Unpacking Rosalie Edge, Slowly: Stories 'Hawk of Mercy' Doesn't Tell
01/27/2010
Rosalie Edge's suitcase led to my adventures in writing.
Several who thanked me for writing Rosalie Edge, Hawk of Mercy in your comments heard enough about my project to point out that it took me a long time to complete. Most of the reasons I stuck with writing a whole book about an unknown woman that nobody paid me to write were contained in her suitcase, which I still keep in my front hall closet. In future blogs I will reveal what was packed in this suitcase and where the contents led.
Anyway, how long did Rosalie Edge, Hawk of Mercy take to write? Nineteen years, if you count from the first quickening of the idea for it to its publication last summer. For most of that time I did little more than resolve each New Year’s Eve to make 1991—no, 1992—the year I would devote to my book about Mrs. Edge. My daughters Hilary and Ariel, who are now 27 and 23, were resolving to turn perfect cartwheels, practice piano daily, or climb a Fourteener near where we lived in Colorado. Their resolutions changed as they got older, mine didn’t.
Ariel's cartwheels revolved into wolf jumps among Utah's red mesas.
Photo by Jake Peart
When Hilary grew up she hiked to Mount Everest Base Camp, having practiced on climbing a few of Colorado's Fourteeners. Photo by Michael Edesess
My referring to Mrs. Edge year after year was one obstacle, since I couldn’t get close to or authoritatively write about a woman I called ‘Mrs. Edge.’ But perhaps the story of how I came to be her biographer actually begins when I decided to be Robert Marshall’s biographer; I figured a book about this near-mythic conservationist would be necessarily brief since Robert died at the age of 38 in 1939.
Wilderness Savior Bob Marshall was my first biographical subject--and an early supporter of Rosalie Edge. Photo used with permission of The Wilderness Society
In 1986 I set out to meet his brother George who at 80, was living in London. My youngest daughter Ariel was then 79 years, ten months younger than George. Inseparably she and I flew to England, arriving in a blizzard. By the time I straggled up to the door of George’s posh townhouse with my baby cocooned in a Snugli, he was not glad I—we--had come. After three days of abysmal weather that made transportation between my hotel and Marshall’s place unreliable, I flew back to Colorado with Ariel, chastened by my failure. For the next four years I didn’t try to be anybody’s biographer, writing instead about Rocky Mountain environmental issues for Audubon, Wilderness The New York Times and other publications. One day T. H. ‘Tom’ Watkins, my editor and dear mentor at Wilderness, called from Washington, D.C. to say he had learned Rosalie Edge’s conservation papers were in the Denver Public Library’s Western history department. Tom advised that if I was still interested in writing the biography of a great conservationist I should try again by reconnoitering Edge’s papers. The convenient opportunity to tell the story of this once famous but then forgotten woman intrigued me, based on the little I had read about her.
Next Time: I Scout Out ‘Rosalie Edge Cons 44’
I can't begin to tell you
I can't begin to tell you how much I enjoyed the read. It read like a mystery novel. where would she perch next? Where was the next prey. She was truly a hawk. Such vision. Take all that repressed sexual energy and put it into a cause and you can achieve real change. Maybe she had a very private life but I think not.
> I am so happy that I met Peter and saw some of his collection in the basement. I wonder if he kept in touch with Margaret. That was such a wrenching aspect of R's life. She must have been a real terror after the break up of the marriage.
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> Her early life was just fascinating. I was reminded of Gertrude Bell, the English woman who traveled through Iraq.
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> I must compliment you on your style. Not too descriptive, but full of fact, it flowed along in such a way that there was no skipping through. It is obviously the work of a serious writer who has a real story to tell. I loved the Hawk Mt. Sanctuary story tho that poor couple did burn out. She was a pusher and used people to move ahead. The alternative was to let the issues die. Yes, she was a hawk.
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> I probably would have admired her but not been a friend. There may not have been room for that.
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> On and on,...it was wonderful. I wish it had been chosen as one of the books of the year by The Economist. Oh well.
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> So what is next on your agenda? Resting time over for a writer!
>
The Hong Kong Connection
I first met Dyana when she was researching the book (AND writing an article on hiking in Hong Kong). My husband and I were living in Hong Kong at the time and were avid hikers. With Dyana, we visited the restaurant at the top of The Peak, near where Rosalie had stayed oh so many decades ago. (The story in the book about the bird flying in the window occurred there.)
We've loved sharing Dyana's trials and tribulations on the road to publication. If you ever have a chance to hear her speak, DO SO! This biographer helps us get very close to her subject through stories and recordings and readings.
Thanks for enlightening us all about Rosalie's contribution to our world. How many other forgotten heroines are there???
A wonderful tale. I
A wonderful tale.
I received the book from Amazon in May and started reading it last week. I’m really enjoying it. You take us right into Rosalie’s early life and deeply into her marriage and her relationship with her children. I am just now at the point where she leases the mountaintop and employs Brownstein and his wife to ward off the hunters. (Weren’t they intrepid!)
You show a deep knowledge of the political underworld of non-profit organizations and give us a great sense of Rosalie’s courage and determination. Now I know why the book gestated for so long: There was so much to learn! From New York to England to the Far East to Pennsylvania, and beyond!
Your diligent research is evident throughout, and your footnoting is extraordinary: You leave a well-marked trail through your sources that will prove of inestimable value to those who come after you.
The book is a pleasure and exposes contemporary readers to a time when so-called “conservation” groups had been hijacked by those for the whom the wild places were preserved now for harvesting later and the wild creatures were preserved for the purpose of providing targets for those who take such great pleasure from killing.
A wonderful tale of an extraordinary woman who faced off against the moneyed interests who had hijacked precisely those organizations that the country believed were protecting nature.
Wow!
I'm making my way through Hawk of Mercy right now, and am so enthralled with it! It's a merging of a bunch of topics that are dear to me, combining everything from feminism and the suggrage movement to the environment and activism and even dear old Audubon (where I work). It's a thoroughly enjoyable book, and one I'm so happy you wrote... when I read the Audubon Ark, the first thing that struck me upon finishing is that out of all the people highlighted in it, I wish I knew more about Rosalie Edge! She sounded difficult, of course, but so important, and ridiculously necessary and ahead of her time.
I read your first post earlier this month about the book, which was wonderful. But this one resonates with me because I'm about to start writing--attempting to write, really--a biography of another friend of the environment, my grandfather who passed away this past November. I don't know how to write a biography in the least! And so I'm really looking forward to hearing more about how you wrote this book--what you found in the suitcase, how you tracked so many details and papers and people down, how finding one new piece of information might take you in a different or even unexpected direction?
And the fact that it took you 19 years to write only makes me feel a bit less rushed :) Either way, I'm very excited to read and hear more.
Thank you for writing such a powerful book!
Best,
Jessica
A story that needs telling
Having seen this books in several iterations over the past 19(!) years, I'm not sure I can claim impartiality, but nevertheless...I think it is a great story, well researched and well told. But it's also an important story. There are a lot of things I like about it: the story of successfully facing down entrenched interests, the fact that it was a woman who did it, and especially the way that this work grew quite literally out of the suffrage movement (in that Rosalie learned her tactics in that movement). The ties between the anti-slavery movement and the suffrage movement (and, a century later, between the civil rights movement and feminism) have been well-understood for awhile, but I'm not sure the connection between the suffrage movement and environmentalism has been made before this work. That is a really important insight.
One other thing I loved about this story was the fact that Rosalie embarked on this work when she was well into the last half of her life. It's a great message that we can make contributions throughout our lives and it's never too late to start.
So, I think the book is very rich, with something for almost everyone. I hope it gets the attention it deserves.
Learning about
Not having any historical background into the conservation movement I found Rosalie Edge Hawk of Mercy an excellent read about a coming of age. Beyond the information and background the book provided I enjoyed reading about a woman who could not be defined by the norms given to women of the time but defined by the causes she chose to take up.
I have given this book to several friends and they all have responded with huge "thank yous" and enjoyment. Thank you Dyana for giving Rosalie Edge her due place in our conservation history.
Awesome. Nine years spending
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This is highly informatics,
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Wow, nineteen years to write book is pretty long time, you must be very patient person. I wonder what was in the suitcase...Irena from personal loans
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Nineteen years to write a book is almost a quarter of her lifetime, what a amazing effort this woman put into this spectacular book.
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Thanks for enlightening us all about Rosalie's contribution to our world. How many other forgotten heroines are there???
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