Slide Mountain, or the Folly of Owning Nature by Theodore Steinberg

Abstract

628 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Slide Mountain, or theFolly of Owning Nature. By Theodore Steinberg. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995. Pp. 212; illustrations, notes, index. $24.00 (cloth). Theodore Steinberg’s latest book, Slide Mountain, or the Folly of Owning Nature, takes its title from a Mark Twain short story in which a circle of 19th-century practicaljokers duped a U.S. attorney named Bunscombe. Bursting into Bunscombe’s Carson City, Nevada, office, Dick Hyde cries that his ranch has been buried in a landslide. To make matters worse, the panicked man complains that his property is being claimed by a neighbor whose land now rests comfortably atop the contested terrain. That afternoon, litigants converged upon a local magistrate, himself part of the ruse. After hearing testimony, the bench decrees: “No—Heaven created the ranches and it is Heaven’s prerogative to rearrange them” (p. 4). Incensed at the ruling, Bunscombe appeals to the judge to reconsider. Eventually, the magistrate relents, telling counsel that Hyde could retain title by digging out his buried ranch from underneath his neighbor’s property. Trapped in a universe where—with enough shovels—jus­ tice could be served, Bunscombe stomps off in disgust. Throughout Slide Mountain, Steinberg playfully argues that we are all Bunscombes and that thejoke is on us—“all ofus,” that is, “who consider ourselves property owners or who are forced to respect a world increasingly defined by private property rights” (p. 4). Remi­ niscent ofJohn McPhee’s Control of Nature, Slide Mountain uses su­ perb storytelling to illustrate the gathering eclipse of reason. Steinberg constructs his book around a collection of court cases, each in its way as funny and enlightening as Twain’s imaginary one: an Omaha Indian reservation at Blackbird Bend, along the evershifting Missouri River; Grand and Six Mile Lakes (or are they a river?) in Louisiana’s Atchafalaya River basin; fast-disappearingfossil water pumped from beneath Arizona’s desert; uncertain weather high above Fulton County, Pennsylvania; Manhattan’s 3-D air rights perched above the lucrative earth below; and quitclaim deeds to the moon. Lunacy, you wonder? Perhaps. But consider the plight of the replumbed Atchafalaya basin. Steinberg depicts a legal struggle over a once-choked remnant of Louisiana’s Mississippi, the Atchafalaya River. In successive stages, first the state, and then nature’s orthodontists, the U.S. Army Corps ofEngineers, sought to set things straight. “The Corps of Engineers had worked a massive disappearing act, a vast series ofmanipulations that had stolen the identity of this part [the Grand—Six Mile Lake segment] of the basin right from under it” (p. 58). Contested ownership of Grand and Six Mile lakes erupted over the issue of oil revenues. Article 509 of Louisiana’s 1870 Civil Code ceded title of deposited alluvial soils to owners of adjacent rivers or streams. “Call it a lake and [Louisiana] state coffers would jingle with the extra oil revenues, not to mention the control the state TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 629 would have over the region’s ecological destiny,” Steinberg writes. “Call it a stream and private landowners [corporations like Gulf, Texaco, Amerada, and others] would experience a windfall” (p. 60). The protracted legal struggle was fought over whether Grand—Six Mile Lake was a lake or a stream. The problem was, as Steinberg wryly observed, that “[n]one of the meanings given the words lake and stream adequately represented the body of water in question” (p. 68). Touche. The essence of this book is captured in this paradox: real estate isn’t. Writing at thejuncture ofcritical legal theory and environmen­ tal history, Steinberg ushers us into a labyrinthine world devoid of rational gravity. It is all reminiscent of the widow Winchester, who, believing she would die when her mansion near SanJose, California, was completed, continued adding room upon room, staircase upon staircase, all going nowhere. Theodore Steinberg has written a book both scholarly and farcical about private property as shibboleth. I dare say Erasmus himselfwould have applauded Steinberg’s aplomb. Michael Black Mr. Black rents airspace somewhere over San Francisco, California. He is coeditor (with Frank Fischer) ofa recent anthology entitled GreeningEnvironmentalPolicy: The Politics ofa SustainableFuture...