Wild Thoughts from Wild Places
Collins, Clare
entering the United States and thereby increase the economic incentives for organized crime to become involved. Perhaps the most touching aspect of Twilight on the Line emerges from...
...Or is it both...
...Consider this passage from "Grabbing the Loop," in which the essayist laments plans to dam the Futaleufu River, a white-water Mecca, into a series of placid reservoirs: "Humanity badly needs things that are big and fearsome and homicidally wild...
...Joseph A. Page, a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, is the author of The Brazilians and Per6n: A Biography...
...But first, let's talk about tigers, particularly white tigers, genetic engineering...and on and on...
...Perhaps the most touching aspect of Twilight on the Line emerges from Rotella's portraits of Mexican reformers who have labored heroically to overcome the challenges posed by the border...
...Is the white tiger propagation a legitimate enterprise in zoo keeping...
...But I don't recommend that approach...
...Why does Spelius do this...
...Counterintuitive as it may seem, we need to preserve those few remaining beasts, places, and forces of nature capable of murdering us with sublime indifference...
...The book's title doesn't refer solely to the unmarred, out-there wilderness...
...Only Connect...
...Quammen can write overlong and he does (as you can see) pontificate...
...The book is organized around four themes, "The River," "The City," "The Mountains," and, finally, "The Heart," that inner landscape that can be just as challenging to conquer as the most hairy stretch of river rapids...
...Quammen himself has a rare ability to write with broad appeal on topics ranging from white-water kayaking to trout fishing to Telemark skiing...
...Wildness is found not only on a secluded stretch of the Salmon River or Chile's Futaleufu River, but also in the foothills of Burbank, where coyotes roam, and in the urban "canyons" of New York City, which have fostered amazing evolutionary adaptations in the "postmodern pigeon...
...Quammen is editor-at-large for Outside, a glossy monthly whose emphasis on exotic (and expensive) destinations and pricey gear makes it the Vanity Fair of outdoor magazines...
...Wild Thoughts is too exhausting...
...As Quammen explains, a whitewater hole is "a recirculating maw of foam...a vortex laid horizontal...
...In a sense, he just can't contain himself...
...That is what Quammen, ultimately, is writing about...
...In lesser hands, I suspect that most of these adventures would prove interesting only to hard-core devotees---or madmen...
...Quammen's writing is energetic in the extreme, stuffed with information, but also with brash, provoking, indeed wild thoughts...
...These wildlife corridors allowing flora and fauna to thrive as nature intended them to are the only hope we have for slowing "ecosystem decay," according to some...
...For Spelius, the big, hunky hotdogging legend of the kayaking circuit, is about to turn forty-one...
...The White Tigers of Cincinnati," for instance, warns Commonweal 2 2 May 22, 1998 about the dangers of breeding endangered species--in this case white tigers, veritable genetic mutants--for zoo exhibits...
...Wild Thoughts is most delightful when focused on quirky, slightly nutty personalities...
...he asks...
...According to Rotella, the border at Tijuana is "the future in the making," where California meets Tijuana and the best and the worst of both societies collide...
...Younger, more agile kayakers are passing him by...
...He wrote a column titled "Natural Acts" for Outside for fifteen years, and most of the essays in this collection first appeared in the column or as features in Outside, Rolling Stone, or Powder...
...Contestants perform stunts such as nosedives and rolls in what are called white-water "holes...
...The issue is complicated because those questions lead to others, some of which are easy to answer and some hard...
...However, this essay, ostensibly about building the perfect rodeo kayak, is really about aging and moving on in one's life...
...For example, Federico Benitez, who became Tijuana's police chief in 1992, was a lonely crusader who struggled to modernize his force, foster respect for human rights, and combat criminal elements among his own officers as well as within federal and state law-enforcement agencies working in the city...
...Quammen's "Wild" is an existential destination as well: places "unpolluted by absolute safety and certainty...
...He tells us simply, "Water is my medium...
...Considering that this essay collection is one in a string of recent books to grow out of articles first published in Outside--the others include Sebastian Junger's The Perfect Storm and Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air--the magazine's literary stature hardly seems in peril...
...He then berates the "safely tenured academics and high-minded literati" for not seeing past the "advertisements for fancy sunglasses and Rollerblades and miraclefiber underwear" and the "stories that might politely be called fatuous junk," to the meaty, imaginative nonfiction work slick magazines also publish...
...In "Only Connect" he discusses the Wildlands Project, an effort to create socalled conservation corridors, reconn e c t i n g p o c k e t s of w i l d e r n e s s throughout the U.S...
...For that reason, I began reading section by section, essay by essay...
...He rarely resists the urge to throw in one more aside or digression...
...What follows is an extended debate on the nature and value of zoos...
...Many of Quammen's essays focus on the fleeting nature of things...
...Clare Collins is a freelance writer and tutor who lives in Pawcatuck, Connecticut...
...Chris Spelius, subject of "Time and Tide on the Ocoee River," is the founder of the white-water rodeo, a type of kayaking competition for the very skilled--or the very foolish...
...Jorge Alberto Duarte, the idealistic warden of the state penitentiary in Tijuana, permitted the wives and children of inmates from southern and central Mexico to reside within, granted conjugal visits liberally, fostered dialogue with the prisoners, and even tolerated the existence of a unique intramural society with its own laws and economy...
...By doing so, he managed to avoid the kind of killing and rioting that has occurred in penitentiaries in Brazil and elsewhere...
...Spelius has designed the perfect rodeo kayak and hopes to get it produced by a major manufacturer in time to use it in the World Whitewater Rodeo Championships, just three months away...
...Commonweal ~ 3 May 22, 1998...
...But Quammen, author of the prize-winning The Story of the Dodo, uses his exotic subjects as a framework for explaining everything from biodiversity to the physics of fluid dynamics to evolution...
...Or is it show business...
...Both Benitez and Duarte paid the ultimate price for their earnest efforts...
...Although he gives somewhat short shrift to how Southern California (and especially Anglo-dominated San Diego) is reacting to the collision, his portrayal of the Mexican side of the line is deftly drawn, thoroughly disturbing, and constructively provocative...
...Federal police ambushed and assassinated Benitez on a cross-town expressway, while Duarte fell victim to kidnappers who snatched him in front of his home and shot him as he struggled to escape from their vehicle...
...The latter had been seriously corrupted by the narco-traffickers, to the extent that on one occasion a vicious firefight broke out between federal and state agents working for competing gangs...
...NATURE AS SPRINGBOARD Clare Collins n the introduction to this colI lection of essays, David Quammen offers an apologia for, as he calls it, the "slick" newsstand magazines...
Vol. 125 • May 1998 • No. 10
