“If stories come to you, care for them. And learn to give them away when they are needed. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive. That is why we put these stories in each other’s memory. This is how people care for themselves.”
—Barry Lopez
Joe Manterola, photo by Dan Boone and Ryan Belnap
Since 2005, I’ve been working with a talented group of people on a project intended to document vanishing knowledge of environmental change in northern Arizona. Working with archivists, photographers, graduate students, and others, we’ve recorded dozens of narratives from a slew of area old-timers, including ranchers, farmers, foresters, and field scientists. The stories they’ve told us have been presented in a couple of public exhibits, and some of them have been published in book form by the University of Arizona Press. Transcripts of the interviews, along with some videos, are archived at Northern Arizona University’s Cline Library.
Doy Reidhead, photo by Dan Boone and Ryan Belnap
Tom Pendley, photo by Dan Boone and Ryan Belnap
Oral history exhibit at the Coconino Center for the Arts, Flagstaff
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