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In this remarkable collection, gifted purveyors of poems, song, music, and artwork have created a memory book that takes readers back to the Old West. The Santa Fe Trail was devised and dug out in danger and determination over years by a wide range of diverse, exhausted, and sometimes hostile travelers as a "conduit" between America and Mexico. Business magnates saw profits, religious folk saw freedom to worship as they wished, and misfits and rovers saw a vast terrain to travel, perhaps becoming lost or found in the large and lonely landscape. In 2013, poet Morton inspired Birkelbach with her idea to visit all sixty-three national parks and create words and pictures to remember them. Once the idea had sprung to life, it seemed it was an unavoidable, noble quest.
The many segments of the quarter-million-mile journey were long, and diversions were sometimes included. Usually, one partner drove while the other sat and wrote. Michael Martin Murphey would later contribute musical insights, which are offered here in CD form, while Bob Boze Bell has selected appropriate and emotive illustrations. The perspectives of the early, original trailblazers are often seen but hardly limited to the reflections of rough-riding cowboys: "Girls make us bold, old dogs make us criers, / but cowboys we are at the end of the day." Some men, though necessarily tough, remember the ones left behind: "I'll ride that trail down / To you, darlin' / To put a new map in your mind." The native peoples also speak in this collection, with bitter remembrances of the theft of their lands, as told in "Winnemucca."
Other standouts in the book include "St. James Hotel" in Cimarron, New Mexico, which was a place where there wasn't much sleeping, but rather "gambling and chatting, and a whole lot of begatting." Meanwhile, "Women's Voices" offers plaints of men's betrayal in pieces like "Should've Known Better." The vengeful plots of women scorned are evident in selections like "Cocking," where the poet vows that if she encounters her false lover again, "He's gonna lose some parts that make up a man." The collection's panorama of the trials and triumphs of the Trail offers a new generation a glimpse into the past, perhaps evoking the urge to follow in the authors' footsteps, literally or, as they suggest, metaphorically.
The creators of this colorful, shareable, cooperative, multimedia work are sincere in their respect for the Santa Fe Trail. Morton and Birkelbach are each highly recognized poets, having been awarded and honored as Texas State Poet Laureates. Their collaboration shows the skills that have earned them such high acclaim. All participants in the work intend to celebrate and preserve America's state parks. Musician Murphey has been granted the Lifetime Achievement Award, and relishes the guardianship of songs and stories of the Old West. Emmy winner Bell is drawn to the escapades of the West's notorious outlaws and shares his fascination in his True West magazine. The colorful, readable, and thought-provoking creation that these acknowledged exemplars offer here will live on in the evocative implications of their written words, the authentic stir of the many illustrations, and the emotive, history-laden sounds of songs that call across the years.
RECOMMENDED by the US Review
Morton's and Birkelbach's The National Parks was a 2021 Category Finalist.