Bargaining for Eden:
The Fight for the Last Open Spaces in America
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words and photographs by Stephen Trimble
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..."one of America's best naturalist writers; nobody else produces prose that is quite so pure, spare, beautiful and clean." --The Gulch Blog
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"Stephen Trimble is the only honest writer in America." --The Oregonian
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"Stephen Trimble has offered us a way beyond hatred with a great and shocking story of the past and a template for the future."
--Dick Dorworth, Mountain Gazette
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2004 Utah Arts Council Literature Program Nonfiction Book Award
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2008 Utah Book Award in Nonfiction
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e all love special places—but who should decide their future? In Bargaining for Eden, Trimble tracks down the motives that inspire passion on all sides in two iconic places in The New West: a Utah mountain and its historic ski area and a redrock mesa on which Trimble builds a home. This is Trimble’s most innovative foray into literary non-fiction, incorporating ten years of fieldwork and writing—and the transition to the 21st Century for the shrinking open spaces of America.
Bargaining for Eden follows citizens in two communities grappling with change on extraordinary public lands in their backyards. Conflict grows from the tension between grassroots values and greed, politics, ownership, and patriarchy. First comes Mount Ogden and the history of the Public-Lands West, from overused commons to reclaimed national forest to ski area—all community-based. The beloved ski area then loses its sense of community as the mountain develops into a resort that hosts the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics. The lens for this story is billionaire resort owner Earl Holding, whose power and money bring him what he wants, despite the anger and agony of local people trying to preserve their special relationship with the mountain.
In the second story, the author forms the lens, turning from observer to actor, buying land in southern Utah redrock country, splitting the property, and facing Earl’s values within himself. The author deals with the ethics of ownership, the same issues confronting every New Westerner hoping for a piece of paradise--housebuilding, conservation easements, stewardship, sustainability, and the “devil’s bargains” of tourism.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Becoming Earl
PART I: BEDROCK
Little America
Mountain of Dreams
The Prophets of Place
PART II: THE GOOD BUSINESSMAN
The Last Resort
The Rules of the Game
Museum of Improprieties
Track Hoe
Pneumonia Road
Public Trust
PART III: THE MIDDLE-AGED WEST
Ninety-Nine Seconds
Farmers in Eden
Crazy Grace
Devil's Bargains
The Woes of Wayne County
Credo: The People's West
Notes, Acknowledgments & Index
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| "With this masterwork, Stephen Trimble has given us the most reasoned and moving account of how and why the West becomes developed and its lands fragmented. He places the development issue in a larger cultural context, asking us all to be full participants in the choices about how our lands and waters are ultimately managed. As wise as it is heart-breaking, Trimble's story challenges us to sign on to supporting a new ethics of land use in the West that will keep such tragedies from occurring so frequently in the future.
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| -Gary Nabhan, author of Renewing America's Food Traditions and Cultures of Habitat |
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| "While open spaces in America are rapidly being destroyed as a result of greed, hubris, and neglect, Stephen Trimble's Bargaining for Eden is a powerful call for us to more earnestly consider our solemn obligations as stewards of the Earth. Combining remarkable investigative research with his skills as a poignant essayist, Trimble has favored us with an extraordinary account that inspires as it challenges our values, our commitment to action, and our sense of connection with place, community, and the essence of who we are as inhabitants of this wondrous planet." |
| -Rocky Anderson, Former Mayor of Salt Lake City |
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| "Stephen Trimble, a spiritual descendant of Edward Abbey, put together, over ten years, a chilling indictment of insider power in Utah and Washington, D.C., leading to the bald-faced appropriation of public land for private profit. Central to Trimble’s new book is the broader question: How do we move ahead given our wildly divergent ideas about living in a fragile West?
It is both a piece of dogged investigative journalism and a soul-searching confessional.
We are all part of the problem. And we need to come to grips with that fact, as the author has in this important, harrowing and revealing self-examination.
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| -Peter Shelton, Telluride Watch |
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| "From Hetch-Hetchy to Glen Canyon, we mourn the sacred places in the West that have been bargained away for the American dream and Steve Trimble’s new book reveals today’s deeper challenge: that every community has its own Walden Pond that is threatened. Trimble eloquently tells the story that we are not just bargaining for Eden but bargaining for our own souls. These are not just conflicts over land, but choices over which American dream we pursue as a nation. What moves us to act? What do we really value? How shall we live together? In this mature and poignant book, Trimble urges passion and self-awareness and that no conflict arises totally outside of oneself. All of the things we fear in others may be possible in ourselves." |
| -Peter Forbes, director, Center for Whole Communities, Vermont |
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| "This thoughtful and thought-provoking book is written for all of us who live in the West and want its character to abide. The story is representative of what happens in every state in the United States. This is a critique of democracy. While the writer's stance is clear, he does not make himself a hero or a man with all the answers, but rather crafts his story as if he's Everyman, fraught with questions and puzzles. And Stephen Trimble ought to be Everyman--the person who cares what will happen to our fragile, beautiful and irreplaceable world.
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| -Kent Nelson, Utah Arts Council Book Awards judge |
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| "Make no mistake: Bargaining for Eden is a brave and important book. It's a page-turner of a story about powerful men, unspeakable wealth, and Olympic gold-medal mountains. But it's also a Jungle–in the tradition of Upton Sinclair, a disturbing story of how politics and capitalism worked hand-in-hand against the common good and our commonweal of wildlands. If we are ever to learn how to live on the land and at the same time protect its heart, maybe we can start here, in Trimble's beloved Utah mountains." |
| -Kathleen Dean Moore, author of The Pine Island Paradox |
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| "...interesting, intelligent, and well voiced, Bargaining for Eden convincingly asserts that the protection of the wildest country on our public lands is necessary to preserve that quality of America so famously described by the great Wallace Stegner as "the geography of hope." The case Trimble makes is troubling testimony to the speed with which a birthright is now slipping away.
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| Rick Bass, Boston Globe |
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| "Bargaining For Eden is not just another depressing illustration of the corrupting influence of power, but a vibrant montage of unusual suspects expressing quirky aspects of individualism, camaraderie, and Western ethos.
Trimble's softspoken integrity puts the reader at ease. In the end, I could not escape the feeling that the author's essential honesty and kindness overshadow even his larger-than-life subjects. Steve Trimble is harder on himself than on anyone else in this book, and that's saying something. It is therefore the one book about the changing West that every American should read.
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| -Kevin McCarthy, Amazon.com |
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| "...a stirring yarn, and a vivid example of how the West's public lands have too often been mismanaged. This deserves a very wide audience." |
| Tom Turner, In Brief, Earthjustice |
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| "Examining a single moment on a single, no-longer-unspoiled patch of land, Trimble has written possibly his most comprehensive book. He tells an old story in a new way, avoiding simplistic Good-Guy-vs.-Bad-Guy characterizations. You may never come across a more fair-minded yet critical portrayal of a wealthy developer." |
| --John Calderazzo, High Country News |
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| "Trimble does a fine job of weaving an intriguing tale from a myriad of details. Bargaining for Eden often reads like a novel, filled with charming character portraits, even though some of the characters are less than charming. With an even hand, Trimble lays out the facts, and respectfully tells a story of people with values different from his, of opposing groups who can look at one piece of land and see two very different worlds of possibilities. Trimble’s style of journalism moves forward with the pacing of a soap opera, each chapter bringing forth new plot points and character quirks." |
| -Audrey Webb, Earth Island Institute Journal |
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| "...a compelling and important book for all of us who are concerned about the future of our remaining open spaces. Bargaining for Eden (the Ogden Valley town or the biblical garden?) is our story, an American story, a story of our time.
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| --Nick Carling, The Lynx, High Uintas Preservation Council |
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| "Bargaining for Eden ultimately asks what we are doing as landowners, neighbors, and citizens to ensure that our changing communities are rooted in, not greed, but generosity." |
| -- Joshua Zaffos, ORION magazine |
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| "The controversies Trimble describes are fascinating, his candid confessions of his own bargains with the devil of excessive resource consumption are engaging, and his distillation of the dilemmas confronted by those seeking to manage the West's natural resources sustainably are insightful. Trimble's openness to other people and their values makes Bargaining for Eden a compelling read.
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| Susan L. Smith, American Scientist |
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| "Trimble weaves a captivating story... The reader meets a cast of engaging characters... This thought-provoking and well-written...book gives conservationists and general readers great insight into current land conservation issues and the character of the people on the front lines of the battle to protect the best remaining open lands in America. " |
| -Bob O'Connor, Environment Magazine |
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| "In intertwining, frequently complex narratives, Trimble uses personal observation and metaphor to make larger points about the fast-changing West ....These are wise words, and one can imagine Wallace Stegner...would be proud. This is an important book.
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| Barry Scholl, Entrada Institute |
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| "Trimble begins his story about 30 miles outside of Laramie, Wyoming, and ends up right at the dinner table of everyone who has ever wanted to put up a fence." |
| Foreword Magazine |
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| "Every so often a book is published that brings the larger world into clear focus through a well-polished, high-quality lens directed at one small part of that world. “Bargaining for Eden” is such a book, and everyone who is interested in the human condition and the natural environment and their connections to and effects on each other will be well served by reading it. Stephen Trimble’s skills and perseverance as an investigative reporter honor the craft of writing and serve its readers by bringing integrity, honesty, intelligence, humility and hope to a story that is about their antonyms." |
| Dick Dorworth, Mountain Gazette |
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| "Trimble's book is hard to classify--a mix of reportage, history, memoir, and advocacy. Its urgent, compassionate voice reminds me of the essay-writing modes of Wallace Stegner, Charles Wilkinson, and William Kittredge. Like "High Country News," the public conscience of the New West, Bargaining for Eden is presentist yet historically literate, environmentalist yet rurally conscious." |
| Jared Farmer, Western Historical Quarterly |
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| "Trimble's book takes a courageous look at the ethics of landownership and the price of paradise." |
| Jennifer Winger, Nature Conservancy Magazine |
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| "A book about the real West. The author's construction of a second home in southern Utah's redrock country puts him at the virtual Center of the Universe of rural and public land politics--extraction vs. preservation, locals vs. transplants, conflict vs. consensus." |
| Janine Blaeloch, Western Lands Project Update |
