“Bargaining for Eden: The fight for the last open spaces in America,” by Stephen Trimble. (University of California Press, $29.95 ISBN 978-0-520-25111-3)

“Greed is all right, by the way ... I think greed is healthy. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself.”

— Ivan Boesky

“Money doesn’t talk, it swears …”

— Bob Dylan

Every so often a book is published that brings the larger world into clear focus through a well-polished, high-quality lens directed at one small part of that world. “Bargaining for Eden” is such a book, and everyone who is interested in the human condition and the natural environment and their connections to and effects on each other will be well served by reading it. Stephen Trimble’s skills and perseverance as an investigative reporter honor the craft of writing and serve its readers by bringing integrity, honesty, intelligence, humility and hope to a story that is about their antonyms.

The larger story here is that of the diminishing and degraded landscape and environment of the American West and the reasons it has gotten that way. The smaller part of the world Trimble focuses upon is the Snowbasin Ski Area in Utah and the machinations by which its owner, Earl Holding, used the 2002 Winter Olympic Games, political influence, obscene amounts of money, abuse of public trust, ruthless and imperious determination, and implacable secrecy to expand his financial empire at the expense of the common good and the environmental health of the landscape.

At 81 years old, Holding is worth approximately $4.6 billion and is listed as the 59th wealthiest American by Forbes. He also owns Sinclair Oil, Grand America Hotel, Westgate Hotel, Little America, 400,000 acres of “working cattle” land in Wyoming and Montana, as well as Sun Valley. He is a self-made man whose fi- nancial success in life is the stuff of capitalist legend, material excess and human shortcoming. The ski lodges at Holding’s resorts are unrivaled anywhere in the world for luxurious fixtures and expensive décor, including marble selected personally by Holding and his wife from the “finest materials from around the world” for the bathrooms. One longtime Holding employee (who for obvious reasons must remain anonymous) said, “If Earl Holding treated his employees half as well as he treats his bathrooms, this would be a better world.”

As America is a capitalist country and each of us represents its value systems, “Bargaining for Eden” can be viewed as a morality play and, perhaps, an object lesson for each citizen. Greed, like its companions, lust, gluttony, sloth, wrath, envy and pride, are part of the human condition and no human is exempt from them. Trimble certainly does not spare himself, and he makes the case (a weak one in my opinion, because Earl’s transgressions against the ideals of perfect morality, environmental consciousness and the common good deserve more weight than Trimble gives them) that his own empire-building, self-serving maneuvers in constructing a small house in the desert of southern Utah makes him not so different from Holding.

As metaphor, however, by connecting his own abuse in developing, owning and thereby unalterably changing the landscape to the demonstrably much larger abuse of Earl Holding’s, Trimble encourages the reader to examine what former Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson terms “… our values, our commitment to action, and our sense of connection with place, community, and the essence of who we are as inhabitants of this wondrous planet.”

As metaphor, the development of Snowbasin from local ski area to luxurious resort spun behind the smoke and mirrors of hosting a couple of the Olympic events on Ogden Mountain above the “idyllic Ogden Valley,” which contains a Trappist monastery and its fastest-growing community, Eden, could not be better. Trimble writes, “The seven thousand citizens of the valley, monastic and non-monastic alike relish a sense of living in a private paradise. They harbor a fierce love for the place, and the names they give to their towns capture these feelings: just down the road from Eden is its satellite village, Liberty.”

As the title “Bargaining for Eden: The fight for the last open spaces in America” indicates, this is a sordid tale with a few bright spots (and people) of integrity and hope. Most notably (perhaps heroically) in the persons of Greg Parrish and Mac Livingston, who own a business called the Flower Patch in Salt Lake City on property Holding wanted for his Grand America Hotel. The Flower Patch wasn’t for sale and, despite his best efforts, political influence, wealth and imperious persistence, perhaps for the first time in his business career, Holding couldn’t buy what he wanted.

Trimble describes the final negotiation: “On March 20 Mac and his allies had their one and only meeting with Earl. … Earl was ten minutes late. When he arrived, everyone rose to greet him except Mac, who remained seated. … Earl answered most questions himself. A query about cost led him off into a long monologue about engineering, earthquake protection, and Salt Lake Valley geology … As he left, all once again stood — all except Mac Livingston. He wanted to force Earl Holding to reach far across the conference table to shake his hand, and he told me that he had never seen quite so much hatred in anyone’s eyes as in the glare Earl turned on him.”

If the fight for the last open spaces in America uses hatred as a weapon, it will, like its nuclear counterpart, destroy the landscape and all that live upon it. Stephen Trimble has offered us a way beyond hatred with a great and shocking story of the past and a template for the future in “Credo: The People’s West,” which ends the book. The last paragraph reads, “We call it paradise, this land of ours. We call it home. Like our nation, the West is in the middle of its arc. We must remain both vigilant and tender if we wish to preserve its authenticity. We can do this. We are not yet too old, too greedy, or too cynical to take wise action together.”

The first action to take is to buy Trimble’s book, read it, study the credo and act accordingly.

Long-time Mountain Gazette mainstay Dick Dorworth lives in Ketchum, where he skis six days a week.

MG