After our descent from the springs, we can't resist the temptation to go tromping among the dunes. Like children, we scuttle back and forth. Old sea fossils on one ridge. Chippings on another. Wildflowers still thriving, despite the summer heat. Violet-green swallows soaring overhead. Abundant elk sign.
"What a place! What a day!" exclaims Martin.
"You know, Mac," he says, winking his one good eye, "I like to call myself a 'varmentalist' instead of an 'environmentalist.'"
Like Tom Bell, Martin also lost an eye to enemy fire during World War II. And like Tom, he has spent much of his life defending wildlife (including varmints) and wild places like the Red Desert.
Roaming & Writing
Martin's first trip to the desert was with his father on an antelope hunting expedition in the Great Divide Basin. His second visit was after serving in northern Italy with the famed 10th Mountain Division. On that occasion, he came with his friend Grant Hagen, another 10th Mountain veteran. They camped at Steamboat Mountain where they spent several days exploring. "We were just enjoying being alive," he recalls. Since then he has returned numerous times.
Martin was born in 1925 in Washington state. Shortly thereafter, his father, Olaus, was commissioned by the National Biological Survey to study the declining Jackson elk herds, so the family packed up and moved to Wyoming. Olaus and Mardy allowed their children free rein to explore the outdoors.
"We skied and snow-shoed and just roamed the mountains," Martin recalls. "Our parents had some sort of faith that everything would be O.K. We could have fallen into Flat Creek, or gotten stuck in caves….We did things that I would never allow my kids to do! But we were also lucky that way."
After World War II, Martin took a year off in Jackson Hole. In 1946, he went to Reed College, where he graduated with a degree in literature and philosophy. Later he received a Ph.D. in zoology at Berkeley.
He, his wife Alison and their three daughters moved to Yellow Springs, Ohio, where he taught biology at Antioch College from 1961 to 1975. He then retired to northern New York where he and Alison found a backwoods farm and settled down, trying to live lightly on the land. They have been married for 50 years.
Martin has written numerous essays and books about the West's environmental and social challenges. His books include Walking Out of Wilderness, Windswept and Losing Solitude, a novel in which ranchers and environmentalists find themselves on the same side in the struggle against corporate development.
Fighting for Wildness
Looking at Wyoming now, Martin has mixed feelings about the state of the state.
"Going back to the town of Jackson and my old stomping grounds," he says, "I feel sad for all of the people there on the streets looking for adventure, looking for something that isn't much there anymore. I grew up there before Jackson became what it is.
"But Wyoming isn't just Jackson," he continues. "It has something that many states don't have. Wyoming has so much going for it. It still has most of its original animals. And it has bigness. In so many ways, it is still wilderness. And it's still there…"
Martin strides with his long lope to the top of a dune and gazes towards the jutting dark dagger of Boar's Tusk.
"When it comes to being an activist sometimes you have to fight, and sometimes you just have to take a break and hang up like a bat," he muses. "Except for maybe Alaska and Nevada, I can't think of another state where it is more difficult to be an activist then in Wyoming. It's tough. It's always tough…But it is amazing when solidarity occurs. Solidarity happens all the time in small places with all sorts of issues… It happens all the time."
"Are you cautiously optimistic about the environment?" I ask him.
"You have to be," Martin exclaims. "You have to be to stay alive."
Late in the day, after a hike to the top of Steamboat, we pass by South Packsaddle Canyon. A proud desert elk bull gazes at us and then gallops like a race horse.
"That's the first one I've seen in such a long gallop," Martin says. He looks happy, like a man in his own element, thoroughly satisfied with a homecoming. |
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