By Kimball Bennion

Trail Staff Writer

Mexico’s Sierra Madre is a region famous for its first-timers. It is a place alluded to in the writings of explorers, poets and future military generals, saying that they were the first “white man” to set foot in the legendary territory.
Jeff Biggers, a travel writer who read from his book In the Sierra Madre for the Northwest College Writers Series, presented his work in exactly that same fashion.
Biggers describes himself as a reporter by trade, a historian by nature and a storyteller by heart. On Thursday, Nov. 2, in the Fagerberg Lecture Hall, it was the storyteller in him that kept his audience engaged. He spoke with the excitement of discovery in his voice, with enough conviction to make a listener almost believe that he, despite the accounts of hundreds before him, was the first to see the Sierra Madre.
He reported the history of legendary characters such as future military general George Patton and Confederate war-deserters who stumbled upon the region by accident. Biggers himself was no different.
“I definitely didn’t go there anticipating to write a book,” he said. Biggers originally planned only to accompany his wife to the region as she did research, but became so fascinated with its history and culture, that he started to write about it.
During its history, the Sierra Madre was a place toward which all kinds of outsiders seemed to gravitate, many in search of refuge or treasure. But, “the real treasure of the Sierra Madre,” said Biggers, “is its people.”
During his year living in the Sierra Madre, Biggers associated with the Raramuri, an indigenous people who have lived in the caves of the Sierra Madre’s vast canyons centuries before the first real outsiders came in. Also known as the Tarahumara, the Raramuri embrace a culture of story-telling and tradition. It was their struggle to preserve this culture and their resilience to keep their heritage alive that inspired much of what he read. “I brought 500 years of conquest with me, and I could not live that down,” he said as he told of his own struggle to find acceptance among them as an outsider.
Biggers’ work tells the stories of many of the world’s more obscure or misunderstood cultures. “Part of my travels is not merely just to travel for the fun of it,” he said, “but to look at ways and cultures that have largely been overlooked.” He added that he also tries to go to regions that have been demonized and stereotyped in order to expose their lesser-known values and contributions.
One example is his book The United States of Appalachia: How Southern Mountaineers Brought Independence, Culture, and Enlightenment to America. He noted that the Appalachian region of the United States has received the stereotype of a land of uneducated hillbillies, when in reality it has brought forth such things as the first declaration of independence, labor movements and the civil rights movement. “The truth is Appalachia is in the vanguard of our American history,” said Biggers.
Biggers’ next book will be about his experiences in south India.

Jeff Biggers speaks about his book In the Sierra Madre Nov. 2 as part of the Northwest College Writers Series.

— Photograph by Amber Stones