Ken Lamberton: Beyond Desert Walls

I could not put this book down. I think it is because he sets up a tension as early as the introduction by telling us he goes to jail. He reveals it in the first paragraph. I wanted to know so badly what happened? And why? And how did he write this in prison? Eventually, I forgot about my questions because I got so sucked into his writing. I admire Lamberton for his ability to weave nature writing with his story. He takes the external—the landscape, bugs, birds and trees and reflects in them the internal—his feelings, motives and fears. By the end of the book, I could read his descriptions of the desert and know that he was describing himself, or a part of himself. He didn’t have to tell me.

Lamberton uses a lot of themes that help tie the book together, themes that range from hunting and blood to adventure and escape. Each chapter orients around a place or a natural element, including insects and reptiles. There is a lot of scientific information that supports his profession as a teacher and naturalist. I found a lot of the information fascinating; it never felt boring or too scientific.(like how to get rid of chigger bites with a little nailpolish!-sounds a little too chemical though) Lamberton takes seemingly meaningless physical objects as well as massive landforms and projects his inner feelings onto them. Through old pottered containers he stumbles upon in caves or the Santa Catalina Mountains, Lamberton sheds layers of himself using his interactions with such forms.

There are wonderful metaphors throughout the book, such as on pg.39 when he writes “If, on a whim, the mountain shuddered, I would have become a fossil, curled in fetal position between limestone plates.” Or on pg. 22 when he writes “Deep into the canyon’s entrails, snowmelt collected in a string of stone basins like an ellipsis at the end of a slickrock sentence.” He takes his body and his language and weaves it into the land. I'm learning that’s what makes a good nature writer.

Although I truly love this book, there is something that drove me crazy. I wanted to know what exactly happened with the affair. He hints on it from time to time, revealing information that it was a young student, a girl student he kept close by, but he never puts it in scene. We never see or feel what actually happened, what decision he made that eventually sent him to jail. We know they ran off together, but that’s it. I wonder if that is partly due to the case itself. Often, information can not be disclosed during a trial, or ongoing investigation. I just felt a little betrayed at the end. It felt like he didn’t fulfill his promise that he left on page 1. (So much so that I did some research online and read an article from the journal in Arizona that did a piece on the entire story)

I found the last chapter of the book very interesting. It is in this chapter that Lamberton reveals a strong environmental tone. It is here that he reveals his love of gray hawks. I find this interesting because up until now, his feelings towards animals and the land have been almost ambiguous (minus the rattlesnake). It is in this chapter that he states his point of view on the environment. He reveals that he deeply cares about it and that it IS definitely worth saving. A long way from where we came in chapter one with him hunting and draining the blood of animals. “Why is it that even the footprints we leave behind cause harm? Why must human culture always have an impact?” He throws out logging, DDT, hunting, and consumerism all in one paragraph. I like what he’s saying but I guess I feel like I wasn’t expecting it so it felt rushed at the end.

I guess this revelation is part of his journey…that just like the land and the environment which he has learned to care so much about, he must do the same for himself and his family. He must learn to look at himself the same way he “sees” his natural surroundings and discover in him what he knows he will find in the land. Strength.