No Man’s Land : The...

When I was growing up in the desert of west Texas and southern New Mexico, I saw the landscape change with the encroachment of the 1.5 million people from El Paso and Juarez. In the 1960s and ‘70s, you could still escape the polluted haze of border industries by hiking into the Organ Mountains near Las Cruces, N.M. When I left the area for good in 1978, the Franklin Mountains surrounding El Paso were no longer a haven because new housing developments had cut into them, destroying the fragile, ecological balance and the beauty of those bare mountains; you had to go farther into the southern New Mexico desert to find solitude. Years later, I wrote a book of essays about the desert and its rich, natural world as I had known it in my childhood. I recounted my experiences with great, diamondback rattlers and the hundreds of collar lizards that skipped everywhere I walked. I thought I knew everything there was to know about the area.

After reading and gazing at “Two Eagles / Dos Aguilas,” my view of where I grew up has been completely disrupted and pleasantly changed. Peter Steinhart’s essays, written in clear, simple language, invite the reader to join him on his explorations and discoveries. His knowledge about the Southwest reveals a whole new world that is thriving along what Steinhart calls “the most ecologically diverse region in North America.” Despite the disappearance of much of the desert and wildlife around major cities such as El Paso, Steinhart’s book is encouraging. He shows how the borderlands are very much alive and surviving current problems such as pollution, industrial mismanagement, the population boom and political tensions between the United States and Mexico.

“Two Eagles” is a tour of the natural world along the border from San Diego to the Texas Gulf Coast. Steinhart and photographer Tupper Ansel Blake drew their boundaries to include everything 50 miles north of the border and everything 50 miles south. The region in between is a belt of valuable natural resources, ancient rock valleys, pockets of tropical fauna and bird species, alpine forests and mighty currents of mountain waters churning into two of our most crucial waterways, the Colorado and Rio Grande rivers.

This is one of those rare books in which the imagery of fine writing is nourished by the imagery of fine photography. As I read about Steinhart’s travels, and became hypnotized by Blake’s photographs, I realized that I may have been guilty of dismissing much of the area I wrote about as a desolate wasteland whose life was over. “Two Eagles” is a groundbreaking book because it does away with the myth many natives themselves have been guilty of promoting about the borderlands. There was always more to the region than I knew about. The deserts, mountains, high forests and green valleys of the borderlands are beautiful, mysterious and environmentally fragile. The Chihuahua desert of southern New Mexico was a world large enough for a small boy, but as its plants and wildlife were overrun by new streets, its stripped landscape forced many of us to believe there was nothing left.

Steinhart’s experience as a naturalist and environmental writer has drawn out secrets of the borderlands and its natural world that few natives, much less outsiders, would know about. He documents little-known species of animals native to the borderlands: jaguars, ocelots, parrots, bears and wolves. The region is abundant with plant life that varies from yuccas, ocotillo and lechugilla to lesser-known ebony trees, guayacans, cenizo and anacuas. As overview in his first essay, “On the Border,” Steinhart writes: “The borderlands . . . are that part of the continent where temperate life meets tropical life. To the north, where most rains fall, are rolling prairies and thick forests. To the south, the land rises into the Mexican plateau; there, too, the land is wetter and more forested. Draw a line fifty miles north of and parallel to the entire border: the resulting 95,000 square miles contain the United States’ richest biodiversity, more species per square mile than any other part of the nation, with the sole possible exception of southern Florida. A similar strip south of the border is one of Mexico’s areas of highest biodiversity, and Mexico boasts a number of endemic species perhaps higher than any other nation’s.”

Steinhart is not, however, celebrating the biological richness of the borderlands without warning about its environmental degradation. The pivotal chapter of “Two Eagles” is “In the Kingdom of Grasses,” in which Steinhart describes the vast grasslands found along the border. The main grass region lies in Southwestern New Mexico, where the best year-round grazing is found. Here the 40 different species of native grasses include black grana, blue grana, hay grana, boboza and sacaton. Beginning with Coronado’s arrival at Zuni Pueblo in 1540, Steinhart traces the history of men coming to the borderlands and transforming them forever with the introduction of cattle.

The reader’s realization of the ecological damage and contradictions of settling the West clash dramatically with the romantic impression the beautiful book initially creates. The borderlands may still be one of the richest natural areas of the continent, but men continue to shape the history of its isolated landscape. The fine ecological balance is tipping toward complete destruction of the borderlands, until there will be nothing left but those new steel fences the U.S. Border Patrol is erecting to keep Mexicans out.

Steinhart’s insight on the fragile relationship between men and nature is the underlying tragic theme of “Two Eagles.” “This distinctive biological province,” he writes, “would be studied and celebrated as unique and precious, like the Everglades or the Great Plains or the redwood forest, but for one fact. It is bisected by the U.S.-Mexico border, and though the line is no wider than a pencil lead, it casts a shadow so broad as to obscure the nature of this world.”

Another of Steinhart’s contributions is his study of the environment south of that shadow. “Two Eagles” effectively erases Northern Mexico’s image of a vast, moon-like terrain of harsh deserts. One of the lushest of tropical zones, the mountains of northern Mexico have been home to large populations of black bears, wolves, jaguars and rare species of predatory birds. The last three chapters are devoted to ecological problems in Mexico and the efforts of its few environmental groups. Their successes have been limited by the political climate in Mexico and barriers that make it difficult for U.S. groups to work south of the border.

One can only hope that Steinhart’s wisdom, compassion and resolve and Blake’s visual intensity will encourage more people to pay attention to the borderlands. In the last essay, which gives the book its title, Steinhart concludes by writing: “I looked up and saw a dark shape to the southwest, just over the bulk of the Santa Catalina Mountains. It had the broad, board-like wings of an eagle. It drifted on an unseen current, and pumped its great wings every now and then to stay afloat. I stared hard through the haze, looking for the throat or wing tips of a caracara. As my gaze followed it, it seemed to flash a burst of light and then to vanish in the sinking sun. When I gained my vision and looked again, the bird was gone. Which eagle was it? The eagle of the natural setting or the eagle of the flag? The eagle of community and spirit or the eagle of militant purpose? Which eagle will fly over the borderlands of the future?”