Desert Notebooks

March 2, 2020
Nation columnist Ehrenreich (The Way to the Spring) critiques notions of progress he sees as having brought civilization to the point of disaster in an erudite philosophical work about the prospect of climate change. Against the backdrop of his wanderings through the Mojave Desert and a bleakly rendered Las Vegas, he juxtaposes stories from indigenous cultures—both of creation and of the devastating arrival of Westerners—with explanations of how modern Western thought developed, such as the adoption of Greenwich Mean Time, or of hourly pay during the Industrial Revolution. He also includes passages in which he reacts to the latest disturbing environmental and geopolitical news. The prose is at its best in the desert, where, for instance, “little jeweled crickets,” dead and encrusted in salt, lay scattered in Death Valley. Coming upon a 12,000-year-old creosote bush prompts Ehrenreich to reflect that time might be understood “as a circle that expands out of sight, invisible roots that grow and grow even as the parts we can see die off.” Suggesting that humanity must go beyond “the stories that have been winning out these last two-hundred-and-change-years,” Ehrenreich creates a beautiful meditation on adapting to future cataclysm.