Between The Lines

Battlegrounds
By Larry Burke, Publisher/Editor-in-Chief

If President Clinton hoped to make a splash last September with his surprise designation of 1.7 million acres in Utah as untouchable wilderness, without a doubt he succeeded. But the reaction was hardly unanimous; in creating Grand Staircase-Escalante, the largest national monument in the Lower 48, he provoked as much indignation and blustery threats as he did applause. For every environmentalist hustling to rank the monument's birth, as one did, among "the grandest, most electrifying moments in American conservation history," there stewed a posse of irate Utahans who felt betrayed by what Senator Orrin Hatch called "the mother of all land grabs."

Before the dust settled, Frederick Turner, author of several books chronicling the flavor of distinctive American regions (including A Border of Blue, about the Gulf Coast, and Of Chiles, Cacti, and Fighting Cocks, about the Southwest), paid a visit to the monument to sort out the realpolitik of Clinton's act. Turner soon discovered that the animus surrounding the announcement has roots as old as the republic itself. "The real bedrock issue in all of this is not Bill Clinton versus Orrin Hatch," Turner says. "It's whether the federal government has the right to designate or restrict the uses to which public lands should be put." In "Oh, Wilderness," Turner paints a rich portrait of this spectacular place and then teases apart the tangle of ulterior motives, mistaken propriety, and economic greed that binds the landscape. It's an intriguing look at what was gained from the president's bequest, and what may have been permanently lost.

Several time zones west of Utah, on Oahu, an annual flock of heroes and up-and-comers seeks to make a splash of its own. Over the years, a lucrative industry has sprung up around surfing: corps of advertisers, photographers, and video producers who seek to cash in on the sport's inherent glamour. Then there are the surfers themselves, who present a face of indifference about all this endorsement and rankings nonsense. These worlds collide each December at the Pipeline Masters, the climactic last stop on the pro tour.

To soak in the fabled North Shore scene, we sent William Finnegan, himself a longtime surfer who in recent years has written about such less-than-idyllic locales as Bosnia and Mozambique. "Going to the North Shore as a reporter was a little disorienting," Finnegan says. "Even though I've been reporting for 15 or 20 years now and have been surfing since I was a kid in the sixties, I've pretty much kept these two sides of my life separate. Conducting interviews when I could see from the corner of my eye that the surf was starting to fire was particularly tough." See Finnegan's insightful report on the state of big-time surfing, "Life Among the Swells." Hawaii-based Erik Aeder, also a surfer, provided the photographs.

On a more contrarian note, Ian Frazier offers a quirky testimonial on the subject of entomophagy: the practice of eating insects ("It's Hard to Eat Just One"). In this case, humans eating insects, which over the years has become a peculiar sort of hobby for Frazier. "People hear about it and say, 'Oh, God, would you eat a cockroach?'" says the Montana resident and author, most recently, of Coyote v. Acme. "Well, no, I wouldn't. But an insect in a natural, clean environment is probably better for you than, you know, a Big Mac." Over the years, Frazier has also consumed part of a houseplant and recently much of the floral arrangement at a French restaurant. But he won't swallow indiscriminately: "The bigger the insect, I think, the less fun it is to eat, as a rule of thumb. If you want a rule of thumb."

Chadwick Rowan, the first American-born sumo champion, knows his way around a meal, too; when you compete at 475 pounds, it takes determination to stay in fighting trim. Former senior editor Brad Wetzler caught up with Rowan at his frat-house-like digs in Tokyo to quiz the big guy about life as a sumo superhero. See "Another Herbal Wrap, O Immortal One?."

Also in this issue: We offer our annual tribute to the grand old art of camping. And who better to lead the discussion than the grand old man of the backcountry, National Outdoor Leadership School founder Paul Petzoldt? At age 89, Petzoldt still isn't shy about calling things as he sees them, as correspondent Elizabeth Royte discovered when she visited Petzoldt at his log cabin in Maine. We've also included a condensed compilation of backwoods wisdom to make your next outing trouble-free and unforgettable.

Finally, in the Field Notes column, contributing editor Craig Vetter recounts his visit to the island of Okinawa, tracing the footsteps of the father he knew only from faded snapshots and yellowed letters home. You'll find his account, "Once More to the Reef," to be a haunting reminder that on the battlefields of World War II--as in the canyons-and-arches country of southern Utah--the echoes of hard-fought skirmishes do not quickly subside.