One Round River: The Curse of Gold and the Fight for the Big Blackfoot - Hardcover

Manning, Richard

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0805047921 ISBN 13: 9780805047929

Publisher: Henry Holt and Co., 1998

Synopsis

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.

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Reviews

The Blackfoot River is in trouble, and its woes are described with anger and clarity by Manning (Grassland, 1995, etc.) in this elegiac account. It would be trouble enough that Montana's Big Blackfoot ends in a Superfund site (one of the nation's oldest, with no current hope of reclamation). But that, as Manning makes clear, is only one of the problems the river faces. Logging has denuded hillsides and filled the river with silt; cattle cluster alongside the river, leveling vegetation and tromping the banks and bed; new homes are springing up along its length, and with them comes a poisonous infusion of pesticides and fertilizers from lawns. Even if most of these problems could be successfully resolved, there is still the issue of a resurgence of gold mining in the West, where economies conspire to spawn rape-and-run operations unfettered by laws and regulations. Manning angrily describes what current mining practices would mean to the Blackfoot: Cyanide would be used to pull the metal from the soil, ammonium nitrate (a fertilizer) would be employed for blasting, and another monster hole--like Butte's immense Berkeley Pit-- would be excavated too close to the river. As he describes the grassroots resistance to mining, Manning makes it clear where he stands. ``I haven't the slightest interest in providing balance to this story,'' he says, for along the embattled river and its environs he still finds a stunning, regenerative natural world one that mining, he believes, would destroy, perhaps forever. It is Manning's special talent to raise landscapes--grasslands, headwaters--to exalted status through prose that is ardent and uncompromising: ``How can you ask me to trade clean rivers and my mountains for your Rolex watch?'' Now that gold is the master, the ancient rhythms receding, Manning hopes that nature won't become a bit of history along the Big Blackfoot. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

In this account of his attempt to stop a proposed gold mine near his Montana home, environmental author Manning (Grassland, LJ 7/95) examines the cyclic nature of rivers. The mine site in question is adjacent to the Big Blackfoot River, immortalized by Norman Maclean's A River Runs Through It, and would use the hazardous but increasingly common method of cyanide leaching to extract the gold. Manning examines the history of extractive resources with an emphasis on gold mining both worldwide and in Montana, and he attempts to understand our long-standing fascination with the mineral. The author does a very good job of describing the practices of modern mining and putting the environmental, social, and political effects into perspective. He is also honest about his own bias, not merely as a resident of the area but as a concerned environmental advocate. Recommended for all Western natural history and environmental collections.?Tim Markus, Evergreen State Coll. Lib., Olympia, Wash.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0805047921
• ISBN 13: 9780805047929
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240