The Book of Yaak

by Rick Bass

  We're ecstatic, where we are. Solitude is a thing we crave. We're clumsy, in cities—when we get in a rush; when we find our hearts racing to make a deadline, to get to some place before the jam occurs. Mistakes get made.

  But out here—it feels like we fit the cycles of things better. As if the world still makes sense—as if it is still intact, in places. It feels like less wear and tear, less heart-tattering adrenaline. Except for the paper struggle to try and protect the valley—to keep the last few uncut mountains up here uncut—I hardly ever get upset any more. I practice going slow, at a pace that can be sustained. I practice looking around at things.

  You can see cycles in almost everything, out here. New things make sense and strange logic. We're learning things we never dreamed we'd learn—things we never dreamed we'd notice: the way snow covering a rotting log is the last to melt, which means it's well insulated, a good place for creatures to hibernate or stay warm; the way deer drop their fawns around the second week of June when the grass is lush and at its absolute highest, giving the fawns maximum concealment.

  It feels like some weight of humanity has been lightened, if not actually jettisoned. No—definitely not jettisoned. Just put way out there, at arm's length. We don't get any radio stations -—the mountain walls ringing the valley are too high—and there's no television reception, either. A few people, the two bars included, have satellite dishes that they can run off of gas generators, but we choose not to have one; if there's a football or basketball game we want to see, we'll drive the seven miles to the bar.

  There's no telephone in our homes—just one pay phone outside the mercantile, also seven miles away—the world's coldest pay phone, with a stump for a seat.

  The only thing that really keeps us connected whatsoever to the world we left—the only thing, the invisible thread, thinner than spider's silk—is the mail.

  I've made it sound pretty, and it is pretty—it's breathtaking, with a new sight every day—but in winter, even for those of us who love solitude, we're glad to see the mail. It's how we shop, how we speak, and how we listen to the outside world. And in winter, that which we have previously turned our back upon becomes once more appealing, even vital. Like sailors who would take along a supply of limes and other citrus fruits on a long ocean journey, the mail in winter becomes a thing that comes back into our lives, and which we want, once again: human contact. After going to so much trouble to distance ourselves from the bulk of it, it seems strange to now have this December-January-February hunger for contact: not a lot, but definitely some, and every day. Just a little; like a pinch of cinnamon, but without which the rest of the day would grow darker and colder.

  The mail run comes only five days a week, Monday through Friday, around one in the afternoon; and in the winter, especially near the middle and end of it, that three-day stretch—from Friday's last mail till Monday's next haul—gets kind of long.

  In the winter, you can hear the mail coming long before you can see the mail lady. There's something different in the stillness of the air: something that, having spurned, in spring and summer and on through the fall, we're now suddenly hungry for. Elizabeth stands on one side of the wood-stove warming her hands, and I stand on the other side. We look out the window, across the great field of white. Mary Katherine may be reading a book. She'll come to the window, too, and watch the mail lady take our letters-to-protect-the-wilderness, our Congress letters, out of the snow-covered mailbox, and slide new ones in. Some days we can barely see her through the thick-falling snow. Even the dogs sit up, sensing her approach: though they, too, do not venture far from the fireplace.

  "Do you want to go get it, or shall I?" Elizabeth asks. We've got a set of binoculars by the window, and we'll watch and try to see just what the mail lady is putting in the box. If it's a fat mail day, we'll be anxious to go check it out. But if it looks like just a few thin circulars, I'll say, "Let it rot"; though we never do.

  Always, there could be some small letter, or postcard—from Arizona, perhaps, or the Caribbean—tucked in among the hardware flyers that advertise snow chains.

  We'll trudge down to the mailbox, wading through all that snow, pulling a bundled-up Mary Katherine on the sled behind us. One day's like the next. It's wonderful.

  There's a thing in us that loves the winter, and a thing in us that is also made a bit uncomfortable by it. Even for hermits, there are limits. Still, we try to push those limits. We try to see how long we can go without having to go into town.

  When we do go, the chores are dreadfully mundane, staggeringly predictable, each time: laundry, grocery store, gas station. A cup of coffee from the Hav-A-Java. Always, something from the hardware store. Sometimes, a haircut. Once in a while, a visit to the chiropractor. Elizabeth might swim; I'll take the girls to the park. The same slides, the same swings, over and over. Actually, I love it—that stability. And then the long drive home, to true security. If we can avoid town, we generally do.

  You can get just about anything from a catalogue now, and in the winter, that's how we go about a lot of our shopping. It's luxurious, letting the goods come to us, rather than having to go out and get them. Skis, snowshoes, boot oil, gloves, sock liners, food, books—anything, everything. We've got a whole bookshelf of nothing but mail-order catalogues, like the reference books in a mechanic's garage.

  When we need something, we sit on the couch and thumb through those well-worn catalogues, comparing prices and trying to gauge, from the photographs alone, just how durable the goods they advertise really are.

  Once a choice is made, we have to decide how to get the merchandise delivered. The mail lady is petite, and carries neither chain saw nor ax. She drives a small red Subaru. If a tree splits from the cold or the wind and falls across the road, blocking her way from town to the valley, then no mail arrives that day, and the outside world stays silent. Occasionally, on days when she has not arrived by her usual time, I'll clear my throat and say, "I believe I'm going to run up to the mercantile for a cup of coffee"—and I'll check to make sure my saw's in the back of the truck, just in case I happen to come upon the mail lady, and just in case she needs my help.

  Even more anticipatory than wondering if the mail will come that day is awaiting the arrival of the UPS Man. His deliveries are less frequent. He usually brings books, which we open ravenously. He's got a 250-mile route, and our cabin is the last stop. Sometimes he'll stand around in the falling snow and chat, in no great rush to start that long drive back across the snowy pass at dusk.

  "I saw a mountain lion today," he might say, or, back when Mr. McIntire was still alive, "Today I delivered a package to the wagonmaster." (Most of the movie people live in other valleys, but we've always had the McIntires, since they came here over sixty years ago, just married. Mr. McIntire was, among other things, the wagonmaster on the 1960s television series Wagon Train.)

  We stand there and talk, the UPS Man and I, as if to ward off the dusk, as if to hasten spring—and then he drives away, his big brown high-topped van swaying and slipping down the snow-crooked driveway, then disappearing into the falling snow.

  The Federal Express Guy is the rarest of all sightings. But reliable: he carries a chain saw. He's a big strapping young man, with arms like some kind of melons; if his van gets stuck in a drift or a ditch, he simply wades out into the snow and lifts it free. He's got the kind of build that old fogeys like to believe they used to have, back in their glory days, and the Federal Express Guy is often overly cheerful, refusing to match the frequent glooms and silences of the landscape. He drives up in a rush, sliding to a fishtailing stop much too close to our parked trucks. He hops out as if he's got a bomb, or a live animal, in his envelope, and rushes across the snow like a commando.

  But always, as with the others, he's welcome. And then he's off, in a rush.

  In winter the woods are alternately motionless and then busy. We sit and watch, and wait, for glimpses—just glimpses—of the rest of the world's strange fury and speed. The mail is just
the right arm's length. We sit, and wait, and move slowly, at our own pace, and at winter's. It's not quite like hibernation, but almost. Voices of friends, family and strangers come to us like whispers, in the mail, or like echoes. There's time to think about what's being said, and what to say back. There's time for everything—no rush—all the time in the world. It's a little frightening, and a little reassuring, both. It's why we're here.

  The Land That Congress Forgot

  SOME ANTHROPOLOGISTS SAY that our species began in the homeland of the forest before venturing out into the grassland, while others say we rose up in the savannah, and that we were then driven into the forests for sanctuary. I don't really care which version is accurate, for I like where I am now, and it makes me feel right. It used to bother me that I loved the deep forest more than the sylvan meadows. I would acknowledge that there was some familiar longing, some sparkling blood affinity, whenever I came upon some small opening in the woods, some place of light—but still, I love the symphony and magic of the deep woods best, and for a while this seemed to suggest to me—if the savannah anthropologists were correct—that I was a misanthrope, turning back and away from the human race; that I was more ape than man, and that I had shaken off old human loyalties.

  But the truth is the truth, and after a while it didn't matter.

  It is dark here and rains a lot and the trees are big and there are mysterious assemblages of animals, groupings and relationships found nowhere else in the world. It is my home and I do not think any longer I will rush out into the bright meadow, lemming-like.

  The Yaak Valley lies within Montana's northwestern boundaries like the corner of something—like the edge of all things, making the center of a new thing. If you were to fall asleep and then wake to find yourself in Yaak, unless you'd been there before, you would not recognize it as being anywhere you'd previously been.

  The big jungle climbs and stretches over the tops of the low mountains. There are only a handful of peaks in the Yaak that push up above treeline. The highest peak is only about 7,500 feet tall; the river bottom is around 3,000 feet. Troy, the nearest town, possesses the lowest spot in the state, at 1,800 feet.

  There's so much I don't know about this valley; but I'm learning: about the geology of it, about the plants and flowers, about the soil, and about how the black bears interact with the grizzlies up here, how the wolves and coyotes get along together, and the wolves and the lions. I've seen lions chasing coyotes off their deer kills; I've seen two bald eagles battling a golden eagle in mid-flight, with Mt. Henry's snowy crest in the background. It's a predator's showcase: I've seen wolverines and lynx, martens and fishers, weasels and owls. Everything eats something else, it seems, up here on the Canadian line, and I'm reminded of the old saying, "The closer you get to Canada, the more things'll eat your horse."

  It's true that there is only a small double-digit population of grizzlies—ten? twenty? thirty?—and a single-digit population of passing-through wolves; and a dozen or so bull trout, down in Pipe Creek, beneath the huge clearcuts bladed out on the sixty-degree slopes of national forests, clearings that are now only memories of ancient cedars, and the soil and fungus of those old forests opened to blazing sunlight and aridity, and to the rains and their runoff....

  But those few wild individuals that remain in the Yaak are super-survivors, with genes that are critical to the future. They have survived the thousand miles of new roads built here since the 1970s, and the shuttling back and forth of their so-called roadless areas—having to abandon one sanctuary and move to a new, stranger one; almost always moving around, trying to make rhyme and reason out of those locked gates. Many of the larger animals—the bears and wolves—have come down into the Yaak from Canada's reservoir of wildness, and possess precisely the migratory abilities, the pathfinding urges, that will be required for our wild corridors to be linked back together in the West: for a genetic flow of health, of vigor and strength, to stretch as uninterrupted as possible once more from Canada to Mexico. I'm convinced that the Yaak is, and must continue to be, one of the cornerstones of this linkage—the most unique, atypical valley in the narrowest, most critical "bottleneck" of the northern Rockies.

  There are places in the Yaak where I have seen elk, grizzlies, bull moose, lions, grouse and coyotes all bedding and living in the same area. Everything lives together, here—everything is all crammed in on top of everything else. It's a small valley.

  A lone woodland caribou drifts through the valley occasionally, doubtless following the old ghost scent of the herds of long-faded caribou who once lived here, but began to be pushed out earlier in this century. (The last verified sighting in Yaak was in "1987.) One year when I shot a spike elk, far back in one of the roadless areas (in the Yaak, the roadless areas average between ten and twenty thousand acres per core), I returned a few hours later with my backpack to find thirty-plus ravens, two golden eagles, and two coyotes feeding on my elk; the hide had been dragged off a hundred yards, with fresh bear scat leading me to it....

  It all comes together here: the rain lashes against the mountains, the forest types merge with one another—the Pacific Northwest mixing with the northern Rockies to make new and unique forms of diversity—and what comes from all this cataclysm is the deepest wildness.

  Besides the traveling individuals that have survived in the Yaak, there are survivors that have learned how to hole up in the remaining core security areas; I've seen the largest trophy bull elk I've ever seen for four years in a row, bedding in the same spot. (Needless to say I've never been able to get up on him in hunting season). These last secure roadless areas in the Yaak are the perfect size for elk security—large enough to hold and protect them, but not so overwhelmingly large that they can't be hunted—but if these areas are whittled down any further, the elk will leave, though they will have no place else to go....

  Between 25 and 40 percent of the valley's grizzly population may be denning in one particular roadless area, and still the Forest Service is planning to build roads into this core, with a below-cost sales program whose purpose, I'm convinced, is to initiate long-term access into this last place.

  Ah, but now politics is crashing into biology.

  It's not just the animals who hole up and hide in the jungle. We do, too—the human residents. It can be a pretty rough existence for us, as well. There are those who trap, who tan hides, who try to log small green slip sales; those who build log and frame homes, who fix small engines, who hunt and garden, who teach, who guide hunters and fishermen, who write, who plant trees, who tend bar, who preach, who raise sled dogs and bird dogs.... Our livelihoods are as diverse as the animals', though one thing we have in common is that we all work for ourselves, not for big corporations, and that in itself is, I think, a form of wildness these days.

  There are two bars—the Dirty Shame, and, across the road, by the river, the Yaak River Tavern. There's the mercantile, which sells gas and canned goods, and eggs, milk, and cheese. There's a volunteer ambulance barn, a two-room schoolhouse in the upper Yaak and a two-room school down in the lower Yaak, near the old mining camp of Sylvanite.

  There's a fishing guide and a hunting guide. There's one cemetery, a small lumber mill—it burned, right before the fires of '94—but the mill is being rebuilt. I have bought rough-cut lumber from the mill, and I love the feel and smell of it, love knowing that the wood I hold in my hands has come from the valley in which I live.

  It's as much a place of indigenous peoples as we may have left in the Lower Forty-eight—a place of hunters and gatherers—mushrooms, venison, antlers, berries. It is a good land for craftspeople, a good place to take one's time with a single piece of wood, or with anything, rather than getting in a rush and making mistakes.

  Because so many of us are hermits, or shy, or reclusive—because we simply live here for the solitude—engagement in political struggles is, for many, not a healthy choice. It's not why we're here. And often I feel as if, in working to protect the last roadless areas, I've allowe
d my private, healthy self—the one capable of great happiness and peace—to be lured into some place of turmoil, of never-rest.

  But it is my home. There would be turmoil, also, if I didn't try.

  Many of us who are working to protect the remaining wilderness of the Yaak understand the arguments, and the fears, on the other side. Never mind that if, say, every standing piece of merchantable timber in the 7,000-acre Grizzly Peak country were cut, it would only provide the mill in Libby with about two or three weeks of timber. Fears are as bad, or worse, than realities, and so in 1993, by Steve Thompson of the Montana Wilderness Association and United States Representative Pat Williams (the sole Montana representative, due to the state's small population), we proposed the McIntire/Mt. Henry Conservation Reserve, in honor of two of the valley's early (1930) homesteaders—the actor and actress John and Jeannette Nolan McIntire.

  The purpose of this area, which has been hammered hard by huge corporate clearcuts, would be to dedicate its use exclusively by sustainable, small-scale loggers, rather than continuing to let the international companies work it. They've had their chance, and have been harsh; now the proposal is for local small loggers to work it—horse loggers and roadside salvage sales, and selective timbering. Additionally, the remaining roadless core would be protected, and streamside repairs as well as reclaiming the lands scarred by roads would begin, in efforts to repair water quality.

  This proposal was included in a Montana wilderness bill sponsored by Pat Williams the next year—he said that the Yaak has "been hammered ... in the past," and that he intended to "protect a small sliver of land between clearcuts." Steve Thompson described the area as "one of the few wild places in the Lower Forty-eight in which all of the original pieces are intact: native old-growth forests, grizzly bears, bull trout, mountain lions, cascading waterfalls, and even a newly discovered fungus closely associated with the yew tree that manufactures the cancer-fighting drug Taxol. In the last few years, wolves have ventured back into the wild Yaak Valley from Canada."