"Brave the Wild River: The Untold Story of Two Women Who Mapped the Botany of the Grand Canyon" with Melissa Sevigny - Thursday, August 22 at 4:00pm at Garland Farm
Thursday, August 22 at 4:00pm
Garland Farm
$10 members / $20 non-members / free for students
Melissa Sevigny will join us virtually for this program, which will be live-streamed in the barn at Garland Farm. If you register to attend on Zoom, a link will be sent to you separately.
In the summer of 1938, botanists Elzada Clover and Lois Jotter set off to run the Colorado River, accompanied by an ambitious and entrepreneurial expedition leader, a zoologist, and two amateur boatmen. With its churning waters and treacherous boulders, the Colorado was famed as the most dangerous river in the world. Journalists and veteran river runners boldly proclaimed that the motley crew would never make it out alive. But for Clover and Jotter, the expedition held a tantalizing appeal: no one had yet surveyed the plant life of the Grand Canyon, and they were determined to be the first. Through the vibrant letters and diaries of the two women, science journalist Melissa L. Sevigny traces their daring forty-three-day journey down the river, during which they meticulously cataloged the thorny plants that thrived in the Grand Canyon’s secret nooks and crannies.
Melissa L. Sevigny is a science reporter and author of three books, most recently Brave the Wild River (W.W. Norton, 2023), which won the National Outdoor Book Award for history. She’s worked as a science communicator in the fields of space exploration, water policy, and sustainable agriculture. She lives in Flagstaff, Arizona.
