from CHAPTER 1 Wind River Canyon A century ago, when a journey from the Union Pacific depot in Rawlins, Wyoming, to the Shoshone Indian Reservation meant 150 miles in a hard saddle across windy tablelands set with waist-high sagebrush, Indian Inspector James McLaughlin trekked to Wind River Canyon. On the long trip north, he rarely looked up at the tall skidding clouds, or down at the sudden draws that dropped through the floor of the plains. It was spring, but barely spring, and scalloped ridges of snow still snugged against the lee sides of the hills. The creeks were mostly still dry, deep cracks blistering across the dun-colored plain. The ground was as cold as a corpse, but in places where the sun could soften it, gnarls of dust rose behind the horses. Then the clouds would collide in the huge sky, and the whitened bone of parched land would be suddenly drenched. Bentonite in the soil would turn it to a paste that coated the wheels until they looked like gray balloons, so heavy and slippery that the horses couldn't pull. McLaughlin would wait it out patiently. He was a twenty-five-year veteran of the Indian Service, and he'd made trips like this before into harsh corners of the plains that had been left to the Indians. The government recognized his knack for parleying with tribes, and it sent him all over the West. With experience and the trust he felt he'd earned among the Indians, he found these negotiations were not difficu< it was getting there that was hard. The high desert McLaughlin crossed was the bottom of an evaporated ocean that once thinly covered the belly of the continent. Uplifted and emptied, the ocean bottom was turned back like a sheet and smoothed by wind. Along McLaughlin's route were hogbacks of red sandstone and scatterings of jade on the ground, but only an avid rockhound would want to linger. Now and then spikes of granite poked through, including a pinkish hump like Split Rock, a landmark westward immigrants still looked for in McLaughlin's time. West of the Rawlins uplift, the creeks drained into a desert bowl with no outlet--the Great Divide Basin, where the Continental Divide forks into west and east branches. At night, if the wind wasn't whistling, the coyotes howled; now and then, as the party headed north, they found a fire ring and grass munched down by pack animals. But there were more signs of death than life: the curled ribs of an antelope carcass, a collapsed homestead cabin with a fallen wooden cross over a child's grave. An experienced traveler accepted the monotony, hardened himself to the artifacts of past suffering, and prepared for the unfriendliest weather. McLaughlin kept his gaze low and forward. This kind of open vista, this nakedness, had driven people mad. Several days into the trip, the plateau suddenly dropped away. They couldn't see the escarpment as they approached it, because the world had been flat for miles, but by then they had spotted the white peaks of the mountains rising above the long curve of horizon and knew the ordeal would end soon. They dropped off Beaver Rim and the world began to change. The desolate prelude made the natural beauty of the Wind River all the more stirring. The valley is a small concavity of warm, still air and braided river bottom that would seem to have no place in the midst of the high desert. The plains form a huge moat to the east and south--much more intimidating distances in McLaughlin's time than now--and on the other two sides rise knifelike peaks that only a fool, or an explorer like John Fremont, would scale. The basin was not without its own scabby draws and sagebrush snags, but the natural ramparts provided a sense of security missing on the trip north. The travelers were relieved, though no one said so. Thickly forested lake-dotted foothills sloped up to the west, and a weave of rippling water lined by cottonwoods etched the broad valley below. McLaughlin had been the agent

"A clear-eyed portrait of Westerners trying to pull a living from a difficult land" --Outside "A rare blend of fact and emotion that will inform and move readers." Dallas Morning News "O'Gara is a lyrical writer when sketching pictures of the land. He is fair and evenhanded . . . [and] lets his characters have their say." The New York Times Book Review "A terrific book by a writer patient and sympathetic enough to air all the complex issues, the triumphs and failures, without judging anybody" -- William Kittredge, author ofHole in the Sky

For nearly a century, the Indians on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming have been battling their white farmer neighbors over the rights to the Wind River.What You See in Clear Watertells the story of this epic struggle, shedding light on the ongoing conflict over water rights in the American West, one of the most divisive and essential issues in America today. While lawyers argued this landmark case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, Geoffrey O'Gara walked the banks of the river with the farmers, ranchers, biologists, and tribal elders who knew it intimately. Reading his account, we come to know the impoverished Shoshone and Arapaho tribes living on the Wind River Reservation, who believe that by treaty they control the water within the reservation. We also meet the farmers who have struggled for decades to scratch a living from the arid soil, and who want to divert the river water to irrigate their lands. O'Gara's empathetic portrayal of life in the West today, the historical texture he brings to the land and its inhabitants, and the common humanity he finds between hostile neighbors on opposite sides of the river makeWhat You See in Clear Wateran unusually rich and rewarding book.