The American Southwest is a land that echoes with mystery, stark beauty, and a history of brutality. On this arid landscape civilizations have risen and fallen for thousands of years. Some were wiped out by changing climatic conditions, others by the brutality of Spanish Conquistadors and later by American settlers and military personnel. Yet the remnants of these complex societies remain and have fascinated visitors to the Southwest for centuries.
In First Impressions: A Reader's Journey to Iconic Places of the American Southwest, co-authors David Weber and William DeBuys take us on a journey to fifteen iconic sites across Arizona, New Mexico, southern Utah, and southern Colorado and tell their stories through the eyes of the explorers, missionaries, and travelers who were the first non-natives to describe them. On this episode of Locus Focus we talk with William DeBuys about how the past and present come together more vividly in the hard, dry beauty of the Southwest than in any other part of America.
Writer and conservationist William deBuys is the author of nine books, which range from memoir and biography to environmental history and studies of place. A native of Maryland, he attended the University of North Carolina, where he was graduated with highest honors in 1972. Soon afterwards, the writer and social critic Robert Coles brought him to New Mexico as a research assistant, initiating deBuys’s deep relationship with the cultures and landscapes of the Southwest. DeBuys’s books include THE LAST UNICORN, A GREAT ARIDNESS: CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE FUTURE OF THE AMERICAN SOUTHWEST, ENCHANTMENT AND EXPLOITATION: THE LIFE AND HARD TIMES OF A NEW MEXICO MOUNTAIN RANGE, RIVER OF TRAPS, SALT DREAMS: LAND AND WATER IN LOW-DOWN CALIFORNIA, SEEING THINGS WHOLE: THE ESSENTIAL JOHN WESLEY POWELL, VALLES CALDERA: A VISION FOR NEW MEXICO’S NATIONAL PRESERVE and THE WALK.
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