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One Round River: The Curse of Gold and the Fight for the Big Blackfoot
An impassioned account of the degradation of Montana's Blackfoot River, immortalized by the book, A River Runs Through It, traces the impact of mining, development, and tourism on the river and the way of life it once fostered.
- GenresNonfictionEnvironment
240 pages, Hardcover
First published January 15, 1997
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 21, 2019
I really liked this book and would highly recommend it. It was a good history of the Blackfoot river system and the things humans have done to it, starting at the very beginning. It had a great understanding of political power in the west and in the state. I only wish it had had even more technical detail in relation to strip mining. In the best possible however, this book inspired me to pick up some other books about mining to further educate myself. It is also over 20 years old - I’d like to think that some of the regulations changed.
March 23, 2013
Near the end of Grassland: The History, Biology, Politics and Promise of the American Prairie, Manning meets an environmentalist who exhorts him to inform himself and take action on some issue - a gold mine, if I remember correctly. He dismisses the guy a bit flippantly, taking a strangely holier-than-thou attitude that suggests the activist doesn't know the environmental history and the true nature of the place nearly as well as Manning. If he did, he wouldn't just be applying the superficial narrative of environmental degradation and resistance found all over the world, most at home in glossy national coalition campaign materials.
One Round River is Manning's attempt to do a better job, in a sense. Published two years after Grassland, ORR zooms in to a specific watershed, the Blackfoot river, a tributary of the Clark Fork and eventually the Columbia. Up front, Manning admits he's writing this book with an agenda: he wants you to never buy gold, ever again. But rather than making that case overtly, Manning simply explores, makes connections, and takes the reader into the Blackfoot basin. Most of that process walks through the degradation of the land by logging, mining, and overgrazing, the erosion of stream banks, ecological invasions, competitive exclusion of wild animals, and disruption of natural cycles of pond formation.
Manning's narrative brilliance is in bringing the human side of the story, communicating the cantankerous stubbornness of rural Montanans and its manifestations in their unique approach to conservation. The only group that isn't so humanized is the miners: the company is portrayed as being totally outside the life of the community, just as the mine itself, unlike moderate logging and grazing, would be outside the life of the land, entirely antagonistic and with no incentive to maintain its longterm health. This is contrary to the way I've been thinking lately, that while strip mines and point-source polluters get a lot of the attention for environmental causes, they'd probably not be a big deal if habitats weren't systematically attacked by habitat destruction.
After spending most of the book establishing the place, the central character of the story, Manning turns to the conflict: the proposed gold mine in the headwaters of the Blackfoot. He reveals that his position is not neutral, that his wife, a former Earth First! activist (what a badass!) and all of his friends are deeply involved in the fight against the mine, though he has avoided active engagement to maintain a shred of journalistic objectivity. His discussion of their tactics brings forward some of the most interesting insights in the book.
He describes the battle-hardened resolve and extensive experience most environmental activists in the West, especially in his area, have accrued, and goes on to argue that the only effective activists have situated themselves in a place, committed to it (unlike the bright but ephemeral college activist) and coevolved with their foes. He brings in a wonderfully colorful approach to militancy, the campy "Environmental Rangers," led by Ric Valois. The Rangers talk big talk and carry guns and do a bit of espionage, but the mere fact that they were included in the book gives up their chance at effective strategy - their names and intentions are known to the authorities. Manning makes a good point about this, though it may be that he has no reason to apply pessimism here when he's slightly brighter on the mainstream routes of action.
"Were this only an ethical question, I could answer it in a second. . . . I would kill someone in a heartbeat if I thought it could stop that mine. It won't. But it's not just an ethical question, and we know it and have known it since our state developed coercive powers sufficient to make rebellion impossible. This is so obviously true as to make our dilemma no longer interesting." Dedicating ourselves to serious underground sabotage, as Deep Green Resistance exhorts us to do, would necessarily set us in conflict with the most effective counterinsurgency force in the history of the world, a power with no qualms about using violence against its own citizens, and with the power to ensure public opinion remains against us. It's not a choice I could make, and I feel deeply conflicted asking others to do so, knowing the odds. Manning's position, then, takes a long view - seeing the harm of the mine will last "in perpetuity" but acknowledging there's a long history of degradation, that this mine would be a catastrophe but only one battle of many in the fight to save this place.
In the telling of all these things, Manning constantly displays a narrative excellence and depth of thought that just blows my mind. He connects every walk and drive he takes to the seasonal round of the Salish or the journeys of Lewis and Clark or the migration of jobless miners to the coast. He weaves each thread into a marvelously rich and satiating picture of the issue. He seems to live in a world of rich perception, full of stories and a history focused on otters and rivers and workers, a world that seems more real than the one most environmental battles are of necessity fought, or even than the prosaic one we live in.
I love his casual disrespect for the fourth wall, advising readers to remember this or that thought for later application (which is almost never really possible, I found). More than anything, I love his critical lens, which forces him to examine his own values and assumptions - justifying why the value he ascribes to solitude, natural beauty, and intact ecosystems can be said to override the value others ascribe to gold jewelry, or thrashing romantic images of nature and replacing them with slightly more reality based iterations of the same thing.
One Round River is Manning's attempt to do a better job, in a sense. Published two years after Grassland, ORR zooms in to a specific watershed, the Blackfoot river, a tributary of the Clark Fork and eventually the Columbia. Up front, Manning admits he's writing this book with an agenda: he wants you to never buy gold, ever again. But rather than making that case overtly, Manning simply explores, makes connections, and takes the reader into the Blackfoot basin. Most of that process walks through the degradation of the land by logging, mining, and overgrazing, the erosion of stream banks, ecological invasions, competitive exclusion of wild animals, and disruption of natural cycles of pond formation.
Manning's narrative brilliance is in bringing the human side of the story, communicating the cantankerous stubbornness of rural Montanans and its manifestations in their unique approach to conservation. The only group that isn't so humanized is the miners: the company is portrayed as being totally outside the life of the community, just as the mine itself, unlike moderate logging and grazing, would be outside the life of the land, entirely antagonistic and with no incentive to maintain its longterm health. This is contrary to the way I've been thinking lately, that while strip mines and point-source polluters get a lot of the attention for environmental causes, they'd probably not be a big deal if habitats weren't systematically attacked by habitat destruction.
After spending most of the book establishing the place, the central character of the story, Manning turns to the conflict: the proposed gold mine in the headwaters of the Blackfoot. He reveals that his position is not neutral, that his wife, a former Earth First! activist (what a badass!) and all of his friends are deeply involved in the fight against the mine, though he has avoided active engagement to maintain a shred of journalistic objectivity. His discussion of their tactics brings forward some of the most interesting insights in the book.
He describes the battle-hardened resolve and extensive experience most environmental activists in the West, especially in his area, have accrued, and goes on to argue that the only effective activists have situated themselves in a place, committed to it (unlike the bright but ephemeral college activist) and coevolved with their foes. He brings in a wonderfully colorful approach to militancy, the campy "Environmental Rangers," led by Ric Valois. The Rangers talk big talk and carry guns and do a bit of espionage, but the mere fact that they were included in the book gives up their chance at effective strategy - their names and intentions are known to the authorities. Manning makes a good point about this, though it may be that he has no reason to apply pessimism here when he's slightly brighter on the mainstream routes of action.
"Were this only an ethical question, I could answer it in a second. . . . I would kill someone in a heartbeat if I thought it could stop that mine. It won't. But it's not just an ethical question, and we know it and have known it since our state developed coercive powers sufficient to make rebellion impossible. This is so obviously true as to make our dilemma no longer interesting." Dedicating ourselves to serious underground sabotage, as Deep Green Resistance exhorts us to do, would necessarily set us in conflict with the most effective counterinsurgency force in the history of the world, a power with no qualms about using violence against its own citizens, and with the power to ensure public opinion remains against us. It's not a choice I could make, and I feel deeply conflicted asking others to do so, knowing the odds. Manning's position, then, takes a long view - seeing the harm of the mine will last "in perpetuity" but acknowledging there's a long history of degradation, that this mine would be a catastrophe but only one battle of many in the fight to save this place.
In the telling of all these things, Manning constantly displays a narrative excellence and depth of thought that just blows my mind. He connects every walk and drive he takes to the seasonal round of the Salish or the journeys of Lewis and Clark or the migration of jobless miners to the coast. He weaves each thread into a marvelously rich and satiating picture of the issue. He seems to live in a world of rich perception, full of stories and a history focused on otters and rivers and workers, a world that seems more real than the one most environmental battles are of necessity fought, or even than the prosaic one we live in.
I love his casual disrespect for the fourth wall, advising readers to remember this or that thought for later application (which is almost never really possible, I found). More than anything, I love his critical lens, which forces him to examine his own values and assumptions - justifying why the value he ascribes to solitude, natural beauty, and intact ecosystems can be said to override the value others ascribe to gold jewelry, or thrashing romantic images of nature and replacing them with slightly more reality based iterations of the same thing.
March 22, 2015
One Round River, by Richard Manning, is a book about the ecosystem of the Blackfoot River, which runs by his home near Missoula, Montana. The title implies that everything is connected, and moves in circles. Manning presents the history of the region in a number of acts.
We begin with geological history, and the vast lakes that formed and flooded at the end of the last Ice Age. He describes the Salish tribe, who enjoyed a good life in the region, until the white man’s horses arrived, and intensified inter-tribal conflict. But the horses did not cause as many problems as the white men, who came later, and went crazy on the land, with their grazing, logging, mining, ecocide, and genocide.
The grasslands and the buffalo had coevolved magnificently. The original vegetation remained nutritious year-round, so the Indians did not have to haul in hay bales for winter feed. Buffalo were fine-tuned for surviving in a semi-arid climate with severe winters. Then the whites came with their northern European cattle, which had evolved to thrive in wetter climates with mild winters. The whites planted many species of northern European vegetation, which led to many unintended negative consequences. Cattle stayed close to the streams, where they removed the vegetation, and promoted erosion and flooding. Cattle do not belong in the western United States.
Damage to the streams was multiplied by logging, which accelerated water run-off and soil erosion. The history of logging in the region is impressive from a robber baron point of view, but not from an ecological perspective. In recent years, some logging companies have abandoned conservative forestry, and have shifted to asset liquidation — cut everything as soon as possible. This popular method of forest management is known as rape and run.
The destruction caused by grazing and logging can sometimes be reversed, but the destruction caused by mining is often permanent and irreversible. Manning takes us on a tour of Butte, a mining center upstream from Missoula. It is a toxic catastrophe. The open pit mine turned into a poison lake when mining ended, and the pumps were unplugged. The lake is rising, and will eventually overflow, and poison everything downstream. A treatment plant is planned. Scientists are trying to invent technology for purifying large volumes of poison water. If they succeed, the plant will run until it is disabled by rising energy costs and/or economic collapse.
Manning’s primary motivation for writing this book was the struggle to stop a proposed cyanide heap-leach gold mine on the Blackfoot River. Gold mining is insane because it causes incredible ecological damage to produce a metal that is primarily used for hoarding, decoration, and status display. Cyanide heap-leach mining is an especially insane mode of gold mining because of the toxic pollution it causes, and the ecologic devastation it leaves behind.
The basics are that a thick plastic sheet is laid on the ground. Then a mountain of crushed ore is dumped on the sheet. Then large quantities of toxic cyanide are poured on the heap, to absorb and carry away tiny pieces of gold to the bottom, where they are collected and processed. Heap leach mining enables corporations to make a profit by extracting one ounce of gold from 60 tons of rock. When the mining is over, the bars and bordellos disappear, the boomtown dies, the corporation moves on, and future generations are left with a permanent super-toxic nightmare. I've come to understand that there is at least as much dark karma in a gold earring as in 10,000 full length mink coats.
I read a lot of books. Many books, a year after reading them, have left no tracks on my memory. Other books are burned into my DNA, and I will never forget their power — One Round River is one of these. This book is a full-immersion baptism in highly concentrated madness. The power of greed and ignorance can make humans behave in a manner that is spectacularly crazy.
Happily, the forceful burning truth in this book contributed to a magic act. After the book was published, and people understood the foolishness, the mine project was killed. The mining industry has long been a controlling force in Montana politics. They almost always get what they want. In 1998 Montana became the only state to ban cyanide heap-leach gold mining. In 2008 the US Supreme Court shot down the last appeal by the mining industry. So, the land will be safe from this madness, for a while, hopefully. It’s enjoyable to find a rare story where the good guys win.
We begin with geological history, and the vast lakes that formed and flooded at the end of the last Ice Age. He describes the Salish tribe, who enjoyed a good life in the region, until the white man’s horses arrived, and intensified inter-tribal conflict. But the horses did not cause as many problems as the white men, who came later, and went crazy on the land, with their grazing, logging, mining, ecocide, and genocide.
The grasslands and the buffalo had coevolved magnificently. The original vegetation remained nutritious year-round, so the Indians did not have to haul in hay bales for winter feed. Buffalo were fine-tuned for surviving in a semi-arid climate with severe winters. Then the whites came with their northern European cattle, which had evolved to thrive in wetter climates with mild winters. The whites planted many species of northern European vegetation, which led to many unintended negative consequences. Cattle stayed close to the streams, where they removed the vegetation, and promoted erosion and flooding. Cattle do not belong in the western United States.
Damage to the streams was multiplied by logging, which accelerated water run-off and soil erosion. The history of logging in the region is impressive from a robber baron point of view, but not from an ecological perspective. In recent years, some logging companies have abandoned conservative forestry, and have shifted to asset liquidation — cut everything as soon as possible. This popular method of forest management is known as rape and run.
The destruction caused by grazing and logging can sometimes be reversed, but the destruction caused by mining is often permanent and irreversible. Manning takes us on a tour of Butte, a mining center upstream from Missoula. It is a toxic catastrophe. The open pit mine turned into a poison lake when mining ended, and the pumps were unplugged. The lake is rising, and will eventually overflow, and poison everything downstream. A treatment plant is planned. Scientists are trying to invent technology for purifying large volumes of poison water. If they succeed, the plant will run until it is disabled by rising energy costs and/or economic collapse.
Manning’s primary motivation for writing this book was the struggle to stop a proposed cyanide heap-leach gold mine on the Blackfoot River. Gold mining is insane because it causes incredible ecological damage to produce a metal that is primarily used for hoarding, decoration, and status display. Cyanide heap-leach mining is an especially insane mode of gold mining because of the toxic pollution it causes, and the ecologic devastation it leaves behind.
The basics are that a thick plastic sheet is laid on the ground. Then a mountain of crushed ore is dumped on the sheet. Then large quantities of toxic cyanide are poured on the heap, to absorb and carry away tiny pieces of gold to the bottom, where they are collected and processed. Heap leach mining enables corporations to make a profit by extracting one ounce of gold from 60 tons of rock. When the mining is over, the bars and bordellos disappear, the boomtown dies, the corporation moves on, and future generations are left with a permanent super-toxic nightmare. I've come to understand that there is at least as much dark karma in a gold earring as in 10,000 full length mink coats.
I read a lot of books. Many books, a year after reading them, have left no tracks on my memory. Other books are burned into my DNA, and I will never forget their power — One Round River is one of these. This book is a full-immersion baptism in highly concentrated madness. The power of greed and ignorance can make humans behave in a manner that is spectacularly crazy.
Happily, the forceful burning truth in this book contributed to a magic act. After the book was published, and people understood the foolishness, the mine project was killed. The mining industry has long been a controlling force in Montana politics. They almost always get what they want. In 1998 Montana became the only state to ban cyanide heap-leach gold mining. In 2008 the US Supreme Court shot down the last appeal by the mining industry. So, the land will be safe from this madness, for a while, hopefully. It’s enjoyable to find a rare story where the good guys win.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews