He was one of the great writers of the West and in this article from the Property Environment Research Center’s magazine, some of his more well-known quotes are reflected upon.
An excerpt.
“Editor's note: The following is extracted from a talk by Patty Limerick (author of The Legacy of Conquest) delivered at a recent symposium celebrating the centennial of Wallace Stegner’s birth. Stegner, an American novelist, essayist, and environmentalist, is often called the “Dean of Western Writers.” His works include The Big Rocky Candy Mountain, Angle of Repose, Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West, and The American West as Living Space.
“Through the vitality and wisdom of his written words, Wallace Stegner remains an influential presence in the American West. When it comes to the consequences of aridity or the Western myth’s power to shape the behavior of its believers, no one is Stegner’s equal in expression. His fans and followers could take equal inspiration from his contradictions.
“ARIDITY
“On the West’s lower rates of precipitation and higher rates of evaporation, Stegner’s quotable remarks are apt, forceful, and everywhere. In Marking the Sparrow’s Fall, describing life beyond the hundredth meridian, Stegner portrays a geographical line beyond which
. . . unassisted agriculture is dubious or foolhardy and beyond it one knows the characteristic western feel—a dryness in the nostrils, a cracking of the lips, a transparent crystalline quality of the light, a new palette of gray and sage green and sulphur-yellow and buff and toned white and rust-red, a new flora and a new fauna, a new ecology.
“Stegner’s reflections on the color green carry particular punch. In his words, “You have to get over the color green; you have to quit associating beauty with gardens and lawns.” Contemplate that remark, and then think about the irony built in to a common habit of expression. The environmental movement uses the word “green” as a synonym for “environmentally friendly” or “compatible with and adapted to nature.” And yet, ladies and gentlemen, in the American West, green is the color of the Bureau of Reclamation. Green is the color of disturbed ground; it is the color of places where you have utilized water you have diverted from other places. Bright green, in other words, is the color of disturbance….
“…the spirit in this passage is pretty close to what I myself felt in September of 2007, the last time that I was at Hoover Dam (called Boulder Dam at the time of Stegner’s visit).
“Two days on Lake Mead and an afternoon and evening going through the Dam and the powerhouses have made boosters of us. Nobody can visit Boulder Dam itself without getting that World’s Fair feeling. It is certainly one of the world’s wonders: that sweeping cliff of concrete, those impetuous elevations, the labyrinths of tunnels, the huge power stations. Everything about the dam is marked by the immense, smooth, efficient beauty that seems peculiarly American. Though no architect designed it and no one mind planned its massive details, it has the effect of great art.”
