Virga & Bone / Craig Childs / 2019
I first encountered the work of Craig Childs at Star Hall in Moab, Utah. The room was packed with locals hanging on his every word, especially as he described the rapturous beauty of flying through a virga. My partner was so impressed by his passion that she bought a copy of his book. While she was getting it signed, she mentioned she was a PhD student in Literature and a bashful Childs told her he wrote the book very, very hastily and to please not judge him too harshly. After reading Virga & Bone, all I have to say is if this isn’t Childs in top form, then Child’s other books must be bomb-ass. A true romanticist, his writing swells and sighs over our landscape. A snappy read, the language glides beneath your eyes like a magic carpet. Childs speaks with the voice of someone eroded, but not hardened by desert. He speaks with a blunt wisdom about its dangers and risks, but also with undeniable and infectious love. At the event, Childs talked about how his real aim in writing is not to make people read, but to make people go out to reverently, ecstatically experience the wonders of the Southwest on their own. His books are only supposed to hold you down while you wait for your next excursion, as most of us can’t live a nomadic life backpacking across our sparse, sparkling deserts.
Another aspect of the book I appreciate is Child’s understanding of the history of the land. He weaves in bits of Navajo language and culture without stereotyping or exoticizing. Neither does it feel like he is speaking over or for Navajos or other indigenous groups. Reflecting on his relationship to the land, he argues, “If there was ever an illegal alien, I felt like one. I was walking over histories as if the earth was the only history, an error of arrogance and blindness I didn’t know I had… I’d been speaking it thinking myself a prince, an explorer. Now I was exploring the trenches of a canyon looking for the way out.” While I cringed at the word “illegal alien,” I appreciate his gesture of acknowledging how his whiteness shaped his relationship with the land and how part of the work of knowing this land is knowing its history beyond European colonialism. Later on, Childs speaks of the Southwest as an “exchange route”, a “Silk Road of North America.” In describing the history of the landscape, he names the atrocities, the “children in cages,” “murdered women,” and “concentration camps.” Childs uses the Southwest’s history as a counterargument against harsh and strict immigration policy. “Ask any shell trader a thousand years ago and they’d tell you that blocking the flow in a place like this will be a problem,” Childs reminds us. For someone who manages to stay otherwise politically neutral, I deeply appreciate these clear-eyed gestures.
If you love the outdoors, you’ll love Childs work.
I recommend this book for anyone interested in Utah, non-fiction, environmentalism, and deserts.