This interview with NAU alum Elias Butler originally appeared under the heading "Wandering Souls, Kindred Spirits" in the NAU Alumni web site, which you can visit by clicking here.
"Elias Butler, '98 B.S. JOUR., is intimate with the nature of obsession. As a biographer, and co-author with Tom Myers, ‘85 B.S. of Grand Obsession: Harvey Butchart and the Exploration of Grand Canyon , Elias pushed the envelope of his own preoccupations with the beauty of natural landscapes, hiking, writing and photography, by using Butchart's idée fixe as motive power. Delightfully, the combined zeal of these trailblazers unites into a new and harmonious whole.
A good biographer is like a criminal profiler. You must get inside Mr. X's head, using the circumstances of his life story to unlock the mystery of his motives. Harvey Butchart, an NAU math professor from 1945 to 1976 whose relentless reconnaissance of the Grand Canyon created the definitive guidebooks and an extraordinary body of adventures, presented the perfect puzzle. Elias became enmeshed in telling the singular story of Butchart's obsession. Trekking halfway around the world to chase down his origins, Elias and Tom were finally rewarded with a thrilling and touching portrait of Butchart's protean identity: as adventurer and academic, as loving but reticent family man, and visionary — and, in keeping with the true nature of biography, as a lasting enigma.
Although the process of Elias's work is necessarily complex, there is nothing of the tortured artist about him. A freelance photographer as well as a writer, he clearly enjoys his vocation, which finds its strongest inspiration in the Southwest. His photographs, which have appeared in newspapers and magazines such as Arizona Highways , are focused on pristine and “untampered” landscapes. Elias says he tries to replicate the “feel of actually being there...so that the emotion is translated more than the accurate document[ing] of the scene,” and is thrilled when he “happens to be in the right place at the right time.” With Harvey Butchart, he has clearly proven his skill at taking advantage of a fortunate divergence.
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Who's News: Tell us about how you came to Harvey Butchart as a subject.
Elias Butler: I have my parents to thank for introducing me to the Grand Canyon. They took us on backpack trips and also on a Grand Canyon river trip when I was 12 years old. I got hooked on hiking, and you can't spend too much time in the Canyon without hearing the name Harvey Butchart, because he's somewhat of a legend. So I knew who he was...and had bought his guidebooks.
In 2002 I was working for the Arizona Daily Sun , writing freelance outdoors articles. Tom Myers, who wrote the book Over the Edge: Death in the Grand Canyon , had noticed one of my articles and called me with questions, and we ended up meeting. When we were hanging out at his house one day I noticed a cardboard box labeled “Harvey,” and I asked him about it. He said he'd been working on a bio of Harvey Butchart since 1993, and had shelved the project so he could work on the other book, but now he was resurrecting the project. We decided right then and there that we wanted to collaborate on the book.
WN: How did you and Tom divide the work?
EB: When we met, Harvey had just died, but Tom had already done a great deal of research, interviewing Harvey several times in the 1990s. So Tom already had a great foundation for the book. As for the actual writing, we divided up certain chapters, and then we would each look at the other's work, edit and make suggestions. It was a true collaboration, looking over each other's shoulders and figuring out how we wanted to present things.
WN: It sounds very organic.
EB: It was. Writers tend to be very individualistic, and I never thought I'd be able to work with someone else. But Tom is easy to work with. He has a great sense for what people will want to read, and he has great ideas.
WN: Writers often become obsessed with their subject, and this book also happens to be about someone who is obsessed with interests similar to your own. What is it about Harvey's story that resonates most for you personally?
EB: As a writer I became obsessed not so much with Harvey himself, but with trying to translate his story the best way possible. As someone who really loves the Grand Canyon, with Harvey's story as the thread, I felt this was the opportunity to explore a subject that I've been fascinated with all my life, and I think Tom would say the same. Harvey's obsession was with the Canyon, but through him, we were able to explore, and hopefully succeed at bringing the reader along on those adventures too. We would spend hours chasing down obscure leads and talking to people who had any kind of contact with Harvey. We also did hikes in the Canyon that we wrote about in the book.
WN: And then there was your trip to China...
EB: Harvey spent his childhood in a mountain range in southeast China, where both his parents were Christian missionaries. Trying to find out information about this place, which Harvey had discussed with Tom in interviews, was important [in understanding] his formative years. But there was really no information available except for Chinese websites. And so it was my chance to play the “National Geographic” role, traveling somewhere exotic to research a story.
Going to Mount Lushan was a key to the book. It's a world heritage site, just like Grand Canyon. The range itself is spectacular, rising from the banks of the Yangtze River, which runs from close to sea level to about 4,000 feet; so the geographical relief is similar to Grand Canyon's. Back in Harvey's day (about 1910-1920) you had to hike about nine miles to reach the town at the top of the range, rather similar to the hike you would make up Bright Angel Trail. Harvey made that trip numerous times as a kid.
At one time the range was the center of all Buddhism and Taoism in China. There's a Tibetan Buddhist temple there that has long been a magnet for poets, philosophers and artists who have sought the mountain's beauty to inspire work and explorations into the spiritual realm. It has a very spiritual quality, similar to the feeling you might get exploring some of the national parks in America.
WN: Was Harvey interested in the Buddhist side?
EB: As far as I know he wasn't. He was a lifelong Christian, but he was there from the ages of 10 to 13, spending time among these beautiful temples and monasteries, getting into all these nooks and crannies. I have to believe that affected him.
WN: Do you think that was the entrance point to Harvey's character for you? Was there one moment when you thought, “Oh, now I get it, now I get him.”
EB: It did happen there in China. Anyone who grew up there and had an enjoyment of the outdoors would have that deeply ingrained. It became obvious that with Harvey's time there as a kid, he would go on to seek out a similar landscape later in life, and really dig into it deeply.
WN: In the interviews that Tom did earlier, did you find that Harvey was articulate about his vision, or did you have to do a lot of reading between the lines?
EB: Harvey was a very articulate person; however, he didn't like to open up. He wouldn't let you know his feelings or divulge much in the way of his personality. He told Tom endless stories about what he'd done and where he'd been, but very little about why he did what he did. And that was what we decided we had to focus on, the real challenge, figuring out why he did these things.
WN: For instance, in the pivotal episode when his friend Boyd Moore was killed, I imagine you had to do some interpretation.
EB: That was a real sensitive point for him. When his good friend Boyd Moore drowned in the Colorado during their “air mattress” river trip, it was devastating for him; not only because of their friendship, but because he really was responsible for Boyd's death, although he was never charged formally. He carried that guilt for the rest of his life. Harvey was surprisingly lucid about that particular event, and was OK talking about his role in it, which must have been pretty painful. But I believe part of his discussing it openly was atonement.
What he wasn't so open about was his obsession, why he got so wrapped up in Grand Canyon exploration. He obviously wanted to make a name for himself, but that's where he expressed a strange mix of humility and great pride. He liked to talk about what he did, but never liked saying he wanted to do these things to become famous as an explorer.
WN: And all this time he was leading sort of a parallel life, with his position at NAU and his family.
EB: Again, Harvey had this real desire to be the explorer who would become the authority on Grand Canyon. But his wife and kids, in a sense, paid the price for his desire or goal. I think that was another reason why he didn't really like to divulge much about the roots of his behavior. He realized that his wife Roma was left out of the picture; and he later realized that his kids were somewhat fatherless during the years of exploration.
WN: A totally uninformed speculation: was his own experience similar with his parents being missionaries?
EB: It's always a challenge to say how a person's upbringing might have affected his life, especially when he doesn't tell you himself. We do know that Harvey's father was extremely driven and focused, and was able to distinguish himself among his colleagues as the hardest working and most knowledgeable. He really resembled Harvey in many ways. In fact, his dedication to his work resulted in his own death. Harvey's father was a doctor. He suffered a wound on his foot one night walking around in the dark, and was so busy preaching and teaching at the local university that he let the wound develop an infection. It became gangrenous, and he suffered a blood clot that lodged in his lung and killed him.
It shouldn't have happened, but he was simply too concerned with his professional obligations to pay attention to himself. So we decided we couldn't really say that Harvey was just like his father, but we thought it was OK to say, “here are the similarities,” and let the reader decide if there was a connection.
WN: You're obviously an explorer as well. What is it about your lifestyle that you like the best?
EB: The freedom. And the ability to pursue my passions fully. I also feel an obligation to the land itself. If you really love something, you have a duty to do what you can to help protect it, or make others aware of why it's important. I see myself stepping into that role more as time goes on. I feel an obligation to the wilderness, to the land, and to the beauty that we're blessed with here in northern Arizona.
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Elias is thoughtful and articulate about both his calling and Butchart's, while striving to keep the story grounded in fact. It's clear that he maintains enough detachment from his subject to refrain from projecting his personal perspectives on Butchart, avoiding spurious psychological conclusions or judgments.
As for his own ambitions, he has another book in mind. “I'm still trying to crystallize the idea for it, but it will be based in the Southwest. With photography, I plan to keep seeking out those moments in nature that inspire me.” If, as Diane Arbus said, “A photograph is a secret about a secret,” Elias will always find himself in the middle of a mystery. "
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