5, file 3; Box 36, File 1. Daily 1cKenzie, "PussYfoot" Johnson, 16 November J 912. ile 3; Box 17, File 5; Box 17, File 39 DEEP MAPPING HISTORY: WALLACE STEGNER'S WOLF WILLOW AND WILLIAM LEAST HEAT-MOON'S PRAIRYERTH: A DEEP MAP by Susan Naramore Maher I Wallace Stegner has written that "[d]eeply lived-in places are exceptions rather than the rule in the West. For one thing, all western places are new; for another, many of the people who established them came to pillage, or to work for pillagers, rather than to settle for life. [...J Successive waves have kept western towns alive but prevented them from deepening the quality of their life, and with every wave the land is poorer.,,1 I Patterns of settlement, migration, and extractive industry have encouraged I a shallowness, Stegner suggests, that prevents a significant connection to the ,! land and its histories. Yet since World War II-and more urgently since the I f 1960s-Stegner does discern "some sort ofindigenous, recognizable culture [ ... ] growing on western ranches and in western towns and even in western cities."z Contemporary writers of the West are consciously and critically compilers of history, Stegner argues in Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs, and their writings will go a long way in countering a history of restlessness, a "displaced condition" that ignores the mandates of place. Stegner's oeuvre speaks to one author's resistance to the shallows. His 1962 nonfiction masterwork, Wo/fWillow: A History, a Story, and a Memory of the Last Plains Frontier, marks a turning point in literary history of the Plains and of the larger West. It is the first book-length imagining of an evolving contemporary genre, what William Least Heat-Moon calls "the deep map" (his subtitle to PrairyErth). According to critic Randall Roorda in a recent issue of the Michigan Quarterly Review (Winter 2001), the deep map is an "incipient genre" that "impinge[s] upon genres more explicitly scholarly and research-oriented."3 In its "sedimentation of impressions and, Susan Naramore Maher is a professor of English at the University ofN ebraska-Omaha. She is a Fellow with the Center for Great Plains Studies at the University of Nebraska­ Lincoln and past president of the Western Literature Association. Her current research interest is a study of Great Plains nonfiction writers, both past and present. -- ,.. 40 especially, texts (since history is textual)," the deep map exhausts "nearly every resource ofobservation, record, reminiscence, myth, and impression."4 Historians themselves have been contemplating metaphors of deepness and their assistance to narrative. In both The Way to the West (1995) and The Contested Plains (1998), for instance, Elliott West considers the need for new stories that trace through "indirection" the "webs of changing connections among people, plants, institutions, animals, politics, soil, weather, ambitions, and perceptions."5 We must, he argues in The Contested Plains, "take into account the deep and the recent past, the interwoven choices of Indians and whites, and the inseparability of the environment from human society and action.,,6 Additionally, Neil Campbell, an American Studies scholar in the United Kingdom, has called this approach the "new spatial geo-history."7 Rather than "totalizing" and "unifying," such histories seek narratives "in which many voices speak, many, often contradictory, histories are told, and many ideologies cross, coexist, and collide.,,8 The deep map, then, presents the multiple histories ofplace, the intercalated stories of natural and human history as traced through eons and generations. Deep mapping requires challenging, innovative narrative forms. Wolf Willow, the headwaters ofdeep mapping, takes us into the multiple layers of remote Whitemud, Saskatchewan, Stegner's fictional name for Eastend. During his boyhood, Stegner often felt an absence of history in a town engulfed by space with few fixed points. A "palpable" sense of history eluded him and others: "We knew no such history, no such past, no such tradition, no such ghosts."9 To his childish mind, the town dump provided the best evidence of history lived. "If the history of Whitemud was not exactly written," he remembers in one of Wo IfWillow 's most famous scenes, "it was at least hinted, in the dump."Io In the dump, Stegner found "our poetry and our history."11 Thus Stegner turns to the trope of archaeology, to a figurative dig that unearths the multiple layers of story embedded in place. As a mature writer, Stegner returns to seek history beyond the confines of a junk yard, a record of the discarded. Memoir is an important feature of the history Stegner presents~it is the foundation of his narrative. Yet as literary critic John Daniel reminds us, "for Stegner the personal is not sufficient [ ... ] he progresses to the larger weave in which his family's life is only one thread."12 Stegner must move beyond the charged sensuousness of his own childhood to find the deeper history of a placc so "marginal OR submarginal in its community and culturallifc."13 As the "Herodotus of the he deep map exhausts "nearly cence, myth, and impression."4 ng metaphors of deepness and y to the West (1995) and The t West considers the need for m" the "webs of changing ions, animals, politics, soil, st, he argues in The Contested recent past, the interwoven arability of the environment ,Neil Campbell, an American alled this approach the "new Ind "unifying," such histories , many, often contradictory, exist, and collide.,,8 The deep ce, the intercalated stories of illS and generations. vative narrative forms. Wol! us into the multiple layers of 'ictional name for Eastend. sence of history in a town 'palpable" sense of history tory, no such past, no such d, the town dump provided ory of Whitemud was not ~llow 's most famous scenes, dump, Stegner found "our he trope of archaeology, to )fstory embedded in place. listory beyond the confines r is an important feature of m of his narrative. Yet as ~gner the personal is not ~ in which his family's life the charged sensuousness f a place so "marginal OR As the "Herodotus of the 41 Cypress Hills," Stegner must incorporate the longer history of the first peoples of Saskatchewan and their contact with European adventurers, traders, and surveyors, and the even longer geological history ofplace. 14 He investigates the legal, political, and economic institutions of Empire, "the problems of an expanding continental hegemony."15 Oral history and personal artifacts like letters and journals contribute to Stegner's textured narrative. When the facts as lived, recorded, told, and published no longer suffice, Stegner turns to fiction halfway into this history, story, and memory. In critic Robert Harlow's words, "we leave offremembrance and history and watch while the spirit and edge of the frontier are blunted by the hard facts of the climate of the region."16 His cowboy tale,"Genesis," and homesteading drama, "Carrion Spring," relate human struggle against a fierce landscape during the infamous killing winter of 1906-7. Through fiction, Stegner's deep map engages the reader in the immediacy and inchoateness ofharsh living during the transition from nomadic communities to settlement. In "Genesis," Stegner releases in the sound ofa prairie blizzard "[t]he voices of all the lost, all the Indians, metis, hunters, Mounted Police, wolfers, cowboys, all the bundled bodies [ ... ] all the ghosts [ ... ] all the skeleton women and children of the starving winters."17 Wind, cold, and landscape overwhelm Stegner's protagonists. At one point, Rusty Cullen, working his chores and chopping through the river ice to provide for the living, "watch[es] the water well up and overflow [ ... ] like some dark force from the ancient heart of the earth that could at any time rise around them silently and obliterate their little human noises [ ....]"18 The possibility of erasure, of disappearance, depresses him: "It was easy to doubt their very existence; it was easy to doubt his own.,,19 Living and enduring, in sync with the cattle he watches, Rusty sees both human and beast "in league against the forces of cold and death."zo Taut and graphic, "Genesis" relives a killing winter in all its fury and "cosmic injustice."zl In the paired story, Molly and Ray Henry's dreams of participating in the epic construction of Whitemud, of embracing "the opportunities open to the young and industrious," are defeated by the carrion stench "breathing out in the first warmth across hundreds of square miles.'>22 "Carrion Spring" reeks of death and irony and presents to us "a hopeless country," yet Ray, infuriated by the land's resistance, argues that they stay: "We're never goin' to have another chance like this as long as we --- .... 42 live. This country's goin' to change; there'll be homesteaders in here soon as the railroad comes. Towns, stores, what you've been missin '. Women folks. And we can sit out here on the Whitemud with good hay land and good range and just make this God darned country holler uncle.,,23 History, of course, will prove such optimism a fool's bargain. In his final chapters, Stegner comes full circle to the settlement town of his childhood and to the difficulty of presenting the history of a "discontinuous" place. Dreams brought homesteaders and merchants to remote Whitemud, but reality drove many out. In the twentieth century, Whitemud became a town that doubted it would have a future, an evolving history. Like Ray and Molly Henry, Stegner's parents arrived full of hope; but the drought years following their arrival in 1914 would drive them out. Settling in a country "that hated a foreign and vertical thing," the Stegners attempted to establish themselves in resistance to "[s]earing wind, scorching sky, tormented and heat-warped light," and the treeless terrain. 24 The nature of the place would win out. In the 1930s, the Dirty Thirties, drought would again shrink Whitemud's population. "Dead, dead, dead, says the mind contemplating the town's life," Stegner keens. In light of such futility, the graveyard and the dump seem to Stegner the town's most permanent features. The town, at its 1955 jubilee, was but a shadow of its nineteenth­ century expectations. John Daniel sees in Stegner's historical narrative a purposeful pattern: "Memory gives form to the flux of subjective experience, history gives form to collective experience held in memory, and fictional narrative further forms memory and history into the wholer truth of art.,,25 In an article devoted to Stegner's storytelling, Elliott West has underscored the essential narrative elements that make place-based historical writing so vital: place "is the accumulation of all the things that people have done on that spot [ ...] a 'place' involves the meanings that humans have taken from an area and from what has happened there, the perceptions and emotions of individuals responding to their surroundings, and to events.,,26It is Stegner's genius that he presented "western history as a perceptual and emotional encounter.'m Such narrative deep mapping works, in essayist William Kittredge's words, to achieve exphrasis, to expose time's deeper connection in "moment[s] which [contain] the past and [imply] the future."28 In Stegner's memorable ~,.,.",,~>- • ~re'll be homesteaders in stores, what you've been ut here on the Whitemud 1st make this God darned a fool's bargain. ircle to the settlement town of resenting the history of a lesteaders and merchants to ut. In the twentieth century, ld have a future, an evolving parents arrived full of hope; l 1914 would drive them out. vertical thing," the Stegners to "[s]earing wind, scorching treeless terrain. 24 The nature lirty Thirties, drought would , dead, dead, says the mind In light of such futility, the le town's most permanent •a shadow of its nineteenth­ rrative a purposeful pattern: perience, history gives form ional narrative further forms ."25 In an article devoted to ored the essential narrative ling so vital: place "is the . done on that spot [ ...] a :aken from an area and from j emotions of individuals 26 It is Stegner's genius that Id emotional encounter.'m ,villiam Kittredge's words, ~onnection in "moment[s] 28 In Stegner's memorable 43 use of metaphor, history is a pontoon bridge: "Every man walks and works at its building end, and has come as far as he has over the pontoons laid by others he may never have heard of.,,29 Unknowingly, each step he takes as a child covers space already inhabited, already built up around stories. Yet as a boy, Stegner, and the other children who "grow up in a newly settled country," suffered from "discontinuity."3o The past was an "unremembered" thing, and Whitemud the capital of this absence. Unlike the descendants of "Gabriel Dumont or Big Bear or Wandering Spirit," he was unable to understand the longer history of this place, to feel "the passion of personal loss and defeat."3l Only in middle age, Stegner has confessed, did he miss history: "I realized that I didn't have a single place to which I could refer myself. I had no crowd, I had no gang, I had no sociological matrix or context except as I could find it or form it by going back along my life.,,32 What Canadian novelist Robert Kroetsch has called "a kind of archaeological act," an "archival method [ ... ] trusting to fragments of story, letting them speak their incompleteness," structures Stegner's presentation of Whitemud's rich layers. 33 As "middle-aged pilgrim," he returns to the "monotonous surface" of Saskatchewan to look beyond the failure of the last plains frontier, beyond the drought years that destroyed homesteaders' dreams. Though Stegner advances his readers' understanding of Cypress Hills geology and tribal history, his first archival fragment, beginning in section II, is "First Look," a recreation ofthose early May days in 1805 when Lewis and Clark's Corps ofDiscovery gazed northwest toward the northern divide. They could not follow the Frenchman River north, but proceeded westward. Earlier European explorers had also missed the Cypress Hills, which remained undisturbed by European advances until the 1850s. In its natural state, [t]his earth was densely peopled with small creatures as with large [ ...] [the] plains were humped and pimpled with the tailings of their burrows, and across the interminable grasslands, even more homeless and fluid than the clouds that moved from west to east across the immense sky [...] swept the blackness of the buffalo, the red-tawny shadow of antelope bands.34 This land that only brought "unmitigated discomfort and deprivation" to Stegner's family once shimmered with fecundity.35 The arrival of Captain -- ". 44 John Palliser in 1859 forever altered an ancient landscape and brought a transitional metis community to the Cypress Hills. In section II, Stegner analyzes the complexities of this ecological and cultural change, attendant with the unexpected consequences and challenges to the Plains tribes. Fur trading gave way to new economies. Between 1872 and 1874, surveyors in this region mapped out the Medicine Line, the international divide, the 49'h Parallel, and clarified the rule of law on both sides of the border. In 1879, Whitemud (Eastend) was established, and from that point on migration by cattlemen and then farmers transformed the biome irrevocably. Yet of this history, Stegner writes, "[a]1I ofit was legitimately mine, I walked that earth, but none of it was known to me. ,,36 The phrase "I wish" acts as a refrain in the chapter "Capital of an Unremembered Past," underscoring the adult author's need to counter absence. In an interview with literary historian Richard W. Etulain, Stegner discusses the shallow vision of history among his neighbors in Whitemud: "All of those people were orphans of a sort. All of them had a very limited and almost completely unliterate kind of memory. More than that, the Indians before them had left no marks on that country, except a few tepee rings. There weren't many relics of the past. books or otherwise, and so I couldn't have learned anything about the history of that town, although I could now.,,37 A similar sense of the elusiveness of history marks another deep map, William Least Heat-Moon's PrairyErth. Stegner begins Wolf Willow cartographically: he situates Whitemud on a map, giving us the highways and topographical features that lead us to his boyhood home. From his map, Stegner advances his sense of history. Envisioned "personally and historically," he waxes, "that almost featureless prairie glows with more color than it reveals to the appalled and misdirected tourist. As memory, as experience, those Plains are unforgettable; as history, they have the lurid explosiveness of a prairie fire, quickly dangerous, swiftly over.,,38 Stegner's map of memory and history clearly lies below the surface of Heat-Moan's text. Deep mapping one county, Chase County, Kansas, Heat-Moon turns to cartography as well to lend direction and stability to a place marked by transcience, economic instability, and cultural erasure. Yet the irony of mapmaking or map reading, in both Stegner and Heat-Moon, is our complicit knowledge that a map, any map-like history itself-is an inexact representation. As much as a grid, on a map or in a text, structures perception, offers itselfas guide and meaning, it also requires critical reading ient landscape and brought a ; Hills. In section II, Stegner md cultural change, attendant :nges to the Plains tribes. Fur 11872 and 1874, surveyors in ~ international divide, the 49 th sides of the border. In 1879, m that point on migration by iome irrevocably. Yet of this tely mine, I walked that earth, ~ "I wish" acts as a refrain in ast," underscoring the adult ~ichard W. Etulain, Stegner his neighbors in Whitemud: J of them had a very limited :mory. More than that, the country, except a few tepee ooks or otherwise, and so I lry of that town, although I ss of history marks another IErth. Stegner begins Wolf d on a map, giving us the to his boyhood home. From ~nvisioned "personally and s prairie glows with more :ted tourist. As memory, as istory, they have the lurid :, swiftly over. ,,3g Stegner's Ie surface of Heat-Moon's ansas, Heat-Moon turns to lity to a place marked by erasure. Yet the irony of eat-Moon, is our complicit ry itself-is an inexact or in a text, structures ;0 requires critical reading 45 and revision. In critic O. Alan Weltzien's words, "as moments of representing any landscape, they immediately and inevitably lag behind the living thing they purport to represent. ,,39 In PrairyErth, the map becomes a visual signifier of history, of narrative that is itselflagging behind in representation. History and maps are never finished, never completed, always approximate. Yet if both are to work, we must trust in their efficacy, trust in their fragments, to repeat Robert Kroetsch. Writer Thomas Fox Averill has noted the important ways maps connect with memory and imagined history. A map begs us to elaborate, refurnish, flush out the landscape it represents. Speaking of his deep connection to Kansas and his love of maps, Averill continues, "maps become more real as they are traveled and imagined (imaged), thus made both concrete and intuitive. ,,40 In such a process, history and cartography become necessarily "participatory. ,,41 In creating the narrative structure ofPrairyErth, in representing his deep map ofChase County, Kansas, Heat-Moon absorbs the culturally mixed cartographic traditions of the Plains. This history is fascinating in and of itself. Rock art, elk skin celestial charts, birch bark scrolls, and other forms of indigenous mapmaking preserve the spatial knowledge of diverse Plains tribes. Received visually or orally, Native cartography aided European exploration of the North American continent, and, in particular, provided Lewis and Clark with "an unparalleled grasp of terrain."42 This contact between cartographic traditions signals the political and cultural transformation of a landscape. From indigenous mapmaking to the efforts of professional and amateur surveyors to contemporary GIS image-makers, Heat-Moon finds inspiration in tracing the thick description ofa long history. Heat-Moon's mapping metaphor is meticulously worked out in PrairyErth. His arrangement is purposeful and inventive. Though I disagree with scholar Pamela Walker's argument that PrairyErth is "randomly arranged,"43 I do agree with her assessment that Heat-Moon starts with a visual icon of place, the map, features Bakhtinian ideas of chronotope or an interdependent representation of "time-space," and plays with a self­ conscious, "writerly" narrative. Heat-Moon's critical consciousness is essential in questioning the assumptions that structure his map, and he asks his readers to test the grid right along with him. A pivotal quality of maps is how they organize time. The casual map reader does not usually mull over "the accumulated thought and labor of the past" distilled into a map's .._.-~."., ! ",. 46 features. 44 But maps "make present [ ... ] the past" as well as bring into being future understanding.45 Maps infuse the present, "our living [ ... ] now [ ... ] here," with the past.46 Cartographer Denis Wood eloquently explains, We are always mapping the invisible or the unattainable or the erasable, the future or the past, the whatever-is-not-here-present­ to-our-senses-now and, through the gift that the map gives us, transmuting it into everything it is not [ ... ] into the real.47 Spreading twenty-five U. S. Geological Survey maps of Chase County over his floor, Heat-Moon walks the 6 foot by 7 foot "paper land," tryiflg to get a finger on the grid. Alan Weltzien's brilliant analysis of PrairyErth 's grid structure asserts, "the book constitutes a gargantuan metaphoric extension of the USGS quad map," that "he writes his initial parables of cartography inside the primary American cartographic narrative.,,4K Each chapter "contains six sections and of these, the first two and final sections- 'From the Commonplace Book,' 'In the Quadrangle,' and 'On the Town' respectively-repeat themselves."49 Each chapter begins with a cartographic icon, an abstraction of the grid, which emphasizes the narrative's dynamic relationship to mapmaking. Yet this system born of the National Survey of 1785 proves unworthy ofhis task. The grid represents "arbitrary quadrangles that have nothing inherently to do with the land, little to do with history, and not much to do with my details."50 On Roniger Hill, in Chase County, Heat­ Moon tests the grid, "[s]tanding here, thinking of grids, and what's under them, their depths and their light and darkness," seeing if the "digging, sifting, sorting, assembling shards" of this county's past will come to life, will breathe as living history.51 The grid is a starting point only. Reading, thinking, imagining, walking, talking, and dreaming build the accretionary levels of his history. In both Stegner and Heat-Moon sensuous engagement guides the initial mapping that leads to complex narration. And like Stegner's deep map, Heat-Moan's "time-space" narrative radiates out from personal history to connect to a deeper geological time and to a longer sense of human habitation. He interviews contemporaries to gather oral histories, anecdotes, and information. He reads history, geography, newspaper accounts, journals, and old letters to add to his store of knowledge. His feet take him many long miles over each quadrangle in the U. S. Geological Survey maps, where vestiges of past worlds and lives / ; I e past" as well as bring into 'resent, "our living [ ... ]!!.Q}y s Wood eloquently explains, the unattainable or the rer-is-not-here-present_ that the map gives us, . ] into the real. 47 maps of Chase County over t "paper land," tryifIg to get nalysis of PrairyErth 's grid ltuan metaphoric extension tial parables of cartography larrative. ,,48 Each chapter and final sections- 'From Ie,' and 'On the Town' rbegins with a cartographic es the narrative's dynamic l of the National Survey of ~nts "arbitrary quadrangles ittle to do with history, and ill, in Chase County, Heat­ If grids, and what's under ," seeing if the "digging, y's past will come to life, ting point only. Reading, ing build the accretionary Ion sensuous engagement larration. s "time-space" narrative ~eper geological time and views contemporaries to ion. He reads history, letters to add to his store over each quadrangle in ofpast worlds and lives haunt him. Hard to find are artifacts from settlement days; harder still are traces of the first peoples of Kansas. Buried below the surface lie the telling layers of former worlds, "the crystalline basement.,,52 As each section of the map is traced, researched, and walked, one gains a sense of gathering loss, ofhistory losing its depths, ofhumanity's ephemerality. IfPrairyErth leaves a strong impression, it is that of loss. Despite all the Geertzian thick description ofplace in Heat-Moon's text, Chase County remains elusive, so much so that by page 600 of his story, he presents his readers with a blackened blank page. The Jeffersonian grid itself becomes implicated in boom or bust cycles, dead end ventures like the Emma Chase diner in the present or the Orient line in the past; the grid has damned Chase County. The grid, as imposed and imposing structure, provides an important portal into Chase County's considerable history that "sweeps from the distant past to the present.,,53 Geographer Ronald Grim, examining the mapping of Kansas and Nebraska between 1854 and 1895, claims that such rectangular precision is "the dominant factor" ofsurveying and consequently settling the Plains. The abstract, two-dimensional grid stands out even at cruising altitudes of35,000 feet. Its presence is ubiquitous. The elegance of the grid seemingly complements the emptiness of the place. Yet the grid is never ahistorical; as a human construction, it reflects the worldview of colonizers (the grid goes back to imperial Rome) who wished to tum terra nullius into production and to push "unproductive" natives off the land. 54 A United States governmental survey system implemented two centuries ago has sectioned off Chase County and "seventy percent of America. "55 The grid determines private and public ownership of our lands; it defines control and power. Contemplating the economic struggles countians face in Elk, Heat­ Moon reflects on the grid and sees "a crimping of expectations and possibilities," a bitter irony "in this grandly open land."56 No longer a mere abstraction that measured wildness and domesticated the heart of America-the positive spin on the survey system-the grid is a "curse [ .. . ] that has helped bring about the effectUAL vassalage" of settlers' descendants. 57 Heat-Moon's thick description, complex rambles, and amassed stories critically appraise the grid, a system that initially seemed "arbitrary," ahistorical, irrelevent to the author's "details."58 As Heat-Moon's stories accrue, so, too, do the grid's effects over history: homesteads too small to sustain families; human vision fenced in and diminished; towns increasingly stripped ofpeople and purpose. In Homestead, Kansas, the grid, 47 \ i ) ~ 48 "Jeffersonian perfection," transforms into a prison, into a net, into a blankness and a darkness: "In my time in the quad, I could never find a way to escape through the gaps into where the real place might lie, and I seemed equally incapable of turning the grid into a screen that might sift out artifacts."s9 What at first presented itself as an enabling metaphor seems to lead not to truth and to connection-to a sense of coherent history-but to absurdity and incompletion. The grid cannot serve as sole method of mapping because so much escapes its boundaries. As a "parable of cartography," PrairyErth provides lessons in incompletion, limitation, and failure. 60 Other kinds ofmaps, other visuals to history, supplement the grid in this text: personal maps of peregrination, topographic dream maps, Native American circlings that • "alter and often subvert the grid. "61 Heat-Moon scrupulously marks the state and county roads he follows-roads that tend to reproduce the grid in asphalt or gravel-but just as often, he leaves them behind, discarding the map and allowing the body instead to guide his exploration. If one stays in the grid, much truth is lost; the grid conceals more than it reveals. Acutely aware of anyone map's circumscription, Heat-Moon, like Stegner, constructs his deep map to stretch boundaries, to enlarge vision and scale, to multiply perspectives, and to make the finite and infinite touch. His cartographic narrative expresses exactly the kind of new cartography geographer Alan MacEachren and others have called for: "cartographic research that attempts to merge the perceptual, cognitive, and semiotic issues ofmaps as functional devices for portraying space.',62 Cartographers, MacEachren continues, must understand "representation at many levels."63 Geographers James Duncan and David Ley echo MacEachren's argument. Rejecting mimetic and positivist models of mapmaking, they champion a new hermeneutical method that is "interpersonal" and "intercultural."64 In place of traditional representations of landscapes, contemporary cultural geographers and cartographers seek new metaphors: "text, theatre [ ... ] and painting."6s With the map now akin to narrative art forms, it can delve into complexities of space and of cultural conflict enacted in space. For the cultural geographer and cartographer to understand landscape from mUltiple angles, interdisciplinarity is de rigueur. Such theorizing over representation itself crosses disciplines. The ongoing dialogue in geography parallels those in both history and literary studies. Heat-Moon, with his ambivalent connections to academia and the University of Missouri, has created a I a prison, into a net, into a ~ quad, I could never find a way al place might lie, and I seemed ) a screen that might sift out an enabling metaphor seems to Ilse of coherent historY-~but to of mapping because so much ography," PrairyErth provides60 re. Other kinds ofmaps, other I this text: personal maps of ative American circlings that >n scrupulously marks the state to reproduce the grid in asphalt ,ehind, discarding the map and ration. If one stays in the grid, III it reveals. Acutely aware of ke Stegner, constructs his deep sion and scale, to multiply inite touch. His cartographic cartography geographer Alan graphic research that attempts ic issues ofmaps as functional ,MacEachren continues, must Geographers James Duncan ent. Rejecting mimetic and npion a new hermeneutical ra!. ,,64 In place of traditional f cultural geographers and [ ] . . "65 W' h:e '" and pamtmg. It n delve into complexities of For the cultural geographer ,e from multiple angles, Ilg over representation itself ~eography parallels those in )on, with his ambivalent of Missouri, has created a multiplicitous narrative in tune with post-structural debates yet not bound by abstraction nor ivory-tower obtuseness. Essays of place, Kent Ryden reminds us, attempt "to replace a static, two-dimensional, cartographic view of geography with a living world of narrative.,,66 Ultimately, Heat-Moon must abandon the grid in order "to both feel the life and meaning of a place and to inscribe its patterns on paper,"67 even if that paper must turn infamously pitch black. "My explorations quite early began forming into a gestalt," Heat-Moon explains, "that seems to control what I am capable ofwriting about.,,68 In a land "where openness can sometimes begin to seem like blankness," the grid provides a toehold for understanding; but Heat-Moon's forays off the map, into a complex gestalt both physical and imaginative, finally allow him to enter into place.69 Critic Michael Kowalewski has noted that "[literary] 'mappings' of American places have increasingly involved an interest in metaphors of depth, resonance, root systems, habitats, and interconnectedness."70 Stegner's WolfWillow reminds us that Canadian places also inspire deep maps. Indeed, Stegner and Heat-Moon embed all these various transferences and more. In order to organize their vast, overarching histories, they have turned to parables of archaeology and cartography to make sense of complexity, to account for absence, and to reclaim the significance of human efforts. Wolf Willow and PrairyErth are monumental, significant efforts themselves. In a different context, scholar Krista Comer has argued that "[l]andscape is not just mystified text; rather, it makes history."71 Through studied and innovative storytelling, steeped in the nuances of place, of landscape, Stegner and Heat-Moon make history. In the Preface to Under Western Skies, historian Donald Worster remarks, "[t]he history that most excites me is [ ... ] physical, ecological, earthy, complex as only nature can be complex."n Indeed, a major argument running through this series of essays is a call for "a new past.,,73 Additionally, Stegner scholar Jamie Robertson reminds us, "such a mixture of fact and fiction [ ... ] is a poetic creation, both real and imaginary, that explains our relationship to a place and its past.,,74 Deep maps, then, follow a new aesthetic and connect to this urgent call for renovated stories and revamped histories. Wolf Willow and PrairyErth stand as signature efforts of creative artists to join this chorus for a resonant past. 49 \' (New York: Penguin, 1992), xvi-xvii. 2. Stegner, xxii. 3. Randall Roorda, "Deep Maps in Ecoliterature," Michigan Quarterly Review 40, no. 1 (2001): 259. 50 NOTES I. Wallace Stegner, "Introduction," Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs 4. Roorda, 259. 5. Elliott West, The Way to the West: Essays on the Central Plains (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995), 166. 6. Elliott West, The Contested Plains: Indians. Goldseekers, and the Rush to Colorado (Lawrence: University Press of ~ansas, 1998), xxiv. 7. Neil Campbell, The Cultures of the American New West (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000), 18. 8. Campbell, 20. 9. Wallace Stegner, WollWillow: A History, a Story, and a Memory of the Last Plains Frontier. (1962; reprint, New York: Penguin, 1990),29. 10. Stegner, WoljWillow, 34. 11. Stegner, WoljWillow, 36. 12. John Daniel, "Wallace Stegner's Hunger for Wholeness," in Wallace Stegner and the Continental Vision: Essays on Literature, History, and Landscape, ed. Curt Meine (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1997). 35. 13. Stegner, Wall Willow, 306. 14. Daniel, 36. 15. Stegner, WoljWillow, 103. 16. Robert Harlow, "Whitemud Revisited," in Critical Essays on Wallace Stegner, ed. Anthony Arthur (Boston: G.K. Hall, 19H2), 26. 17. Stegner. Wolf Willuw, 202. 18. Stegner, Wolf Willow, 150-51. 19. Stegner, Wolf Willow. 151. 20. Stegner. Wolf Willow, 163. 21. Stegner, Wolf Willow, 196. 22. Stegner, Wolf Willow, 222-23. 23 Stegner. Wolf Willow, 237. 24. Stegner, Wolf Willow, 278. 25. Daniel, 36-37. 26. Elliott West, "Stegner, Storytelling, and Western Identity," in Wallace Stegner: Man and Writer, ed. Charles E. Rankin (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996), 64. 27. West, 64. 28. William Kittredge, "The Good Rain: Stegner and the Wild," in Wallace Stegner: Man and Writer, ed. Charles E. Rankin (Albuquerque: University ofNew Mexico Press, 1996),41. !ebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs , Michigan Quarter~v Review 40, no. ~ the Central Plains (Albuquerque: ldseekers, and the Rush to Colorado iv. . New West (Edinburgh: Edinburgh ry, and a Memory a/the Last Plains 1),29. rholeness," in Wallace Stegner and wy, and Landscape, ed. Curt Meine 'cal Essays on Wallace Stegner, ed. fdentity," in Wallace Stegner: Man Jniversity of New Mexico Press, Id the Wild," in Wallace Stegner: .University ofNew Mexico Press, ~-,--_._-_._- 51 29. Stegner, WollWillow, 29. 30. Stegner, Wolf Willow, Ill. 31. Stegner, WallWillow, 112. 32. Dave Dillon, "Time's Prisoners: An Interview with Wallace Stegner," in Critical Essays on Wallace Stegner, ed. Anthony Arthur (Boston: G.K. Hall, 1982),47. 33. Robert Kroetsch, "Disunity as Unity," in The Lovely Treachery 0/ Words: Essays New and Selected (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989),24-25. 34. Stegner, Waif Willow, 41. 35. Stegner, Waif Willow, 282. 36. Stegner, Woll Willow, 112. 37. Wallace Stegner and Richard W. Etulain, "Biography," in Stegner: Conversations on History and Literature (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1996),5. 38. Stegner, Wolf Willow, 4 . 39. O. Alan Weltzien, "A Topographic Map of Words: Parables of Cartography in William Least Heat-Moon's PrairyErth," in Great Plains Quarterly 19, no. 2 (1999): 120. 40. Thomas Fox Averill, "Essays on Place: The Map as Big as the World," in Great Plains Quarterly 19, no. 2 (1999): 125. 41. Weltzien,120. 42. James P. Ronda, "'A Chart in His Way': Indian Cartography and the Lewis and Clark Expedition," in Mapping the North American Plains, ed. Frederick C. Luebke, Francis W. Kaye, and Gary E. Moulton (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987), 84. 43. Pamela Walker, "The Necessity of Narrative in William Least Heat-Moon' s Blue Highways and PrairyErth," in Great Plains Quarterly 14, no. 4 (1994): 294. 44. Denis Wood, The Power o/Maps (New York: Guilford Press, 1992), 1. 45. Wood, 1. 46. Wood, 1. 47. Wood,5. 48. Weltzien, J 10. 49. Weltzien, Ill. 50. William Least Heat-Moon, PrairyErth: (a deep map) (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1991),15. 5!. Heat-Moon, PrairvErth, 15-16. 52. Heat-Moon, 156. 53. John T. Price, "What This Prairie Will Awaken," in Organization and Environment, 11, no. 3 (1998): 112. 54. Terra nullius, according to geographers Daniel Dorling and David Fairbairn in Mapping: Ways ofRepresenting the World (Harlow: Addison Wesley Longman, 1997), is a legal concept emerging from exploration and colonization; to justify occupation, colonial agents would declare land terra nullius ("empty land") (82). Dorling and Fairbairn further argue, "[the] concept of terra nullius . .. was used to justify the westwards expansion of the United States of America, the settlement of Australia, and \ _/­ 52 the colonization of Africa" (88). In 1973, the International Court of Justice ended this legal practice. 55. Heat-Moon, 15. 56. Heat-Moon, 427. 57. Heat-Moon, 427-28. 58. Heat-Moon, 15. 59. Heat-Moon, 364. 60. See O. Alan Weltzien for an extended discussion of this metaphor, coined by Weltzien. 61. Weltzien, 122. 62. Alan MacEachren, How Maps Work: Representation, Visualization, and Design (New York: Guilford, 1995), II. 63. MacEachren,14. 64. James Duncan and David Ley, eds., introduction to Place/Culture/Representation (London: Routledge, 1993), 3. 65. Denis Cosgrove and Mona Domosh, "Author and Authority: Writing the New Cultural Geography," in Place/Culture/Representation, ed. James Duncan and David Ley (London: Routledge, 1993), 30-31. 66. Kent Ryden, Mapping the Invisible Landscape: Folklore, Writing, and the Sense of Place (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1993),243. 67. Ryden, 249. 68. Heat-Moon, 598. 69. Heat-Moon, 547. 70. Michael Kowalewski, "Writing in Place: The New American Regionalism," III American Literary History 6, no. I (1994): 181. 71. Krista Comer, [,andscapes of the New West: Gender and Geography in Contemporary Women's Writing (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999),13. 72. Donald Worster, Under Western Skies: Nature and History in the American West (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), viii. 73. Worster, 253. 74. Jamie Robertson, "Henry Adams, Wallace Stegner, and the Search for a Sense of Place in the West," in Critical Essays on Wallace Stegner, ed. Anthony Arthur (Boston: G .K. Hall, 1982), 96. Bibliography Averill, Thomas Fox. "Essays on Place: The Map as BIg as the World." Great Plains Quarterly 19, no. 2 (1999): 123-26. Campbell, Neil. The Cultures of the American New West. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000. tional Court of Justice ended this on of this metaphor, coined by Ition, Visualization, and Design o Place/Culture/Representation Id Authority: Writing the New I, ed. James Duncan and David {klore, Writing, and the Sense of l. w American Regionalism," in Gender and Geography in rsity of North Carolina Press, r History in the American West , and the Search for a Sense of r, ed. Anthony Arthur (Boston: : as the World." Great Plains '. Edinburgh: Edinburgh Comer, Krista. Landscapes of the New West: Gender and Geography in Contemporary Women's Writing. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999. Cosgrove, Denis and Mona Domosh. "Author and Authority: Writing the New Cultural Geography." Place/Culture/Representation. Ed. James Duncan and David Ley. London: Routledge, 1993. 25-38. Daniel, John. "Wallace Stegner's Hunger for Wholeness." Wallace Stegner and the Continental Vision: Essays on Literature, History, and Landscape. Ed. Curt Meine. Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1997.31-42. Dillon, Dave. "Time's Prisoners: An Interview with Wallace Stegner." Critical Essays On Wallace Stegner. Ed. Anthony Arthur. Boston: G.K. Hall, 1982. 47-59. Dorling, Daniel and David Fairbairn. Mapping: Ways ofRepresenting the World. Harlow: Addison Wesley Longman, 1997. Duncan, James and David Ley, eds. Place/Culture/Representation. London: Routledge, 1993. Grim, Ronald. "Mapping Kansas and Nebraska." Mapping the North American Plains. Ed. Frederick C. Luebke, Francis W. Kaye, and Gary E. Moulton. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987. 127-44. Harlow, Robert. "Whitemud Revisited." Critical Essays on Wallace Stegner. Ed. Anthony Arthur. Boston: G .K. Hall, 1982. 23-26. Kittredge, William. "The Good Rain and the Wild." Wallace Stegner: Man and Writer. Ed. Charles E. Rankin. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996.39­ 42. Kowalewski, Michael. "Writing in Place: The New American Regionalism." 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Michigan Quarterly Review 40, no. 1 (2001): 257-72. Ryden, Kent. Mapping the Invisible Landscape: Folklore, Writing, and the Sense of Place. Iowa City: University ofIowa Press, 1993. Stegner, Wallace. "Introduction." Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs. 53 / i '{". 'l't­ .\ . ~.' ,. /. 54 New York: Penguin, 1992. xv-xxiii. ---Wolf Willow: A History, a Story, and a Memory of the Last Plains Frontier. 1962. Reprint, New York: Penguin, 1990. Stegner, Wallace and Richard W. Etulain. "Biography." Stegner: Conversations On History and Literature. Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1996. 1-19. Walker, Pamela. "The Necessity of Narrative in William Least Heat-Moon's Blue Highways and PrairyErth. Great Plains Quarterly 14, no. 4 (1994): 287-97. Weltzien, O. Alan. "A Topographic Map ofWords: Parables of Cartography in William Least Heat-Moon's PrairyErth." Great Plains Quarterly 19, no. 2 (Spring 1999): 107-22. West, Elliott. The Contested Plains: Indians. Goldseekers, and the Rush to Colorado. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998. ---. "Stegner, Storytelling, and Western Identity." Wallace Stegner: Man and Writer. Ed. Charles E. Rankin. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996. 61-71. ---The Way to the West: Essays on the Central Plains. Albuquerque: University ofNew Mexico Press, 1995. Wood, Denis. The Power ofMaps. New York: Guilford, 1992. Worster, Donald. Under Western Skies: Nature and History in the American West. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.