by Johnathan Raban Bad Land: An American Romance brilliantly and descriptively depicts the attempts of would-be farmers and ranchers, those of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, to make a living on highly questionable land. This land, much of it in eastern Montana and western Dakota, could have been described as marginal land, but Raban’s fact-finding mission has made it abundantly clear that these lands were less than marginal.
The federal government and the railroad companies would benefit from having settlers in this region. Your benefits: There would be more products to ship from one place to another and travel to this region would increase considerably. However, as Raban documents and I have seen firsthand, this marginal land had shallow topsoil, strong wind patterns, little precipitation, and extremely cold winters; and efforts to cultivate the barren land were rarely rewarded.
This book was written in an informal and pleasant way while the author walked through this region and examined some of the failed farms. Indeed, it is dramatic when Raban explored the remains of these numerous failed farms. He even found a book that described the best method of thriving on these barren farms. The book was titled Campbell’s Scientific Dry Growing Techniques and it was subtitled The Camel for the Sahara Desert and the Campbell Method for the American Desert. According to meteorological figures, any area with an average annual rainfall of less than three inches per year would be classified as a desert region. This region of eastern Montana is certainly considered a desert, as most of it averages less than three inches of rain per year.
Like Raban, I too have walked this land, but I walked it for a different reason. I was looking for the sharp-tailed grouse and the elusive sage grouse. I was amazed, many years ago, to have seen so many remains: remains of rotting and fallen windmills, broken and gray boards of outbuildings, barns and houses, as well as unoccupied rock foundations, long-rusted barbed-wire fences. , fence posts that were rotten and lying on the ground, and space – open space… endless space. Raban’s book told a story of the many valiant human attempts to produce on this infinitely poor farmland, bad land. The government pamphlets and railroad brochures were undoubtedly at least spurious, if not outright lies.
Raban had an inspiring idea for writing this story, and followed through on it: brilliant inspiration, first-hand research, and highly descriptive writing!
