LA GRANDE — The date was May 24, 2017, and George Venn, an award-winning La Grande writer and poet, had just completed a reading in Cove at an event honoring Brock Evans, one of the nation’s most decorated environmental activists.

Venn did not know it then, but the end of the reading actually was a beginning — the start of a literary journey unlike any he may travel again.

Venn gave his reading at a surprise party celebrating Evans’ 80th birthday. The works Venn chose for the occasion included two poems by Evans from a collection of writings in his basement, “Keepers of the Door” and “Elgy.”

The quality of Evans’ verse piqued Venn’s curiosity.

“That experience — reading his work aloud to an audience of 80 some friends and environmentalists — made me wonder what else there might be worth sharing — even publishing— in that basement archive,” Venn said.

Depth of material

It did not take Venn long to realize Evans’ literary wellspring runs many ink wells deep.

“I quickly learned that he was a prolific writer, one who had had been writing a diary daily since he was in eighth grade,” Venn said, noting that Evans, who moved to Union County in 2016 from Washington, D.C., and now lives in La Grande, had donated 124 boxes of his papers to the University of Washington and another 134 boxes to the American Heritage Center at the University of Wyoming.

Venn, already a friend of Evans, offered to help the environmentalist assemble his diary entries, speeches and essays into an autobiography.

Venn informed Evans that much of the work was essentially written and all it needed was to be oraganized.

“George told me I had a great pile of lumber that needed form to become a house,” Evans told The Observer on Dec. 16, 2020.

Evans agreed, and Venn then prepared a plan and helped him write his work. The result is a new work, “Endless Pressure Endlessly Applied — The Autobiography of an Eco-Warrior.”

Venn, who has teamed up to help a number of other writers produce noteworthy books, including the award-winning “Darkroom Soldier” by the late Fred Hill of La Grande, said the challenge posed in assisting Evans was one of a kind. He explained the enormity of the amount of material, including diary entries, essays, speeches and reflections he had to sort through was remarkable.

“It was massive. I had to make so many choices,” Venn said.

The coffee table book is 491 pages, and Venn said there was enough good material for it to be twice that size.

Taking on dams

One of the most fulfilling accomplishments of Evans’ life, which he covered in detail in his autobiography, was the work he did to help prevent the construction of dams in Hells Canyon. Evans in 1975 pushed for Congress to create the Hells Canyon National Recreation Area and grant Wild and Scenic River status to a portion of the Snake River that runs through the canyon.

“It is a compelling story,” Venn said. “(Evans) was a pathfinder and trail blazer.”

Evans’ fight to save Hells Canyon from dam construction began in 1967 and appeared initially doomed to failure for two big reasons: There were few environmental laws in place to help stop dam construction, and the prevailing attitude then was rivers should be used to serve humankind.

“Many people believed the only thing to do with a river is to make it go to work,” Evans said Wednesday, Dec. 16. He said this belief gave rise to the slogan, “The Snake River is a river which wants to work.”

Evans and other Hells Canyon supporters had few environmental laws available to them in 1967, but that year the U.S. Supreme Court came to their aid out of the blue while determining which company should get a license, one already approved, to build a dam in Hells Canyon. The Supreme Court during this process came out with an opinion that would be a landmark in environmental history.

Justice William O. Douglas wrote the opinion on behalf of the court, stating: “The Court will not now make a decision on who gets to build this dam. The first question that must be asked is whether there should be any dam at all. Therefore, we remand this case back to the FPC (Federal Power Commission) for a determination on this one point: should there be a dam or not.”

Evans writes in his autobiography the words represented a “stunning legal precedent.” He explained never before had the Supreme Court, or any court, questioned “the common wisdom” of dam building.

“Those words were like manna from heaven,” Evans said Wednesday.

The campaign to save Hells Canyon had the Supreme Court on its side at that point but limited regional political support. The anti-dam campaign picked up a powerful ally a little more than a year later when Bob Packwood beat incumbent Wayne Morse in 1968 to become a new U.S. Senator for Oregon. Packwood later became a big Hells Canyon supporter and introduced a bill to create the Hells Canyon National Recreation Area.

Beating the odds

Evans has overcome long odds not only in fighting for the environment, but also in fighting for his life. He details in the book how he battled multiple myeloma, a plasma cell cancer in 2002 and 2003, and a doctor told him he had only three or four months to live. In 2015 a physician at Huntsman Cancer Institute in Salt Lake City told Evans he was cancer free. He did not believe his doctor at first but was persuaded moments later.

“My heart danced with gladness,” Evans writes in his book.

Evans, who grew up in Columbus, Ohio, moved to Union County with his wife, Linda Garcia, because of the connection he feels to the Northwest, where he had spent extensive time working on projects in Oregon and Washington.

“I love the people here and the land. This is my beloved Northwest,” Evans said.

Evan said he titled the autobiography, published by Wake-Robin Press, “Endless Pressure Endlessly Applied” because it represents a signature mantra of Evans’ when striving for an objective.

“The key is to keep moving, to never stop, to never quit,” he said.

He stressed that everything he has helped accomplish in his life was done with the assistance of many others, individuals he sees as part of an international brotherhood and sisterhood. Evans said when on trips outside the country finding new friends is as easy as locating a meeting of a conservation group.

“Our accents may be different,” Evans said, “but our love of the land is the same.”

For information on obtaining copies of the autobiography, email wakerobinpress@redbatcreative.com.