In his essay entitled "Exclosure," David Bayles discusses the idea of the natural in an exclosure, an area that has been fenced off from one type of wildlife in order to stimulate the growth of another, often in an attempt to determine the health of a landscape. He argues that in the Lamar Valley in Yellowstone National Park, that within an exclosure is no more natural than that which is outside. The elk and bison that feed outside the exclosure belong just as much as the willows and aspen that flourish inside. Bayles says that the fence is the only unnatural part of his equation. And perhaps in Yellowstone he is right. However, in the rest of the West, it may be that exclosures themselves are the most natural part of the landscape.
Exclusion pervades the West. In its simplest form, it is a cattle exclosure, a small, fenced vegetation plot placed intermittently across our public lands. A tool used to determine the effects of cattle grazing on a landscape. However, exclusion gets complicated quickly, becoming a little less tangible, a little less practical and a little more convoluted. The historic exclusion of the Native Americans from their homelands onto reservations marks the beginning of the polarization of the American West, a tradition we continue to uphold today. It is time for this legacy to come to an end, time for a new Western tradition.
In September we visited Manzanar, a Japanese internment camp-turned museum and interpretive center. Upon passing through the gate and reading the resentful inscription, "May the injustices and humiliation suffered here as a result of hysteria, racism and economic exploitation never emerge again," I immediately felt the sharp pang of remorse for a history I must claim. During WWII, Japanese-Americans, citizens of the United States, whose children were fighting and dying in our armies, were brought here to this desolate, dusty place to live and were forbidden to leave. Functioning under the guise of protection, the internees were surprised to see the guns pointed not outward, but in. It was not an exclosure, but an enclosure, a city inside a wall, justified for reasons of national security. Most of Manzanar was disassembled immediately after the end of the war. Today it is little more than a dirt road, signs marking where houses used to stand, and an interpretive center telling the stories of those who lived inside. As though, with only a couple tractors, America can erase the stain left on Southern California and on our national dignity. We try to pretend that the dismantling of the internment camp makes this exclusion a relic of the past, a result of blindly irrational fear from which we've learned our lesson. It took only one visit to the US-Mexico border for me to know otherwise.
Looking back into the United States through a barbed-wire fence, I tried to imagine what it must feel like to not belong. Historically, movement across the US-Mexico border was fluid. Mexican commuters moved transnationally between their homes in Mexico and their jobs in the United States. These crossings were concentrated in urban centers where migrants moved back and forth, from home to job and back home. Now, with increasing national security concerns, we have built fences through our cities and split families in half. We're trying to overlay the vision of our identity onto a history that doesn't agree. Throughout the West, these exclusions act as reminders of a history pieced together by different sets of stories.
A few states North, a new kind of exclusion determines the cultural climate. Aspen, Colorado is a town built on a foundation of wealth, a foundation assembled and maintained by people who cannot afford to live there. Though it is deemed a progressive city, a national leader in alternative energy solutions, its exorbitant cost of living is the ultimate determinant of its inhabitants. So-called affordable housing starts near $400,000. A community that once was made up of single-family ranching operations is now claimed by absentee owners who can afford the property taxes. This is the New West, exclusion based on economic status.
Our exclusions mark our path across the American West. The history of our fears, loves and political agendas can be traced on the landscape in the form of the places that have been fenced off, metaphorically or otherwise, where occupation has been mandatory or restricted. We've systematically divided that which we speak of as one cohesive unit and are left with a patchwork of lifestyles, ideas and values projected onto the landscape. We decry the lack of a unified Western culture and feel that somehow it was the responsibility of the land to create it for us. How could it, when we steadily separated and enclosed those forces that could combine us into something one? Historic traditions are wrapped up in exclusion all over the West. So should we unify into one Western culture? It is these differences, this lack of sameness and cohesion that makes the West unique. Culture is, after all, determined not only by people but by their backgrounds and the land on which they live. Exclusion is a good tool to test a landscape, to isolate the effect of certain factors on the health of the system. But perhaps, like Bayles says, inhabitants from both sides of our fences belong. Exclusion is not natural, and it is not a rule under which the West should function. It's time to embrace our dissimilarities, to glory in them, and to use them to form a new identity of a Western whole.
The West is multi-faceted. In this essay I do not mean to imply that exclusion is the only pattern to be seen in the American West. However, it is one that continued to speak to me throughout my travels. I hope to continue examining this theme in my next several pieces. Updates soon to follow!
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