letters, she
helped on the manuscripts, she got
up and testified at the hearings as a
citizen.
“Those are the things she actually
did that made a big difference. I
didn’t want people to be intimidated
by the myths that may have
developed about her. Just go out and
do what you can, and it’s going to
make a difference. That’s what she
did.”
19
Leadership lessons
from the wild
Lander, Wyoming is home to the
international headquarters of the
National Outdoor Leadership School
(NOLS), one of the world’s premier
wilderness training organizations.
NOLS was founded in 1965
by legendary mountaineer and
outdoorsman Paul Petzoldt.
Operating out of Sinks Canyon
that first summer, NOLS took 100
students – all men – on monthlong trips through the Wind River
Wilderness. Today, NOLS has more
than 75,000 graduates and offers a
variety of outdoor skills courses in
locations throughout the world.
While on one level, NOLS courses
are about developing practical skills
needed to navigate challenging
natural environments. On another
level, they’re about developing the
teamwork and leadership skills needed
for a successful expedition.
“We teach this concept of
expeditionary leadership and
expeditionary training for a group,”
explained John Kanengieter, director
of NOLS Professional Training. “If
you’re working within a group out in
the mountains or if you’re working in
a group at a business trying to achieve
a specific goal, the concepts are the
same. It’s still people working with
other people to achieve a goal.”
Expeditionary leadership,
Kanengieter explained, is “that idea of
starting at one place, ending up at a
different place, having accomplished
a specific goal in-between and getting
everyone along as a team through
that. Maybe the antithesis of that is
the concept of an organization or
leader attaining the goal at all costs,
including losing group members along
the way.”
Fellow NOLS instructor Missy
White explained, “It’s true that our
leadership philosophy developed from
month-long wilderness expeditions,
yet we hear consistently from our
alumni that what they learned at
NOLS has impacted the rest of their
life in all aspects.
“All of life can be viewed as an
expedition, be it a new job, a marriage,
living together in a college dorm or
raising a family. The same skills that
we rely on to summit a mountain
– effective communication, teamwork,
good decision-making, developing
sufficient skills, the ability to handle
curve balls, constantly learning – all
apply every day in all of our lives.”
NOLS helps each person look at
their leadership role within a group,
whether as designated leader, peer
leader or active follower. “Within
those roles, we practice different
skills of leadership,” Kanengieter said.
“So we pare it down to seven skills:
expedition behavior, competence,
communication, judgment and
decision-making, tolerance for
adversity and uncertainty, selfawareness, and vision in action.”
In a traditional NOLS wilderness
course, the outdoors itself serves as
a teacher. “You’ll often have three
instructors,” Kanengieter said, “and
we’ll call the outdoors or the weather
the fourth instructor, because it
teaches so much. It brings in reallife situations that are not contrived,
or they’re not simulations. A big
thunderstorm, for instance, teaches
you a lot about uncertainty and
tolerance for adversity. The outdoors
brings those things right up in the
forefront, and it’s a pretty powerful
teacher when we get groups in the
field like that.”
In 1999, NOLS established its
Professional Training division to
offer customized leadership courses
to organizations – including those
who want to get those lessons in a
classroom instead of on the trail.
“Through NOLS Professional
Training, we can share the leadership
lessons we’ve learned over the last 40
years with those who want to improve
their leadership and teamwork, but
2001 Library Leadership class doing a
“group massage.”
20
The Seven Leadership
Skills NOLS teaches:
Expedition behavior
Competence
Communication
Judgment & Decision-Making
Tolerance for Adversity &
Uncertainty
Self-Awareness
Vision & Action
don’t have the time, interest or ability
to be outdoors,” said instructor Missy
White. “We believe that great leaders
create an environment that inspires
individuals and groups to achieve their
full potential. What group doesn’t
want a leader like that?”
One of these custom courses is
the Wyoming Library Leadership
Institute. Established in 2001, the
Institute helps the state “grow
its own” library leaders through
mentoring and training. Kanengieter,
White and organizational consultant
Jep Enck teach the Institute.
“The librarians have been really one
of our favorite client groups to work
with,” Kanengieter said. “There’s
always been a great sense of humor
and a great sense of camaraderie.
Librarians have always shown up as
eager learners, and I’ve also seen folks
put themselves into situations where
they’re stretching themselves a little
bit. When you’re teaching, those are
all really great things to see mirrored
back.”
The Library Leadership Institute
is strictly a classroom endeavor.
“People will ask me, ‘So, are we going
to be climbing ropes?’” said Chris
Van Burgh, Wyoming State Library
outreach librarian. “No, we don’t
get to climb mountains. But NOLS
has learned so much in what they do
outdoors in team building: natural
leaders that come out if something
goes awry, pulling your own weight,
that you need more than one type of
personality.”
Holding the Institute in Lander
allows it to tap into the NOLS
expertise. Another advantage, Van
Burgh said, is “getting people out of
their setting, out of their home town,
out of their library, getting them with
folks – their peers that they don’t even
know they have.”
Since the Institute was established,
70 Wyoming library employees
have graduated. Participants are
selected from all types of libraries and
positions on a competitive basis.
Van Burgh said the two biggest
things they gain are confidence in
their own skills and connection to a
statewide peer group.
The Institute was started with a
generous grant from the McMurry
Library Endowment, and is now
funded with Library Services and
Technology Act (LSTA) funds. Van
Burgh said she hoped at some point
to bring past graduates together for a
reunion and refresher course.
Van Burgh has seen Institute
graduates taking on leadership
roles in their libraries, professional
associations and communities – both
meeting their own personal goals and
the goals for the Library Leadership
Institute.
“It keeps happening, and we keep
growing our own leaders,” she said.
“We have a program that actually sets
out to do something and does, year
after year after year.”
For more information: Wyoming Library
Leadership Institute: http://will.state.
wy.us/training/wlli.html National
Outdoor Leadership School: www.nols.edu.
Jep Enck: www.enckresources.com
Above photo: © Deborah Sussex/NOLS
21
Draper Museum explores
Yellowstone’s natural history
A gem of a natural history museum
is located in Wyoming’s northwest
corner at the Buffalo Bill Historical
Center (BBHC) in Cody. The 55,000square foot Draper Museum of
Natural History opened to the public
on June 4, 2002 – the first natural
history museum established in the 21st
century.
The museum highlights wildlife,
geology and human presence in
the Greater Yellowstone region. It
attracted more than $1.3 million in
funding from the National Science
Foundation for its immersive,
interactive exhibits.
“The Draper adds the spice of
natural science to the already rich
broth of humanities disciplines that
has characterized the Buffalo Bill
Historical Center for many decades,”
said Charles Preston, Chief Curator
for the BBHC. He is also Founding
Curator of the Draper Museum,
hired in 1998 to lead design and
development.
BBHC board member Nancy
Carroll-Draper planted the spiritual
and financial seeds for the museum
when she joined the board in 1990. It
was a challenge for a staff and board
focused on Western art and history to
add a natural science component.
“We view humans as being a part of
nature, rather than apart from nature,”
Preston said. “We decided early on
that our best approach would be to
22
draw on the strengths of the Center
and integrate natural sciences with
humanities as appropriate. We were
able to incorporate original artwork
and prints, archival documents, Plains
Indian cultural materials, firearms, and
other cultural and historical objects
and interpretation in our exhibits.
This greatly enriches our presentation
beyond a more traditional ‘scienceonly’ approach.”
The Draper Museum contributes
to the understanding of Wyoming’s
outdoors resources and heritage in
four broad ways. The first is through
research to create new knowledge
about the area’s natural environment.
Current projects are exploring logging
impacts, Yellowstone raptors, human
and grizzly encounters and land use
patterns.
The second way is through the
collections. One innovation of the
Draper Museum has been its focus on
collecting visual and sound recordings
of wildlife, vegetation, landscapes,
and other natural resources of the
Greater Yellowstone region, rather
than reproducing the large physical
collections already housed in other
natural history museums.
The third way is through the
exhibits, which occupy 20,000 square
feet of the Draper Museum and take
visitors on a fun and educational
Greater Yellowstone Adventure.
Finally, the museum engages in
educational outreach with lectures,
presentations, classes and organized
trips out to the field to see wildlife and
wild lands. “Our educational outreach
programs have been overwhelmingly
successful,” Preston said. “Last year we
served more than 15,000 participants.”
Many of the lectures and programs
are filled to capacity, and “our only
limitations have been a staff that’s
stretched too thin and lecture spaces
that have too few seats.”
The BBHC has long been one of
Wyoming’s best-known cultural
centers, attracting 250,000 visitors
a year. “Through the last several
decades, the Buffalo Bill Historical
Center has developed a stellar
reputation as a wonderful cultural
heritage center of the Old West,”
Preston said. “With the addition of the
Draper Museum of Natural History
and after only three short years of
operation, the BBHC has made great
strides toward developing an equally
stellar and widespread reputation as a
natural heritage center of the ‘Wild’
West, past, present, and future. “
Visit the Draper Museum of Natural
History’s web site at http://www.bbhc.
org/dmnh/ .
Photo above: Tile map of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem - Draper Museum of Natural
History - Buffalo Bill Historical Center, Cody,
Wyoming (BBHC photo by Sean Campbell)
Exploring nature’s boundaries
Ted Kerasote
When Wyoming author Ted
Kerasote first came West as a
sophomore in college, “I knew right
away that I was home and that I’d
been born in the wrong place.”
Kerasote’s writings on wildlife,
nature, outdoor recreation and
conservation have appeared in
numerous publications, including
Audubon, National Geographic
Traveler, Outside, Sports Afield, and
The New York Times. He’s published
four books – Navigations, Heart of
Home, Bloodties and Out There – and
edited a fifth, Return of the Wild. His
latest book, Merle’s Door: How Dogs
Might Live If They Were Free, will be
published in Spring 2007.
Kerasote claims sloth made him a
writer. “I was never intrigued very
much by work. As a kid, I prefered to
go fishing , hunting or skiing.” The
summer before he entered college,
his father insisted that he get a real
job. “Being a pretty good kid, I rode
my bike into Oyster Bay, which was
the nearest big town, and got a job
at a hardware store. After three days
of cutting glass, weighing nails and
delivering plywood, I quit and said,
Dad, I can’t do this. I’m not going to
spend the summer inside.” Instead, he
spent the summer fishing – surfcasting
for striped bass – and wrote about it.
He sold the story to Outdoor Life for
$350, more than he would have earned
at the hardware store.
“So I thought, cool, I am quitting
the American workforce as of now,
and I’m going to become a freelance
writer.” He’s dabbled in “real jobs”
since then – being a chef while skibumming in Aspen, guiding for
Outward Bound, loading jets and
working as a carpenter, “I always came
away saying, ‘Thank God, I don’t
have to do that for the rest of my life,’
though I did love my job at Outward
Bound—being in the mountains every
day.”
For the last 20 years, Kerasote has
lived in Kelly, Wyoming, a village
of 90 people that sits between Grand
Teton National Park, the National
Elk Refuge and the Gros Ventre
Wilderness.
“What’s nice about living in Kelly
is that the interface between the wild
and the civilized is very porous,”
Kerasote said. “A lot of my writing
has examined this interface and the
ever-evolving relationship between
wildlife and people. Maybe five to
six thousand years ago, all of us were
hunter-gatherers and were totally
dependent on wildlife for a good part
of our sustenance. So there was a
very one-to-one relationship between
wildlife and our own survival.
“Most people today live pretty
distant from the wild. And yet, natural
systems, as is becoming increasingly
apparent, support us. So my work
has often plumbed that dependence
of people on wildlife and how very
often we tend to ignore it and try to
be observers of wildlife rather than
participants in the natural cycles that
run the planet.”
Part of that natural cycle is hunting,
a subject he plumbed in-depth in
his book, Bloodties. “Bloodties had
the distinction of being condemned
by some members of the hunting
community as well as by some
members of the animal rights
community, which I took as a great
compliment.”
A former vegetarian, Kerasote is
an avid hunter – but for subsistence,
not sport. “I’m not in favor of
competition in hunting,” he said. “I
think going out and shooting animals
to put them in the record book is not
a wise way or a compassionate way to
interact with wildlife.”
In Bloodties, “I wanted to investigate
the ethics of killing charismatic
megafauna in the 20th and 21st century.
One of the ways I addressed this
question was to say I don’t think any
of us are really exempt from killing
23
wildlife.”
Hunting, he pointed out, kills
directly, but agriculture kills indirectly
through habitat loss and fossil fuel use.
Mechanized harvesting kills rabbits,
snakes, rodents and ground-nesting
birds.
“We can try and exempt ourselves
from the traditional cycles of
predation, but someplace, someone
is dying so that we can eat. Should
everyone, therefore, read Bloodties and
become a hunter? No. It just means
that we should be honest about our
dietary choices and reflect on and
thank all those beings who are out
there supporting us, most of them
unwillingly, without whose sacrifices
we couldn’t exist.”
Out There: In The Wild in a Wired
Age examines another interface – that
between technology and solitude. In
the book, Kerasote canoed through
one of the most remote parts of the
globe. His canoeing partner took a
satellite phone for emergencies, but
used it instead to check in every day
with friends and family.
“It provided an opportunity for me
to explore how we go to wild places
and what their particular benefits
may be for people who are harried
by modern lifestyles,” Kerasote said.
“What I find fascinating these days is
that more and more people are really
not willing to disconnect. Even when
they have the opportunity, they’ll
take their satellite phones, they’ll take
shortwave radios, they’ll take videos
– you know, portable DVDs – and
have all the kinds of stuff that we have
back at home and which we so often
complain about – that it fritters away
our time and doesn’t give us any real
peace. Increasingly, the challenge of
going to the outdoors will be leaving
home the communication devices and
simply listening to the silence.”
If Kerasote’s writing has one
theme, “I think it would be to take
responsibility for one’s actions and
be honest about the cost that your
lifestyle inflicts on the rest of the
environment,” he said. “I’ve been on
a bunch of boards here in Wyoming
24
and Montana and there are some
really well-meaning folks who serve
on them, working on environmental
issues, yet their lifestyles are the
antithesis of sustainability. They
don’t seem to be able to make the
connection between having three
SUVs, four homes, and a staff of
people to keep things running, and the
loss of biodiversity.
“Fortunately, those of us who live
in Wyoming can still experience
relatively untouched landscapes. We
are incrediblyblessed to live in a place
that has so few people and so much
open space and wildlife A lot of my
writing has talked about the joy and
peace of mind that people get from
those kind of environments.”
These days, Kerasote isn’t writing
about hunting or the environment.
“What I’m writing about now is my
dog, Merle, whom I had for 13 years,
and dogs in general. It’s called Merle’s
Door: How Dogs Might Live if They
Were Free, and it’s about how dogs
might become more self-actualized
if we gave them more freedom. It’s
a book that is near and dear to my
heart. It’s somewhat of a departure,
but I think you can only write about
the environment for so long before
you turn crotchety with all the bad
news.”
Kerasote met Merle on the San
Juan River in Utah in 1991. “He was
about a 10-month-old pup, roaming
in the desert all by himself, making
his own living. He was looking for a
human to hook up with, and it was
just love at first sight. I put him in
the raft and took him down the river,
and he swam between the kayaks
and hiked with us up canyons and
at the end I said, ‘You want to come
to Wyoming?’ He said, ‘Sure,’ and
jumped in the truck.
“I brought him up here and I gave
him his own dog door so he could
come and go as he wished, and he
became this amazingly self-possessed
dog that later got the nickname of the
‘Mayor of Kelly’ because he would
make thrice-daily rounds around the
whole village.”
He said Merle was an amazingly
steady dog, especially with children.
“The more I read about dogs, the
more I realized that one of the biggest
problems with dogs’ behavioral
problems today is they don’t have
any freedom. They don’t have the
opportunity, especially if they live in
urban places, to be outside, getting a
nose-on and paws-on experience of
the world, so it’s very difficult for
them to learn how to be a social being
amongst other social being. They can’t
learn it from TV. They can’t learn
it from books. They have to learn it
through interaction, and most of the
time, they’re interacting with others
at the end of a leash and they just
don’t have enough experiences in the
greater environment to become whole
beings. So the book, Merle’s Door, is
mostly about Merle, but each of his
experiences is a jumping off point,
a vehicle for discussing how dogs
learn, how we can help our dogs learn
more while also creating dog-friendly
cultures, especially in urban spaces.”
Kerasote did extensive research for
Merle’s Door, with the help of his
local public library. “It’s been a real
joy to be able to go online each day
while I was doing my research and
put in interlibrary loan requests,
which Carol Connors, here at the
Teton County Library has fielded.” he
said, “She is true library heroine and
has processed, at this point, a couple
hundred interlibrary loan requests
for me over the last year. Anywhere
from a few days to a few weeks later,
I’d get a phone call and go down and
collect this pile of photocopied articles
and books. So, the interlibrary loan
system has made the writing of this
book possible and in a way that has
speeded up the process. It just happens
so quickly and so efficiently, that it’s
a wonderful, service for a professional
writer living in a rural place.”
Learn more about Ted Kerasote at
http://www.kerasote.com/. Merle’s
Door: How Dogs Might Live if They
Were Free will be available Spring 2007
from Harcourt.
The Toppan Rare Books Library
Wyoming’s Premiere
Collection of Outdoor
Literature
It seems fitting that one of
the nation’s finest collections of
rare books on hunting, fishing,
and natural history would
reside in Wyoming—where
many of the historic outdoor
events actually occurred.
The Toppan Rare Books Library
is located at the American Heritage
Center on the University of
Wyoming (UW) campus in Laramie.
Nestled in a corner of the second
floor, you feel as if you have
discovered a hidden treasure when
entering its cozy environment with
thousands of volumes neatly arranged
in custom-built bookcases. Artwork
lines the walls and long reading tables
with book cradles invite you to sit
down and examine some of the rare
books at your leisure.
It is home to UW’s rare book
collection, including all of the
University Libraries’ pre-1850 books.
Major subject areas include:
• History and literature of
America (particularly the West)
• History of literature of the
British Isles and Europe
• World-wide travel and
exploration
• Fishing, hunting, and natural
history
• Books written by women
authors (particularly before 1900)
• Various religions
• Examples of the book arts
(illustration, paper, and binding)
This collection of rare books and
manuscripts is named after Clara and
Frederick W. Toppan. Following
the death of her husband in 1966,
Clara, a UW alum, donated their
personal library of more than 4,000
books, and this formed the core of
a collection which now includes
more than 45,000 items. Rare
books comprise the majority of the
assemblage, but there are also many
valuable newspapers, magazines,
illuminated manuscripts, and ancient
artifacts.
Clara passed away in 2001, but she
left a generous endowment to fund
the library in perpetuity. Anne
Marie Lane, Curator of Rare Books
since the library’s inception, put it
this way, “We would not be here, the
books would not be here, were it not
for Clara.”
When I first viewed the Toppan
Collection, I was astounded at the
number of books on fishing, hunting,
and natural history. Through the
glass doors of beautiful hardwood
bookcases, hundreds of outdoor titles
beckoned to me. Lacking the time to
25
delve into even a single shelf, I vowed
to return.
Fascinated by the treasure trove
of books I had discovered, I made
arrangements to meet with Curator
Anne Marie Lane prior to my next
visit. Her infectious enthusiasm for
the library was immediately apparent
and she graciously gave me a tour
of the collection, carefully pointing
out those areas that held outdoor
books of greatest interest to me. As
a former archeologist who made
a mid-life career change to library
science, Anne Marie seems the perfect
curator for such a diverse and historic
collection of literature and artifacts.
According to Curator Lane, there
are approximately 500 books on
hunting. These run the gamut from
19th century accounts of hunts in Asia
and British East Africa on up to the
most notable author’s tales of hunts
in early 20th century North America.
Subject matter is also diverse, with
numerous volumes on both bird and
big game hunting for different species
throughout the world. Examples
of intriguing hunting titles provide
a glimpse into the quality of this
collection:
•Sporting in Both Hemispheres
(1858) by J. D’Ewes
•Hunting in Many Lands; The
Book of the Boone and Crockett
Club (1895) by Theodore
Roosevelt, George Bird Grinnell
•In Haunts of Wild Game: A
Hunter-Naturalist’s Wanderings
from Kahlamba to Libombo” (1896)
by Frederick Vaughan Kirby
•Musk-ox, Bison, Sheep and Goat
(1904) by Caspar Whitney, George
Bird Grinnell, and Owen Wister
•Camp-fires in the Canadian
Rockies (1906) by William
Hornaday
•Hunting at High Altitudes
(1913) by Col. William D. Pickett
and George Bird Grinnell
•Fifty Years a Hunter and
Trapper: Experiences and
Observations of E.N. Woodcock
(1913) by E.N. Woodcock
26
•Happy
Hunting
Grounds
(1920) by
Kermit
Roosevelt
•Cleared for
Strange Ports
(1927) by Mrs.
Theodore
Roosevelt, Sr.
•My Gun
Dogs (1929) by
Ray P. Holland
•Deerstalkers
(1930) by
Frank Forester
•Trails of the
Hunted (1932) by James L. Clark
•Tranquility: Tales of Sport with
the Gun (1936) Col. Harold P.
Sheldon
•Falling Leaves: Tales from a
Gun Room (1937) by Philip H.
Babcock
•Blood Lines: Tales of Shooting
and Fishing (1938) by Nash
Buckingham
The Toppan collection is perhaps
best known for its fishing books.
Numbering more than 600, they
include such rare volumes as a 1797
edition of Izaak Walton’s Compleat
Angler, and Favorite Flies (1892) by
Mary Orvis Marbury, and an original
edition of the Western Angler by
Roderick Haig-Brown.
The rarest and most intriguing
fishing book in the collection is Dry
Fly Entomology, First Deluxe Edition.
Published in 1897 by Frederick M.
Halford, each page is recessed in the
center, and holds actual flies tied by
Halford; there are 100 fly patterns
in all. Only 50 copies of Halford’s
book were ever produced, so this is
indeed a treasure among rare fishing
books.
A more contemporary collection
of angling books was inaugurated
in 2002, when the University of
Wyoming Flycasters donated the
LaFontaine Memorial Angling Book
Collection in honor of the late Gary
Wyoming Game and Fish Department’s Jay Lawson looking through
rare books at the Toppan Library in
Laramie.
LaFontaine, a noted author of fishing
books. It includes much of the best
writing on angling since the 1960s.
There are also many rare books on
natural history and the outdoors,
including a first edition (1854) of
Henry David Thoreau’s Walden.
There is also an 1882 edition of
Journal of Researches into the Natural
Histroy and Geology of the Countries
visited during the Voyage of H.M.S.
Beagle Round the World by Charles
Darwin. I look forward to delving
into this section on my next visit.
If you have an interest in fine
books and the outdoors, I highly
recommend the Toppan Rare Books
Library. Library hours are Monday
- Friday from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
(summer 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.),
phone (307)766-2565. I am sure you
will find Curator Anne Marie Lane
highly knowledgeable and extremely
helpful.
-JAY LAWSON
Jay Lawson has worked for the
Wyoming Game and Fish Department
for 30 years and currently serves as
Chief Game Warden and Chief of the
Wildlife Division.
by Douglas W. Smith and Gary Ferguson
2005. Guilford, Conn.: Lyons Press, 256 p.
ISBN: 159228700X, $23.95
Kate Mutch, Public Services Librarian
Natrona County Public Library, Casper
Arctic Dance: The Mardy Murie Story
by Charles Craighead & Bonnie Kreps
2002. Portland, Ore.: Graphic Arts Center, 128 p., $19.95
ISBN: 155868686X, (pbk.)
FOR WYOMING READERS
The reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone was certainly a
polarizing decision. Most people were adamantly for or against
such an act, with few people in the middle. The last wolf in
Yellowstone was killed in 1926, and in 1995 efforts to reintroduce
the wolf to this region culminated in the release of 31 gray wolves.
A decade after this controversial release, there are 170 wolves
running free. Decade of the Wolf: Returning the Wild to Yellowstone
by Douglas W. Smith and Gary Ferguson is the story of many of
the wolves and what researchers discovered about them in those ten
years, providing insight into the lives of many of these wolves, referred to
by numbers. The best part of the book is the 30 pages of color photos of these wolves,
with a particular favorite showing a mother wolf nursing her young. These Yellowstone
wolves, who have an average life span of less than 3.5 years, have helped the researchers explore
what the wolf means to the ecosystem’s functioning. Wolves sit on the top of the food chain,
and their existence impacts the animal and plant community around them. Reading this
fascinating book, one cannot help but respect this magnificent animal and the scientists who
research them.
bookshelf
Decade of the Wolf: Returning the Wild to
Yellowstone
Based on the critically acclaimed documentary
movie, Arctic Dance: the Mardy Murie Story shows
the life and the impact that Margaret “Mardy” Murie
had on the modern environmental movement. The
book is designed like a scrapbook, with page upon
page of photographs, many used in the filming of the
documentary. Interspersed between the narratives are
excerpts from her diary. This gives the book a very
personal feel to it. It details her childhood in Alaska, her
courtship and marriage to Olaus, and her adventures
exploring the Alaskan wilderness with her husband. It
also tells the important story of her work in protecting
the environment during an era in which nature was seen
as a tool to use. A wonderful book, that tells a wonderful
story about a wonderful woman.
Erin Kinney, Digital Initiatives Librarian
Wyoming State Library, Cheyenne
27
Out There: In the Wild in a Wired Age
by Ted Kerasote
2004. Stillwater, Minn.: Voyageur Press, 160 p., $16.95
ISBN: 0896585565
In a world that’s increasingly connected, how do you get away? Ted Kerasote’s
Out There takes the reader with him to one of the most remote spots on the
globe: a canoe trip down the Horton River to the Arctic Ocean through the
northernmost part of Canada’s Northwest Territories. It’s unbroken wilderness,
hundreds of miles from the nearest road. However, his travel companion brings a
satellite phone “for emergencies,” but instead checks in daily with his family, his
friends and his law office.
Don’t look for this book to be a purist rant against cell phones in the wilderness,
though. Instead, Kerasote approaches the subject with honesty, kind humor and
reflection. What does it mean to be “out there,” but still connected? How does it change
how you experience the wilderness? What chances you take? Wrapped around all this is Kerasote’s
masterful, poetic language. It brings every detail of the trip alive – from the wildlife and glorious 24-hour
Arctic daylight to the muscle aches and mosquito swarms. It’s not surprising that this book won the National
Outdoor Book Award in 2004. Out There is a lovely read, one for a quiet afternoon where you want to enter
a whole different world without roads or computers or telephones. Well, only one telephone. And only for
emergencies.
Susan Vittitow, Publications Specialist
Wyoming State Library, Cheyenne
In Plain Sight
by C. J. Box
2006. New York: Putnam, 320 p., $24.95
ISBN: 0399153608
A new boss that epitomizes bureaucratic kingdom building, a missing
matriarch and the escalating violence over who will inherit her ranch
(the biggest in the area), revenge for past perceived wrongs; what more
could you ask for in the sleepy little county of Twelve Sleep, Wyoming!
C. J. Box takes Joe Pickett in a direction that you might just think
you should have seen coming, but like most of us, you didn’t. Domestic
problems in Joe’s own family and in the families of his friends and
neighbors are all too familiar for most of us and C.J. Box ties the
resulting home tensions in with work problems with a backstabbing
new boss very effectively. Add in a killer determined to enact revenge
for a perceived wrong, who is to blame for the missing matriarch and
who gets to inherit what in a good old fashioned dynastic squabble,
and you have a real humdinger of a story. This continues the excellent
development of a very human game warden and family man and has left
me wondering what is coming next in Joe Pickett’s life.
Paul Pidde, Branch Manager
Glenrock Branch Library
28
The Open Space of Democracy
bookshelf
The Open Space of Democracy
by Terry Tempest Williams
2004. Great Barrington, MA: Orion Society, 107 p. $8.00
ISBN: 0913098639 (pbk.)
Terry Tempest Williams has made democracy personal. She leads us through life
enlightening the reader to specific issues that have become personal to her and how she
has involved her neighborhood as well as state senator to look at problems that threaten
our democracy. Williams’ diligence has helped others see why these issues threaten our
open space of democracy.
Williams was asked to speak at the University of Utah’s commencement address May
2, 2003. She was able to meet with several of the seniors before the engagement. She
was struck by their desire to find solutions and alternatives to the problems facing their
generation. Therefore, she delivered the speech that brought cheers and boos from the
audience. She ended the speech with “Question. Stand. Speak. Act. Make us uncomfortable.
Make us think. Make us see. Keep us free.” This sparked controversy that took Williams and Senator
Bennett to the Artic National Wildlife Refuge. The vivid descriptions allowed the reader to view the area as if
he were with her. The desire to protect such areas became a more important issue.
The area where Williams lives was another issue for keeping democracy alive. She spends time describing
the problems and the solutions the neighborhood used. This desert land is very fragile and houses endangered
species of plants, so the neighborhood set about protecting their valley.
This book allows contemplation of one’s own values and what democracy means to the reader.
Judy Morris
Retired from Big Horn County School District 1
A Green River Reader
A Green River Reader
edited by Alan Blackstock
2005. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 240 p., $17.95
ISBN: 0874808375 (pbk.)
A Green River Reader is a compilation of journals, explorations and experiences of various
travelers to the area of the Green River dating back to the early 1800s. Its pages transport
you into a world of wilderness and take you back to the beginnings of man’s attempts
to conquer the challenges of a wild and free river as it traverses the miles, sometimes
threatening to snuff out life itself. He weaves a spellbinding view of the breathtaking beauty
of the river in its ever changing landscapes. Blackstock is well qualified to write about the
Green River as he has studied and researched it extensively through the journaling of earlier
visitors to the region as well as through his own travels. He embraces both the past and
present attractions of the area and the varied pleasures it offers to all who come within its
boundaries. Blackstock is an educator who has both taught and experienced the lure of the Green
River. The anecdotes and personal experiences shared from the journals of early visitors to the area really
bring the story to life for the reader. Having spent the major part of my life in the region featured in Blackstock’s
book only increased my appreciation for the history and beauty of the Flaming Gorge, Brown’s Park and
other surrounding areas. I will no longer take for granted the great attraction it offers to all who are willing to
experience life and adventure on the Green. This is a wonderful guide book for learning of the past and becoming
better acquainted with the area traversed by the Green River.
Bonnie Hanks, Media Aide
Evanston High School
29
Man and nature connected at
Museum of Wildlife Art
The National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson, Wyo.
has nearly 2,300 works of art, some dating as far back as
2000 b.c. This year Wyoming’s Congressional Delegation,
Senators Craig Thomas and
Mike Enzi and Representative
Barbara Cubin, are working
to make it one of less than 20
nationally designated museums
– an elite group that includes the
Smithsonian museums.
“National designation signifies
something unique that belongs
to all of the people of our
nation,” Sen. Enzi said. “The
National Museum of Wildlife
Art is the premier museum
dedicated to enrich and inspire
public appreciation and knowledge of fine art related
to nature and wildlife. National designation would
acknowledge that a major museum in Wyoming is the
most important museum in the nation of its kind.”
The museum’s web site notes: “Wildlife art is one of
humanity’s earliest art forms, dating back to prehistoric
cave paintings. Its long existence in virtually every culture
exemplifies humankind’s vital relationship with nature.”
Founded in 1987 with a private gift of a collection of art,
the museum overlooks the nearly 25,000-acre National
Elk Refuge near Jackson, Wyo. The museum strives to
enrich and inspire public appreciation of fine art and
humanity’s relationship with nature by focusing its
exhibitions and programs on wildlife.
The NMWA has a library collection, opened in 2001,
that is part of the Wyoming Libraries Database (WYLD)
network of libraries. “The library collection represents
a virtual treasure trove of
information,” said librarian
Melisa Nicoud.
The library collection has
approximately 5,000 titles
covering not only the museum’s
artists, but also American art
history, photography, natural
history, zoology and Native
Americans. Audio-visual
holdings are growing: videos,
DVDs, nature music and other
compact discs.The library
is a non-circulating research
collection, open to the public and researchers 1-4 Mon.Fri. or by appointment.
“This is a special and, in many cases, unique collection,”
Nicoud said. “Many first and limited editions,
autographed and rare works pertaining to natural history
and the evolution of fine wildlife art, make this library a
very special complement to the local public and historical
society collections and an asset to the greater virtual
community in the pursuit of fine art research.”
The National Museum of Wildlife Art is open daily,
Closed Columbus, Veterans, Thanksgiving and Christmas
day. To learn more about the museum, visit the web site
at http://www.wildlifeart.org.
http://will.state.wy.us/roundup
The Wyoming Library Roundup is a quarterly publication of the Wyoming State Library, the Wyoming
Library Association and the Wyoming Center for the Book. If you would like to continue to be on our
mailing list, if your address has an error that needs correction or you know of someone who would like
their name added or you would like your name removed from our mailing list, please send your request to:
Wyoming State Library, Publications and Marketing Office, 2301 Capitol Avenue, Cheyenne, WY 82002.
Library
Wyoming
Roundup
Wyoming State Library
2301 Capitol Avenue
Cheyenne, WY 82002
CHANGE SERVICE REQUESTED
Presorted
Standard
U.S. Postage
PAID
Cheyenne,
WY

Spring 2006 - the Wyoming State Library

Transcription

Similar documents

2015 WYOMING MERRIAM`S TURKEY HUNT – 2 BIRDS

THE SECRET BEHIND SUSHI DEN`S SUCCESS l^H[[i

Hunting brochure - Bear Basin Adventures

Everyday tools for ranchers and farmers

Pheasant Hill 10 Pg PDF - Newman Realty, Torrington, WY

Athletics - Western Wyoming Community College

Eagle Roost Brochure

Fall 2011 - Wyoming Public Schools

sycamore plaza flyer.qxp

Grandmother of Conservation