Author, journalist and science writer Melissa Sevigny will be the guest lecturer for July’s Glen Canyon Lecture Series in Page. She’ll be discussing her newly published book “Brave the Wild River,” which tells the story of Elzada Clover and Lois Jotter, botanists who became the first women to raft the Grand Canyon while gathering plant samples in the hard-to-reach terrain of Cataract, Glen, Marble and Grand Canyons.

The story of Clover and Jotter’s expedition – and the contributions they made to the fields of botany, as well as further advancing women’s rights, equality and empowerment – is a fascinating story and one that needed to be told. What really sets “Brave the Wild River” apart from other books about first explorers and pioneers is Sevigny’s thoughtful, powerful, beautiful writing. Her wonderfully crafted metaphors, colorful imagery and insightful descriptions adorn the narrative, like monkeyflowers and maidenhair ferns on a cliff wall.

Clover and Jotter joined a trip arranged by Norm Nevills in 1938. The trip also included LaPhene Harris, an engineer from Salt Lake; Bill Gibson, a photographer from San Francisco; and Eugene Atkinson, a teaching assistant from Michigan who planned to gather zoological specimens during the trip. Part of the crew changed at Lees Ferry. Lorin Bell and Dell Reed joined the trip, while Harris and Atkinson left. Emery Kolb joined the trip at Phantom Ranch.

The idea for the expedition was planted in August 1937 when Clover was making a field study of cacti in the southwest. She made her headquarters at the Mexican Hat Lodge, owned and operated by Norm and Doris Nevills. During the day, Clover went into the desert and collected plant specimens, and returned to the lodge in the evening. During her time at the lodge, Clover met Norm Nevills, who had dreams of starting a company that carried paying passengers on scenic rafting expeditions through Cataract, Glen, Marble and Grand Canyons.

One night, Clover mentioned she’d like to venture into Grand Canyon by mule to study and collect its cacti for research. She asked Nevills if he’d consider being her guide. Nevills did her one better and suggested they skip the pack train and go by boat.

In the following months, a plan to travel the Colorado River from Green River, Utah, to Boulder City, Nevada, was formed.

Nevills viewed the trip as a means to garner free publicity for his soon-to-be launched rafting company, as well as gain much-needed experience navigating parts of the canyon he hadn’t yet visited. Clover and Jotter viewed it as a scientific expedition, during which they would gather as many plant specimens as possible, and make other notes – such as soil type, rain conditions, terrain features – that might be useful to the scientific community.

The trip indeed gained coverage in the newspapers, most of it sensational and exaggerated with screaming 2-inch headlines. The articles mostly ignored the fact that Clover and Jotter were trained botanists engaged in serious work, and instead portrayed the women as daredevils.  

A great many men who had successfully run the river before them, secretly – and some not-so-secretly – hoped the trip would fail, and that the women wouldn’t be able to complete their trip. Many of the early river runners returned from the canyon depths to tell blustery tales of the perils, often over-exaggerating the dangers and the size of the rapids and obstacles. They feared a successful completion of the canyons by “the fairer sex” would diminish their own accomplishments and claims that only the bravest, strongest men could complete such a feat.

Author Melissa Sevigny’s name – and voice – may be familiar to many residents of northern Arizona. Sevigny has been a science reporter at KNAU since 2015. Her stories have been awarded regional Edward R. Murrow awards and have been featured nationally on Science Friday. She has written two other books, “Mythical River” and “Under Desert Skies.” 

Anyone who has heard Sevigny’s stories on KNAU knows she is a master at crafting a well-researched, well-written story, and those abilities have reached a new level on the pages of “Brave the Wild River.”

Sevigny grew up in Tucson, Arizona, where she fell in love with the Sonoran Desert’s ecology and dark desert skies, and her writing reflects a lifetime living with Arizona’s flora, fauna and big landscapes. 

Sevigny first learned about Clover and Jotter’s botanizing expedition while searching for something in Northern Arizona University’s online collections. Jotter’s papers are housed there. 

“I started digging around, trying to find more of the story, but I only got more and more curious about what drove these women to – first of all – become botanists at a time when women weren't welcomed in science, and then go run a very wild river in search of plants,” Sevigny said. “I finally realized if I wanted to know the whole story, I'd have to write it myself.”

Sevigny formed the backbone of the story from reading Jotter and Clover’s diaries, which are housed at Northern Arizona University and the University of Michigan. She also dug into other letters related to the 1938 botany expedition at the University of Utah and Huntington Library.  She read tons of books about Colorado River history, National Park Service policies and evolving ideas about ecology in the 1930s. She interviewed family members, friends and former students of both women.

When the research was finished, Sevigny had enormous stacks of printed documents, and more than 10,000 files on her computer, which climbed to 43 gigabytes of data.

“The process was a bit like putting together a puzzle,” she said.

Sevigny was preparing to dive into the research by visiting the libraries in Utah and Michigan, where the materials she wanted are housed, but the COVID pandemic arrived just as she began her research. 

“When I started the book, I had big plans to go to all these archives and do all the research and then sit down and write,” she said. “But I signed the contract in the summer of 2020, right as the pandemic took off, and of course all the archives shut down. By the time things opened up again, making in-person visits to all the places I'd planned to see wasn't possible. So, I hired a research assistant to copy materials from the archive in the University of Michigan, and another assistant to help me get through the documents at NAU.”

After the effort of gathering so much information, it can be tempting for an author to include every interesting fact in the book, but books containing so much history run the risk of miring down the narrative, like a raft overloaded with unnecessary items can swamp under the weight.  Sevigny deftly avoided that trap, giving her readers enough information to add relevance, context and depth to the story without suffocating it under minutiae.

As part of her research, Sevigny spent two weeks rafting through the Grand Canyon as part of a botany crew in 2021 tasked with removing an invasive plant species called ravenna grass.

“It was an incredible experience and allowed me to fill out details of what the 1938 expedition must have seen, felt and experienced on their journey,” Sevigny said. “Of course, a lot has changed on the river since 1938, but the beautiful geology, the experience of time falling away and being hitched to the river's rhythms – I think that is probably the same.”

In addition to helping the botanists remove the invasive grass, Sevigny soaked in everything about the Grand Canyon, filling her notebook with descriptions of its weather, light, terrain, plants and the thrill of running some of the biggest whitewater in North America. These notes become beautifully written descriptions as they find their way into the book.

Sevigny believes Jotter and Clover’s contributions to the field of botany – particularly along the Colorado River corridor – will become increasingly important as time goes on.

“The work they did is still being used today, it’s still vital today, especially as we’re heading into this future of drought and climate change and fights over water,” Sevigny said.

“They took a snapshot in time as the river was changing. An important part of their legacy was making it easier for women to become scientists and for women to become river runners, both of which have been male-dominated fields for a long time.”

Clover and Jotter would undoubtedly be honored and delighted to know their story has been told by a curious, intelligent, brave female science writer.

Sevigny will discuss “Brave the Wild River” as the guest lecturer for the Glen Canyon Lecture Series on July 18 at 7 p.m. at Glen Canyon Conservancy’s Flagship Store, located at 12 North Lake Powell Blvd. in Page.