To what extent should we value nature? It is as glorious as it is fearsome, as beautiful as it is merciless, an unimaginably ancient system that has nurtured countless varieties of organisms through the eternal cycle of life. For this, as well as being the cradle of humanity, it should be respected and cherished, an ecosystem that is beyond our right to control. And yet, is it not, in some sense, a means to our end? Humanity is, as far as we know, the only intelligent species of any consequence to have evolved on Earth. For the sake of our future potential, for the limitless ways in which a hyper-technological humanity could ignite life on thousands of dead worlds as it spreads across the stars, is it not acceptable that Earth's biosphere be sacrificed to achieve that end?
It is not ours to sacrifice, or it is the means to our end. Millions of species depend upon it to survive, or none matter as much as we do. It seems, at times, an eternal debate, a clash of irreconcilable ideologies that will forever prevent a healthy consensus from coalescing around this most critical issue. But while the debate is perpetuated, Mr. Brinkley asks us to consider the wilderness we'd so willfully tame before taking to it the axe of civilization.
When, in 1867, Alaska was sold to the United States by an imperial Russia made poor by the Crimean War, it was thought, by Americans, to be a boondoggle. Coined as Seward's Folly, Alaska was dismissed as a worthless tundra, an unimaginably cold stretch of sub-Arctic land farm ore suited to wolves and bears than man. All this would change in the closing decades of the 19th century when the Klondike goldrush transformed the image of Alaska from a worthless, wintery stone into a glittering gem in the American crown, a forest of fortune where any man could pluck a lifetime of wealth from branches sagging under the weight of abundant fruit. These initial strikes only fuelled speculation in Alaska which would eventually yield up rich deposits of oil, minerals and timber, plentiful resources that, if cultivated, could bloat the coffers of American corporations for decades to come.
But to a group of adventurers and hunters, explorers and jurists, to cultivate Alaska would be to destroy it. It would mean carving highways through its forests, shafting mines into its soil, blowing the tops off its mountains and felling its trees. It would mean forcing the species that called Alaska home to make yet another retreat before the constant encroachment of a civilization that had already thoroughly thoughtlessly despoiled lands to the south. Determined to prevent the speculators and the capitalists from taking away what they considered to be North America's last wildlife refuge, this movement of disparate souls banded together to drive legislation through the American congress that would forever preserve a huge swath of Alaska from the cruelties of cultivation. For fifty years, they scratched and clawed, fighting interests both special and selfish to keep pure the magnificent and quiet world they called home. For some places are simply too grand and too beautiful to be torn apart by industry. And so, when, in 1959, President Eisenhower signed their victory into law, they rejoiced. For humanity would have to find its resources somewhere else, leaving pure this last, great wilderness.
Though hobbled by a narrowness of focus, the Quiet World is, nonetheless, a thorough and engrossing document of a generational effort to create the Alaskan wildlife Reserve. Penned by a first-rate historian whose chronicle of Hurricane Katrina sits in the first rank of disaster stories, it devotes its full attention to the men and women without whom Alaska's wilderness would have surely been allowed to succumb to speculators. Colorful enviornmentalists from John Muir to Mardy Murie, from Charles Sheldon to William O Douglas, feature prominently, their lives and their deeds venerated by an author who cannot hide his deep admiration for their accomplishments which were as improbable as they were immense. And yet, they are, to a crusader, overshadowed by the looming figure of Theodor Roosevelt, that most rugged of individualists whose conservationist speeches and letters are celebrated here with reverence and relish.
But though Mr. Brinkley does a wonderful job capturing the rugged individuals who spearheaded the effort to preserve this rare and immense wilderness, his account fails to do justice to the Alaska that must surely have inspired this project. Though there are some passages that convey general impressions of trees and flowers, mountains and wolves, they are exceedingly rare, scattered glimpses that fail to coalesce into a memorable impression of what must be an extraordinarily beautiful land. Ironically, the author has chosen to relate the history of the lifting up of nature out of the grasping hands of humanity through the eyes of humans. Yes, these are humans who helped save this wilderness from being sullied, but the why of it will necessarily escape us until we are better informed on the nature and the variety of the land in question.
Mr. Brinkley has committed his delightfully ordered mind and his eminently skilled pen to the telling of a necessary tale. In doing so, he has unearthed any number of courageous people who would have otherwise been remembered by only an environmentally conscious few. In this, he has done a worthy service. But in failing to leave the reader with a stronger impression of the Alaska that has captivated these crusaders, he falls short of his lofty best. Fascinating but flawed work... (3/5 Stars)
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