Book Review – Bad Land, An American Romance
By Johnathan Raban Bad Land: An American Romance brilliantly and descriptively describes the attempts of future farmers and ranchers, those of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, to make a living on highly questionable land. This land, most of it in eastern Montana and the western Dakotas could have been described as marginal land, but Raban’s fact-finding mission has made it very clear that these lands were less than marginal.
The federal government and the railroad companies would benefit from having settlers in this region. Its benefits: there would be more products to ship from one place to another and trips to this region would increase considerably. However, as Raban documents and, I have seen firsthand, this marginal land had a shallow topsoil, strong wind patterns, little rainfall, and extremely cold winters; and efforts to cultivate the arid land were seldom rewarded.
This book was written in a casual and pleasant way as the author walked through this region and examined some of the failed farms. Indeed, it is a drama when Raban explored the remains of these many failed farms. He even found a book that described the best way to thrive on these arid farms. The book was titled Campbell’s Dry Farming Scientific Techniques and it was subtitled The camel for the Sahara desert and the Campbell method for the American desert. Based on 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, with most of it averaging less than three inches of rainfall per year.
Like Raban, I too have walked this land, but I walked it for a different reason. He 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, gray and broken boards of outbuildings, barns and houses, as well as empty rock foundations, long-rusted barbed wire fences. , fence posts that were rotten and thrown on the ground, and space – wide open space … infinite space. Raban’s book told the story of the many valiant human attempts to produce in this infinitely poor land, bad land. The government and rail pamphlets were undoubtedly at least false, if not downright lies.
Raban had an inspiring idea to write this story, and he followed it up: brilliant inspiration, first-hand research, and highly descriptive writing!