Science journalist Melissa L. Sevigny was searching through the online archives of Northern Arizona University when she stumbled on something unfamiliar — papers botanist Lois Jotter donated to the university about her scientific exploration down the Colorado River.

Jotter and her mentor, University of Michigan botany professor Elzada Clover, set out in 1938 along with a crew of four men to raft the Grand Canyon. The two became the first people to conduct a formal study of the plant life of the Grand Canyon and also became the first two women to successfully raft the entire canyon.

A science reporter at Flagstaff-based KNAU radio station, Sevigny grew up in Arizona and wrote a previous book about the Colorado River.

“Clover and Jotter lived at a time when they were not being invited to do this. They had to make it happen for themselves, but they were being told that because of their gender they didn’t belong in that place. And thank goodness they ignored that advice.” — Author Melissa L. Sevigny

If anyone had heard about Clover and Jotter, it should be her — but she hadn’t.

“I was just really astonished I had never heard either of their names before,” she said.

She started looking for more information about the two women but there wasn’t much out there, particularly regarding the scientific implications of their research.

“It dawned on me slowly that I was going to have to write it myself,” Sevigny said.

She started out with a long-form article about the expedition for Atavist Magazine, but still felt like there was much more to say and signed a contract to write a full-length book about the trip. That turned into Brave the Wild River: The Untold Story of Two Women Who Mapped the Botany of the Grand Canyon (W.W. Norton & Company), which was published in May.

Books such as John Wesley Powell’s The Exploration of the Colorado River and Its Canyons and Wallace Stegner’s Beyond the Hundredth Meridian have become classics of Western exploration literature. Brave the Wild River is a much-needed addition to the canon.

The book is partly an adventure story about the chaotic nature of the trip — there was conflict among expedition leader Norman Nevills and some other members of the crew, and at one point the group was several days late to a checkpoint and presumed dead — and partly a detailed look about the women’s scientific accomplishments, which are still considered significant by botanists and ecologists.

Their study of the plant life at the bottom of the canyon was more important than even Clover and Jotter realized at the time. The expedition was conducted before the Hoover Dam, which closed its gates in 1936 and took years to fill, forever changed the ecology of the Colorado River and gave future researchers a benchmark for what the plant life along the canyon used to be like.

Despite the lack of current-day knowledge of the trip, at the time it was a media sensation. The expedition was covered in newspapers from coast to coast, and the women briefly become celebrities.

“I guess today it would be like if we sent someone to Mars,” Sevigny said. “The idea they would do this, and specifically that women would do this, was just considered very outlandish.”

Much of the coverage, which Sevigny described as “utterly sensationalized,” was not welcomed by Clover and Jotter. As Sevigny’s book details, both felt ambivalent about their role as the first two non-native American women to traverse the Grand Canyon.

Unlike some other female explorers who broke boundaries, they weren’t making the trip to prove a point that women could do anything men could do. They were scientists, and their key focus was on conducting research in a heretofore-unexplored region of the country.

“My sense is they both felt they should be treated equally and be respected for their capabilities,” Sevigny said. “They were both aware they were being treated differently because they were women and at every opportunity insisted they had as much right as a man to be there.”

Despite the boundary-breaking nature of the expedition, it was quite traditional in other ways. Clover and Jotter did all of the cooking for the

entire group throughout the expedition on top of their demanding scientific work, something it seems they grew quite tired of by the end of the trip.

Hopefully Clover and Jotter themselves would be pleased with Sevigny’s book, which doesn’t shy away from the gendered nature of their accomplishment but in large part focuses on their scientific pursuits.

Along with contemporary media accounts and the archives both women donated to universities before their death, Sevigny drew in large part from the diaries both Clover and Jotter kept of the trip. In fact, the diaries were all she had to go on for a while — she signed the book contract in the spring of 2020, just as the COVID-19 pandemic shut down access to many archives for more than a year.

“All I had were the diaries and parts of Lois’ archive; that’s all I had to work with for first year and a half,” Sevigny said. “That was not my plan, but I think it worked out for the best, because it made sure the women’s voices were very central to the story.”

As she conducted her research, Sevigny said she realized she would need to embark on her own rafting trip through the Grand Canyon to truly understand her subjects. She signed up with a botany crew and in the fall of 2021 spent two weeks rafting down the canyon while weeding out the invasive species Ravenna grass.

The work-based focus gave her a little semblance of what Clover and Jotter’s trip might have been like, she said, as well as the fact she didn’t have any previous whitewater rafting experience.

“I think it was good I went into it like that because that must have been what Elzada and Lois felt as well — they really and truly didn’t know what they were getting into,” she said.

The ecology of the Grand Canyon has changed significantly since 1938, in large part due to how much of the Colorado River is now an engineered system in thrall to the 35 to 40 million people who rely on the water it provides.

As the many different entities with rights to the river’s water struggle to negotiate how to go forward at a time of historic drought, Sevigny said Clover and Jotter’s story can serve as a powerful reminder that everyone, from researchers and scientists to the Indigenous communities who have lived along the river for millennia, needs to have a seat at the table.

“Clover and Jotter lived at a time when they were not being invited to do this,” Sevigny said. “They had to make it happen for themselves, but they were being told that because of their gender they didn’t belong in that place. And thank goodness they ignored that advice.”

Author Melissa L. Sevigny drew on a library of ecology books while writing Brave the Wild River, including many about previous river explorations. These are the ones she said most inspired her work:

• Downcanyon: A Naturalist Explores the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon by Ann Zwinger (University of Arizona Press, 1995)

• Raven’s Exile: A Season on the Green River by Ellen Meloy (Henry Holt & Co., 1994)

• The Emerald Mile: The Epic Story of the Fastest Ride in History Through the Heart of the Grand Canyon by Kevin Fedarko (Scribner, 2013)

• Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer (Milkweed Editions, 2013)