Encounters With the Archdruid: Narratives About a Conservationist and Three of His Natural Enemies

“It was called Hart Lake and was fed by a stream that, in turn, fell away from a high and deafening cataract. The stream was interrupted by a series of beaver ponds. All around these free-form pools were stands of alder, aspen, Engelmann’s spruce; and in the surrounding mountains, just under the summits, were glaciers and fields of snow. Brower, who is an aesthetician by trade and likes to point to beautiful things, had nothing to say at that moment. Neither did Park. I was remembering the words of a friend of mine in the National Park Service, who had once said to me, ‘The Glacier Peak Wilderness is probably the most beautiful piece of country we've got. Mining copper there would be like hitting a pretty girl in the face with a shovel. It would be like strip-mining the Garden of Eden.’”

McPhee uses detailed imagery to emphasize the pristine beauty of Hart Lake and its surroundings, describing the natural elements with precision to create a vivid mental picture. The silence of Brower and Park in response to the scenery underscores the profound impact of the landscape, suggesting that its beauty transcends words. The simile likening copper mining to “hitting a pretty girl in the face with a shovel” conveys the brutality and sacrilege of industrializing such an untouched and magnificent wilderness, highlighting the moral and environmental stakes at play. However, this simile also underscores an outdated mode of thinking about gender: Brower equates natural beauty to feminine beauty, which must be protected by man, who has the power to do so.

“Park, throughout his career, had not made a religion of camping out, and he had been particularly pleased when we found the cabin and its bunks, although they were little more than stiffly woven wire in frames. His general practice on trips of exploration for minerals had been to sleep in a bed if there was one within five miles, so he had managed to keep his lifetime total down to something like nineteen hundred nights on the ground. On foot and alone, he had hunted for copper in the Philippines, in Cuba, in Mexico, in Arizona, in Tennessee. He had hunted for silver in Nevada and Greece, for gold in Alaska, gold in South Dakota, and—on one curious assignment for the United States Geological Survey—gold in Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, and the District of Columbia. He had found what he was looking for. During the Second World War, there was a working gold mine in Rock Creek Park, in Washington, D.C. Such is Park's feeling for where ore bodies are that some of his friends think he has occult powers.”

To indirectly characterize Park, McPhee details his pragmatic approach to exploration, contrasting it with the romanticized notion of rugged outdoor living. Park’s preference for sleeping in beds rather than camping, despite his extensive fieldwork, highlights his practicality and comfort-driven mindset. McPhee gently mocks Park, noting that he had kept the camping night “down to something like nineteen hundred nights,” implying that Park so dislikes camping that he has kept careful count of the nights he’s had to do it.

“‘He certainly is—let’s say—reserved,’ Park said. ‘I don't see how anyone could ever break through it. I almost called him yesterday when he said the big trees ought to be left to rot in the forest. Long before they fall, they are dying from the inside out. It’s a shame not to use big trees like that.’ He waved his pick at a stand of spruce. ‘I am not a member of the Sierra Club,’ he went on. ‘I don't approve of their policy. To me, they are preservationists, not conservationists. You can't avoid change. You can direct it, but you can't avoid it. I like Sierra Club books, though.’”

McPhee uses dialogue to reveal Park’s pragmatic perspective on environmental management, contrasting it with the preservationist stance of the Sierra Club. Park’s frustration with the idea of letting big trees rot in the forest underscores his belief in utilizing natural resources efficiently rather than preserving them untouched—and an incomplete understanding of the important role of large rotting trees in the forest ecosystem. Park equates the inevitability of change in nature with man’s exploration of resources. However, Brower does not agree with his stance.

“‘Minerals are where you find them. The quantities are finite. It's criminal to waste minerals when the standard of living of your people depends upon them. A mine cannot move. It is fixed by nature. So it has to take precedence over any other use. If there were a copper deposit in Yellowstone Park, I’d recommend mining it. Proper use of minerals is essential. You have to go get them where they are. Our standard of living is based on this.’

‘For a fifty-year cycle, yes. But for the long term, no. We have to drop our standard of living, so that people a thousand years from now can have any standard of living at all.’”

McPhee presents a stark clash of ideologies through Park and Brower’s conversation. Park, who is the first speaker, emphasizes the necessity of exploiting finite mineral resources to sustain contemporary living standards, even advocating for mining in protected areas like Yellowstone Park. The counterpoint, from Brower, expresses a long-term perspective, advocating for a reduction in current living standards to ensure the sustainability of resources for future generations, thus illustrating the tension between immediate economic needs and long-term environmental stewardship.

“At about half past three that afternoon, we came to a small stream that ran straight down the steep mountainside. We shook off our packs, removed our boots, and set our feet in the water. ‘Oh, gad, that feels good,’ Park said. Our feet were as white as fish flesh in the cold water—so cold that I could barely stand it. This was a way to keep going, though. A cold stream offers a kind of retread. The pain goes away for a while afterward, and miles can be added to a day. Reaching upstream, Brower dipped himself a cupful of water. ‘Wilderness is worth it, if for no other reason than it is the last place on earth where you can get good water,’ he said. No one else said anything. We were too tired.”

McPhee employs sensory imagery to portray the physical relationship that the two interlocutors, Brower and Park, have with the environment. While Park suffers throughout the hike and, afterwards, expresses relief when the mountain stream soothes his feet, Brower underscores the intrinsic value of unspoiled nature. Park’s relation to nature is superficial, symbolized through the contact of water with his feet, while Brower drinks the water, signifying a deeper, internalized connection.

“He said, ‘People have a tendency to get a little bit emotional about preservation of the environment, I'm afraid. There are a couple of sawmills in here. They take mature trees. What harm do they do? They don’t hurt the country. I don't see it. While I love the out-of-doors, I have no use for wilderness. We need to lumber. We need to mine. People don’t realize what mining is. They don’t realize the contributions that minerals and metals make to their lives. You can't live without industry. But that is what preservationists will say. Sawmills, mines, and forests can live together. These forests are beautiful here. They really are. The Black Hills are an example of where industry has not ruined an environment.’ In Park's view, about all that has been ruined in the Black Hills is Mount Rushmore, where the face of a mountain was blasted away and replaced with the faces of four American Presidents. It happens that Jefferson's nose is cracking. So is Lincoln's chin. And there are water stains on George Washington. But all that is just added insult. No face should be there except the face of the mountain.”

McPhee uses direct dialogue to reveal the Park’s pragmatic view on environmental preservation, emphasizing the perceived necessity of balancing industry and nature. Park dismisses emotional arguments for preservation and highlights the practical benefits of logging and mining, arguing that these activities can coexist with forest beauty, as exemplified by the Black Hills. The concluding irony about Mount Rushmore, where the natural mountain faces have been replaced and are now deteriorating, underscores a deeper critique of human intervention in nature, suggesting that such actions ultimately deface the landscape they claim to honor.

“He speaks calmly, almost ironically, of ‘the last scramble for the last breath of air,’ as if that were something we had all been planning for. ‘There is DDT in the tissues of penguins in the Antarctic,’ he says. ‘Who put the DDT in Antarctica? We did. We put it on fields, and it went into streams, and into fish, and into more fish, and into the penguins. There is pollution we know about and pollution we don't know about. It took fifty-seven years for us to find out that radiation is harmful, twenty-five years to find out that DDT is harmful, twenty years for cyclamates. We’re getting somewhere. We have recently found out that polychlorinated biphenyls, a plastic by-product, have spread throughout the global ecosystem. At Hanford, Washington, radioactive atomic waste is stored in steel tanks that will have to be replaced every fifteen years for a thousand years. We haven’t done anything well for a thousand years, except multiply. An oil leak in Bristol Bay, Alaska, will put the red salmon out of action. Oil exploration off the Grand Banks of Newfoundland will lead to leaks that will someday wreck the fisheries there. We're hooked. We're addicted. We're committing grand larceny against our children.’”

Brower’s speech, which McPhee earlier in the narrative likens to a sermon, here adopts a calm yet ironic tone to highlight the dire consequences of human actions on the environment. His use of specific examples, such as DDT in penguins and radioactive waste in Hanford, illustrates the pervasive and long-lasting impact of pollution. By framing environmental degradation as a form of “grand larceny against our children,” Brower underscores the moral urgency of addressing these issues for the sake of future generations. He also likens human dependency on practices that result in environmental destruction to addiction, implying our inability to stop such practices without a fundamental change of vision and unprecedented action.

“Brower is a conservationist, but he is not a conservative. I have heard him ask someone, ‘Do you like the world so much that you want to keep it the way it is?’—an odd question to be coming from David Brower, but he was talking about the world of men. The world of nature is something else. Brower is against the George Washington Bridge. He is against the Golden Gate Bridge. He remembers San Francisco when the bridge was not there, and he says the entrance to the bay was a much more beautiful scene without it. He would like to cut back the population of the United States to a hundred million. He has said that from the point of view of land use the country has not looked right since 1830. There are conservationists (a few, anyway) who are even more vociferous than Brower, but none with his immense reputation, none with his record of battles fought and won—defeater of dams, defender of wilderness. He must be the most unrelenting fighter for conservation in the world. Russell Train, chairman of the President’s Council on Environmental Quality, once said, ‘Thank God for Dave Brower. He makes it so easy for the rest of us to be reasonable. Somebody has to be a little extreme. Dave is a little hairy at times, but you do need somebody riding out there in front.’”

In this passage, McPhee portrays Brower as a passionate and uncompromising conservationist whose radical views and actions set him apart from others in the environmental movement. Brower’s desire to drastically reduce US population and his belief that the country hasn’t looked right since 1830 (the date of the Indian Removal Act, which forced Indigenous peoples to relocate from their land) reveal his deep-seated commitment to preserving nature in its most untouched form. Russell Train’s comment underscores Brower’s role as a necessary provocateur in the environmental debate—someone whose extreme positions force others to reconsider their own and highlight the importance of having diverse voices in the fight for conservation.

“Fraser considers himself a true conservationist, and he will say that he thinks of most so-called conservationists as ‘preservationists’ but that he prefers to call them ‘druids.’ ‘Ancient druids used to sacrifice human beings under oak trees,’ he says. ‘Modern druids worship trees and sacrifice human beings to those trees. They want to save things they like, all for themselves.’”

Fraser’s speech ridicules modern conservationists, calling them “druids.” Like their mysterious and arcane ancient counterparts, these modern druids make extreme sacrifices, but in this case, for the sake of trees rather than people. By drawing this parallel, Fraser suggests that preservationists prioritize nature over human welfare, implying a selfish or misguided agenda. This quote is important because McPhee gives Brower the title “Archdruid” (138) in light of Fraser’s comments.

“There was an expression that had been in the air there since the days of the rice and indigo plantations, and now it rose again to currency: ‘The Devil has his tail wrapped around Cumberland Island.’”

The expression “The Devil has his tail wrapped around Cumberland Island” is a reflection of how its previous owners, the Carnegies, who were forced to sell their land to Fraser, see the new property owner and developer: as Satan. The locals are apprehensive about Fraser due to their commitment to the island as a natural reserve.

“The family of my friend Brailsford Nightingale, in Savannah, owned parts of this island when the Carnegies were still herding sheep. The Nightingales have been elegant for more generations than you can count. They are descendants of General Greene. They had subdivided this island and were going to make it a rich man’s retreat before the Carnegies had ever heard of it, but the Nightingales were thwarted by history. Reconstruction was a brutal wipeout. And now the Carnegie druids do not wish to share the island with other people. They think only Carnegie eyes are sensitive enough to appreciate the beauties of that beach out there. On any list of America's hundred most selfish families these poor new-rich Carnegies must be placed very high.”

Fraser explains his sense of superiority over the Carnegies, the family that used to own Cumberland Island. Fraser is reacting to what he feels is an elitist position, as the Carnegies believe only they can appreciate the island’s beauty. The phrase “poor new-rich Carnegies” is laden with irony, underscoring Fraser’s disdain for what he perceives as their pretensions and selfishness in monopolizing the island.

Reflectively, Fraser placed a hand on the tombstone and said, ‘Druids hate golf I keep telling them golf was here seventy-five years ago. Dave, you wouldn't mind if I built a little golf course here on Cumberland Island, would you?’

‘I suppose not, if you don't take too many trees,’ Brower said.

‘You know I don't take too many trees, Dave,’ Fraser said.”

McPhee uses dialogue to reveal the conflicting attitudes toward land use and conservation between Fraser and Brower, highlighting their differing priorities. Fraser’s casual suggestion to build a golf course on Cumberland Island, juxtaposed with Brower’s conditional approval, underscores a tension between development and environmental preservation. The repetition of Fraser’s assurance, “You know I don’t take too many trees, Dave,” adds a layer of irony, suggesting Fraser’s superficial understanding of Brower’s deeper conservation concerns while also hinting at a negotiated compromise between the two perspectives.

“Save the marsh! Grasses are one of the nicest ways the green thing works. The green giant is chlorophyll, really. When I come back in another life, I am going to spend my whole life in grasses. I'm addicted to the entire planet. I don’t want to leave it. I want to get down into it. I want to say hello. On the beach, I could have stopped all day long and looked at those damned shells, looked for all the messages that come not in bottles but in shells. Life began Tuesday noon, and the beautiful organic wholeness of it developed over the next four days. At three minutes before midnight, man appeared. At one-fourth of a second before midnight, Christ arrived. At one-fortieth of a second before midnight, the Industrial Revolution began. You, Charles Fraser, have got to persuade the whole God-damned movement of realtors to have a different kind of responsibility to man than they have. If they don’t, God will say that man should be thrown away as an experiment that didn't work. I have seen evidence of what you can do. Now make others do it. The system must be used to reform the system.”

Brower’s urgent plea to Fraser uses vivid imagery and impassioned language to convey a deep connection to the natural world. The speech uses metaphors, such as the “green giant” of chlorophyll and the chronological metaphor of human history, to emphasize the insignificance and destructive impact of human activity in the grand timeline of life on Earth. Brower’s direct address to Fraser, demanding a shift in the responsibility of realtors, emphasizes the critical need for systemic change. It also portrays a different strategy in conservationism, which relies on emotional impact and personal connection to make an impact on developers.

“Actually, the resolution was to arrive swiftly. In months to come, druids in massed phalanx were to create so many pressures—social, political, financial—and so much ecological propaganda that Fraser would give up his Cumberland territory, selling Cumberland Oaks to the National Park Foundation. Money for the purchase was to be made available to the Park Service by the Andrew Mellon Foundation, with enough left over to acquire the rest of the island from the other owners. Thus Fraser, in his coming and going, was in the end to be the catalyst that converted Cumberland Island from a private enclave to a national reserve.”

Military phrases like “massed phalanx” describe the determined efforts of the environmentalists, framing their activism as a strategic and powerful force. The term “ecological propaganda” suggests a deliberate and persuasive campaign, highlighting the intensity and effectiveness of their advocacy. By depicting Fraser as the catalyst for the transformation of Cumberland Island, McPhee stresses the unintended but pivotal role he plays in shifting the island from private ownership to public conservation, thus highlighting the unpredictable nature of environmental and social change.

“‘Nature is a pretty cruel animal. I watched the people there—I mean good folk, industrious, hardworking, frugal—compete with the rigors of nature against hopeless odds. They would ruin their health and still fail.’ Without waiting for approval from Cheyenne or Washington, the young county agent took it upon himself to overcome nature if the farmers and ranchers could not. He began up near Recluse, on the ranch of a family named Oedekoven, in a small bowl of land where an intermittent stream occasionally flowed. With a four-horse Fresno—an ancestral bulldozer—he moved earth and plugged the crease in the terrain where the water would ordinarily run out and disappear into the ground and the air. He built his little plug in the classic form of the earth-fill dam—a three-for-one slope on the water side and two-for-one the other way. More cattle died, but a pond slowly filled, storing water. The pond is still there, and so is Oedekoven, the rancher.”

Dominy details his experience as a relentless struggle between humans and nature. The description of nature as a “pretty cruel animal” personifies it as a fierce and unyielding adversary, highlighting the harsh realities faced by the farmers and ranchers. Dominy’s resourceful actions illustrate human ingenuity and determination, ultimately leading to a lasting solution as represented by the enduring pond and the surviving rancher. This experience has informed Dominy’s attitude towards dam building throughout his life.

“In the view of conservationists, there is something special about dams, something—as conservation problems go—that is disproportionately and metaphysically sinister. The outermost circle of the Devil's world seems to be a moat filled mainly with DDT. Next to it is a moat of burning gasoline. Within that is a ring of pinheads each covered with a million people—and so on past phalanxed bulldozers and bicuspid chain saws into the absolute epicenter of Hell on earth, where stands a dam. The implications of the dam exceed its true level in the scale of environmental catastrophes.”

McPhee uses hyperbolic imagery to convey the intense aversion conservationists feel toward dams, likening them to the innermost circle of Hell in a metaphysical landscape of environmental destruction. This dramatic depiction suggests that the impacts of dams are seen disproportionately in the conservationist movement.

“David Brower believes that the dam in Glen Canyon represents the greatest failure of his life. He cannot think of it without melancholy, for he sincerely believes that its very existence is his fault. He feels that if he had been more aware, if he had more adequately prepared himself for his own kind of mission, the dam would not be there. Its gates closed in 1963, and it began backing up water a hundred and eighty-six miles into Utah. The reservoir is called Lake Powell, and it covers country that Brower himself came to know too late. He made his only trips there—float trips on the river with his children—before the gates were closed but after the dam, which had been virtually unopposed, was under construction. Occasionally, in accompaniment to the talks he gives around the country, Brower shows an elegiac film about Glen Canyon, ‘the place no one knew.’ That was the trouble, he explains. No one knew what was there.”

Reflective and regretful language conveys Brower’s sense of personal failure and melancholy regarding the Glen Canyon dam. Brower’s belief that his lack of preparation directly contributed to the dam’s construction highlights his internalized responsibility, as well as the immense investment he has in the conservation movement. The phrase “the place no one knew” signifies the irony that the beauty and significance of Glen Canyon went unrecognized until it was too late, amplifying the sense of irrevocable loss that Brower feels. The description of Brower’s work after the dam was built is likened to the work of penitence, as he is trying to reverse what he feels was his mistake by spreading information about Glen Canyon.

“The Dinosaur Battle, as it is called, was a milestone in the conservation movement. It was, to begin with, the greatest conservation struggle in half a century—actually, since the controversies that involved the damming of Hetch Hetchy and led to the debates that resulted in the creation, in 1916, of the National Park Service. The Dinosaur Battle is noted as the first time that all the scattered interests of modem conservation—sportsmen, ecologists, wilderness preservers, park advocates, and so forth—were drawn together in a common cause. Brower, more than anyone else, drew them together, fashioning the coalition, assembling witnesses. With a passing wave at the aesthetic argument, he went after the Bureau of Reclamation with facts and figures. He challenged the word of its engineers and geologists that the damsite was a sound one, he suggested that cliffs would dissolve and there would be a tremendous and cataclysmic dam failure there, and he went after the basic mathematics underlying the Bureau's proposals and uncovered embarrassing errors. […] Conservationists say that the Dinosaur victory was the birth of the modern conservation movement—the turning point at which conservation became something more than contour plowing. There is no dam at the confluence of the Green and the Yampa. Had it not been for David Brower, a dam would be there. A man in the public-relations office of the Bureau of Reclamation one day summed up the telling of the story by saying, ‘Dave won, hands down.’”

McPhee presents the history of the Dinosaur Battle as a pivotal moment in the history of conservation, marking the unification of diverse environmental interests. Brower’s role as a central figure in this struggle is emphasized through his strategic coalition-building and his scrupulous use of data to counter the Bureau of Reclamation’s plans, showcasing his leadership and determination. The acknowledgment from the Bureau’s public-relations office that “Dave won, hands down,” underscores Brower's effectiveness and his profound impact on the modern conservation movement.

“On a shelf behind Dominy’s desk, in the sort of central and eye-catching position that might be reserved for a shining trophy, was a scale model of a bulldozer. Facing each other from opposite walls were portraits of Richard M, Nixon and Hoover Dam. Nixon's jowls, in this milieu, seemed even more trapeziform than they usually do. They looked as if they, too, could stop a river. Seeing that my attention had been caught by these pictures, Dominy got up, crossed the room, and stood with reverence and devotion before the picture of Hoover Dam. He said, ‘When we built that, we—Americans—were the only people who had ever tried to put a high dam in a big river.’ He said he remembered as if it were his birthday the exact date when he had first seen—as it was then called—Boulder Dam.”

Dominy’s reverence for industrial achievements is symbolized by the bulldozer model and the portraits of Nixon and Hoover Dam he displays in his office. The comparison of Nixon’s trapezoid-shaped jowls to the dam humorously accentuates the monumental and imposing nature of these engineered structures—and the significance of President Nixon to their construction. Dominy’s nostalgic and patriotic reflections on the construction of Hoover Dam reveal his deep pride in American engineering prowess, highlighting the cultural and personal significance he attaches to such human ingenuity.

“Dominy said as he turned on the lights. ‘Let's use our environment. Nature changes the environment every day of our lives—why shouldn't we change it? We're part of nature. Just to give you a for-instance, we're cloud-seeding the Rockies to increase the snowpack. We've built a tunnel under the Continental Divide to send water toward the Pacific that would have gone to the Atlantic. The challenge to man is to do and save what is good but to permit man to progress in civilization. Hydroelectric power doesn't pollute water and it doesn't pollute air. You don't get any pollution out of my dams. The unregulated Colorado was a son of a bitch. It wasn't any good. It was either in flood or in trickle.’”

Dominy justifies human intervention in nature by using pragmatic reasoning and a confident tone to argue for the manipulation of the environment. Dominy equates human actions with natural changes, asserting that altering the environment is a normal extension of human progress and ingenuity, as illustrated by cloud-seeding and water diversion projects. His defense of hydroelectric power as a non-polluting energy source and his criticism of the unregulated Colorado River underscore his belief in the superiority of controlled, engineered solutions over the unpredictable forces of nature.

“‘Emotionally, people are able to look only two generations back and two generations forward,’ Brower said. ‘We need to see farther than that. It is absolutely inevitable, for example, that Lake Powell and Lake Mead will someday be completely filled with silt.’ ‘Nonsense, nonsense, complete nonsense. First of all, we will build silt-detention dams in the tributaries—in the Paria, in the Little Colorado. And, if necessary, we will build more.’ ‘Someday the reservoirs have to fill up, Floyd.’ ‘I wouldn't admit that. I wouldn't admit one inch!’

‘Someday.’

‘Someday! Yes, in geologic time, maybe. Lake Powell will fill up with silt. I don't know how many thousands of years from now. By then, people will have figured out alternative sources of water and power. That's what I say when you start talking about the geologic ages.’”

In opposition to Dominy’s argument (see above), Brower makes recourse to the emotional dimension of humans. Moreover, Brower’s emphasis on the inevitability of silt accumulation in Lake Powell and Lake Mead reflects a forward-thinking, geologic timescale, stressing the need for long-term environmental foresight. Dominy’s rebuttal, focusing on immediate solutions like silt-detention dams and technological advancements, underscores a more pragmatic and short-term approach, informed by engineering optimism.

“‘His supporters believe that the prophet can do no wrong.’

‘Conservation is a religious movement. So you get sects. And then you have the art of exposition of the individual creed. Each sectarian knows that he is right. Dave Brower has been the prophet leading the faithful.’

‘The Sierra Club itself is a religious movement.’

‘If the prophet goes off the straight and narrow course, he becomes more of an adversary than the adversary in the distance.’

‘He has been bitten by the worm of power.’

‘He has jumped in front of a moving car, which he was driving.’

‘Dave had to violate orders of the board, in order to get done what he had to do.’”

In this dialogue between different (unnamed) voices within the Sierra Club, religious metaphor is used to frame the environmental movement and Dave Brower’s role within it, likening conservation to a religion with Brower as its prophet. The dialogue reveals internal conflicts and differing opinions within the movement, illustrating how Brower’s actions, perceived as either visionary or transgressive, polarize supporters.

“This was Havasu Canyon, the immemorial home of the Havasupai, whose tribal name means ‘the people of the blue-green waters.’ We climbed from one pool to another, and swam across the pools, and let the waterfalls beat down around our shoulders. Mile after mile, the pools and waterfalls continued. The high walls of the valley were bright red. Nothing grew on these dry and flaky slopes from the mesa rim down about two thirds of the way; then life began to show in isolated barrel cactus and prickly pear. The cacti thickened farther down, and below them was riverine vegetation—green groves of oak and cottonwood, willows and tamarisk, stands of cattail, tall grasses, moss, watercress, and maidenhair fern. The Havasupai have lived in this place for hundreds, possibly thousands, of years, and their population has remained stable.”

McPhee employs vivid and sensory-rich imagery to bring the lush beauty of Havasu Canyon to life, highlighting the contrast between its blue-green waters and the starkly red valley walls. The progression from barren slopes to the thriving vegetation mirrors a journey from desolation to vitality, emphasizing the canyon’s unique ecosystem. The mention of the Havasupai people’s long, stable residence emphasizes their harmonious relationship with the environment, suggesting a model of sustainable living integrated with nature’s rhythms.