In an interview with Scientific American, author Melissa Sevigny discusses her book Brave the Wild River: The Untold Story of Two Women Who Mapped the Botany of the Grand Canyon
In the summer of 1938 the first women known to travel the entire Colorado River—and survive—documented the flora and fauna of the region before it was further reshaped by Western development. They were white botanists in academia who battled both the usual obstacles in scientific expeditions and some unusual ones: doubters telling them they were doomed to fail, a lack of funding, the serious risk of injury or even death and, for one of the botanists, her father’s permission.
Spark is a good word. You know, there was something there right from the very beginning that I just had to chase down. I grew up in Arizona all my life, and I thought I was pretty up to date on the Colorado River, and yet when I encountered these women’s names, I had never heard them before. I was shocked! I ran across their names just by chance. I was looking for something online in the special collections department of Northern Arizona University, which is here in Flagstaff, Ariz.
I get the sense while reading the book that the two botanists realized the timing and importance of their research in the moment. Was there any evidence of that in their diaries? What a big question. We could talk about that for hours. I tried to be very unflinching when facing the racism and the sexism of the era—both what they experienced as women and what they inflicted as white people. Early in Clover’s career, before she became a botanist, she worked at a segregated school for Mexican American students.
You also took a trip on the Colorado, following in these researchers’ “footsteps” and keeping your own diary. What was that experience like?
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