The Book of Yaak

by Rick Bass

  I am convinced it was a conscious decision not to—that it was a thought, a rational decision—the mind overriding the body. It was merciful and generous.

  There may be only a couple hundred grizzlies in the Lower Forty-eight outside of national parks (Glacier and Yellowstone)—and here were three of them, waiting for me to move aside, so they could continue down the trail, into history—into whatever fate awaited them.

  I turned and walked weak-legged down the mountain in blue dusk, the sun now sending up orange sundial rays from its nest for the night, behind the far mountain. I reached the truck in dimness, half an hour later, and drove home to my wife and daughter. I held on to that new fresh feeling of still being alive for as long as I could; and even today, I can still feel, can still remember, the gratitude.

  I am not going to speak against science. Science has its own wildness. But the science we have been taught pauses at the edge of borders, does not usually spill over, unless either by elaborate design, or by accident. We are taught not to leap.

  In art, as in the wilderness, you can stumble into grace and luck, into magic, not just on the rare occasion, but every day; every single day.

  I am too hungry, too gluttonous, to remain a scientist any longer. I want to consume—to devour—unmeasured things; to wallow in the rich overflow. To see it, or taste it, if not measure it.

  A thing in my blood tells me that there are things in the world that, if touched and measured, disappear.

  I do not mean to speak against science, or even to argue that we have too much of it. I mean only to suggest that we do not have enough art and wilderness. I think that magic is becoming rarer every day—rarer than timber, oil, or steel, and as a glutton, I want the rare things, the delicious things.

  I want as much luck and grace as I can hold. Not measure, but hold.

  Antlers

  IT TOOK ONE HUNDRED and sixty thousand letters, it is estimated, to return wolves to Yellowstone and Idaho: to capture and transport wild wolves from Canada back into what remains of our own forests. Will it take two hundred thousand letters—or a quarter million, or a million—to protect the last roadless areas in the Yaak? How thrilled I would be if I knew that's all it would take; I would write each one of them myself, and be done with it.

  But when the last roadless areas of Yaak are roaded, and clearcut—if that happens; if we allow the encroachment, the steady gnawing, to keep happening—where then will we get our wilderness, our old forests? Can you fit one on a helicopter as you can a wolf, and bring it in from Canada? Our ability to achieve the quick fix, purchasing a wolf or grizzly as if off the shelf, slapping a radio collar on it, and then turning it loose on our side of the border—those days are coming to a screeching stop. Right now, we're still in the mindset of being able to plug holes. But when the big wild forests are gone—when nothing but a hole remains—what will fill us, and where will we shop?

  A day for cooking. I know I should be spending time in these pages chronicling the last days of the wild creatures, here at the edge of the century, in this land of giants—but it seems a day to pause.

  Nearly everything is frozen—the snow continuing to pour down for the eighth day in a row—- and there is a silence, a profound resting, all throughout the woods.

  It is a time for death, too. This is the week, according to my journals, when, on walks through the woods, you begin to find more deer carcasses, the leavings of lions and coyotes, and of the winter itself—the absence of one thing, food, and of another thing, warmth.

  This is the week, too, when the deer begin to lose their antlers—the antlers falling off and tumbling to the ground, first one side, so the deer is lopsided, but soon thereafter, the other, balancing back out. The trails the deer travel are packed down icy-smooth through the snow, and antlers line either sides of these trails like decorations in a rock garden, or like markers. In the summer after the snow is gone you can still come across these trails, the edges of them strewn with antler residue. The antlers will still be relatively untouched, except for having been gnawed upon by the squirrels and porcupines, who savor the phosphorous and calcium and other minerals held in the antlers.

  The bucks no longer need their antlers for establishing and guarding their territory against other bucks, nor for establishing dominance. Survival is all that matters now—not procreation. The does have already been bred and are carrying the next season's life in them, and though the antlers might still be useful in defending against predators, flight is still the best defense a deer has. The extra energy used in carrying those antlers around is simply not worth it, so questionable is survival in winter: so fine the line, the balance of accounting between calories consumed and calories expended. So the bucks jettison their debt; the richness of the antlers, the extravagance of them, cannot be sustained.

  It's possible, too, that the antlers are a liability in another way; it's possible that the predators know that in winter the male deer will be worn out from the rigors of the breeding season, and that that is another of the selective advantages of antler-shedding that has been sculpted into the deer, over the aeons. And doubtless there are other reasons as well which we will never know: but every year the trails are out there, lined with the casting-off of things—signposts of trouble in the present, but signals also of hope for a future.

  There are times when I waver, when I think, How foolish, how idealistic this is—a letter-writing campaign, like something one might do as a class project in the third grade. How totally inefficient, ineffective, in these days of corporate-owned politicians, and the corporations themselves so much more massive than ever. The forest activist John Osborn has called money the "mother's milk" of western politics. (I don't understand why southern congressmen, in districts where trees are grown, indulge the massive subsidies made to the districts of western congressmen, where trees are liquidated and then the companies flee town; unless it is that the companies are so total now, so huge, that the timber companies have offices in both Georgia and Washington—in Arkansas as well as Oregon.) There are times when even the most idealistic among us must wonder, Are ideals even worth anything, any more?

  Despite your knowing better, you begin to dream of the quick fix. Such dreams are born of winter-tiredness—a thing we must always hold at arm's length, no matter how bad things get—no matter if they get even worse, as current trends suggest may happen.

  You tire of licking stamps and addressing envelopes—you tire of being voiceless. You notice that Boise Cascade, Plum Creek, Georgia Pacific, Potlatch, and Weyerhaeuser are active donors to the elected Congress; but then you notice that Microsoft is, too. What if the giants could be turned against one another? What if rather than continuously merging, they could be turned, like bulls with rings in their noses—or by idealism—to do good rather than such avaricious harm? What if Microsoft decided that the world needed a place like Yaak—not to visit so much as to just hold in one's mind? What if they, or someone as powerful—and their stockhold ers—decided that a thing did not have to be measurable to be valuable?

  These dreams are dangerous. In the end, the answers always return to the gruntwork, to the rolling up of one's sleeves; the redoubling, or tripling, of one's efforts. If letters cannot change things, then we're screwed anyway, so you might as well believe in them, and keep pushing, keep believing—please keep believing. But on a winter day, staring out the window at six feet of snow with more coming down, you cannot help but let your mind wander, and dream of being rescued, rather than rescuing yourself....

  What is the value of the imagination? We probably won't really know until it's gone: until everything has been either decided for us or taken from us; until disorder and fragmentation completes its destruction of our social and judicial systems, mirroring our destruction of the woods. We probably won't fully know the value of imagination, spontaneity and creativeness until they are relics or artifacts from a more indulgent, excessive—richer—time.

  The power of imagination is still rich in the
Yaak. It is a force that is still intact in all of us. Whether in the pleasure, the anticipation, of looking forward to an evening's meal, or in the hand-to-hand wrestling of some great problem of the intellect—or in spiritual matters, or any matters—the tool of the imagination is still our greatest asset.

  It is no coincidence that the more timber we clearcut, the poorer the communities around these clearcuts become; and that the more mines we dig, the poorer we get. The last of the money goes somewhere but never to us, and in the end we have nothing, have less than nothing, for our imagination has been taken, and we have only a memory of how rich the land once was.

  Imagination—a kind of wildness in itself—used to be one of this country's greatest strengths: the ability to invent, and to question authority and the status quo—to ask What if? —to challenge, and ask Why?

  No one asks Sony, or AT&T, or Plum Creek, or Amoco Why? We've had that power wrested from us—or have surrendered it. Some people think that it is the government's fault—democracy—while others think it is big business's fault. There seems to be a big difference between the two, despite their close affiliations, and we'd better make the right choice: not just for the sake of the woods and places like the Yaak, but for every other aspect that is relevant to our humanity.

  Without question, a place like the Yaak—just knowing it is in the world, mostly, but also being able to wander into its deep cores—is vital to my imagination, as both an artist and a regular human being: as a father and husband, a citizen. Having access to peace makes me peaceful, and makes me want to be peaceful to those around me. One can only hope this is still contagious—that such connections can still be made, that those paths between us—what is called most frequently common ground—have not yet been fragmented.

  And as an artist—a trade I used not to think was so terribly critical to the health of a culture, but which I am now convinced is at least as vital as any other trade—logger, geologist, preacher, teacher, senator, athlete, doctor— diversity— the depth of western wilderness has helped provide models for increasing the boundaries of my own imagination—that mysterious connection between body and mind.

  I'm not saying you can't write a big story if you haven't ever walked across a big country. I'm just saying it makes it easier for me—and I know this is true for other artists I've spoken to—to imagine big stories, or big art (by which I mean that which is deeply felt) if one knows that there is a corresponding terrain of largeness of spirit—almost a boundlessness—still out there somewhere. Call it the unregulated wild.

  If I can speak of the imagination, then I can speak of spirit. I must speak of the spirit of a place—again, one of this country's greatest blessings: an incredible diversity of place. What is a place worth?

  Out of this country's braid, the United States' weave of desert and forest, east and west, swamp and mountain, north and south, prairie and bayou, comes the fabric that we can all feel but can not measure or even name other than to say that it is American, and that we are Americans—not French, not Russians, not Chinese, but American. To be sure, Yaak is only one great strand— a thick rope—in the weave of these things—imagination and spirit—but these things are real and I do not enjoy watching them become weakened and even severed for the short-term profit of faceless shareholders for whom the words "place" and "rhythm" have no meaning; who scan each day's stock market quotations (whether they live in Beijing or Philadelphia) as if—get this—as if their lives, or their spirits, depended on it.

  That's all fine and dandy, you may say, but you can't eat spirit.

  No, you can't—but you can live longer and more fully on spirit than you can on clearcuts.

  What is the spirit of a place? The writer and anthropologist Richard Nelson describes it best, I think: though again, for those whose lives are structured upon the short-term tricks of quarterly earnings or daily T-bond microfluctuations, he does not describe it in any way that can be measured or packaged, any more than one can quantify an act of kindness.

  Nelson speaks of the seasonal comings and goings of life — the invisible trails left by the passages of the migrations of the animals—not just in Alaska, but all across the continent — as a pulse, a tracing, "a luminous sheath" of passages, emotions, and ways of being that conspires to wrap this country in its own unique spirit: the migration of cranes and geese overlapping paths and trails of the buffalo and caribou, the wanderings of wolves, and the waxing and waning of human cultures, human dreams and desires, across the land. No, you can't eat this—but neither can we survive without it—this spirit of place—and it is deep in danger.

  ***

  All I want to do is read and eat, this winter day. Simple goals. When I go down into Libby for errands, on a day like today, friends will often ask what it's like up here: knowing that it will be snowing harder, and that the temperatures will be ten to twenty degrees colder.

  We need that notion of an edge—- a furthering of boundaries—in both our imaginations and the real world. I like to think that it gives balance to the communities of Libby and Troy—knowing that there is a roadlessness, a vastness, still beyond them. When I tell them that indeed the snows are deeper, that day—almost impassable—or that I saw a mountain lion run across the road—it seems to settle right with them; it seems almost to nourish.

  I don't want to take anyone's job away. But I don't believe clearcutting the last wilderness will save or even create jobs; I think failing to protect it will cost us jobs, and more.

  We are of a place: barely, we are still of a place, up here—the loggers and the woodland caribou, the owls and the elk. We are all hanging on up here and I hope we always will be.

  This is the week the deer and elk lose their antlers—the week they line their trails with the evidence of their passings. My friends Tom and Nancy have taught their dog, Pagan, to retrieve any antlers she finds in the woods. She doesn't bring in every antler she happens across, but only those ones that appeal to her, for whatever reasons. Perhaps she actively selects those that she thinks will please Tom and Nancy the most.

  It's quite a sight to see her trotting in from the snowy woods with one of those big antlers gripped in her teeth, her eyes bright with pleasure. You watch her enter the dark woods, and she's usually gone a long while: you wait, and the anticipation and pleasure build. You never know quite what the antler's going to look like; there are always a few long delicious moments of mystery as you wait for Pagan to come back from the woods.

  Waterfall

  SOME NIGHTS MY HEART pounds so hard in anger that in the morning when I wake up it is sore, as if it has been rubbing against my ribs—as if it has worn a place in them as smooth as the stones beneath a waterfall. Sometimes a calm, smooth, placid expression can harbor more fury than an angular, twisted one. And sometimes serenity can harbor more power than anger or even fury. I know that and I'm trying to get there—to peace, and its powers—but I just don't seem to be able to. The river keeps falling.

  The sound of it, in my ears.

  The Music and Harmony of Large and Small Things

  "I spend a considerable portion of my time observing the habits of the wild animals, my brute neighbors. By their various movements and migrations they fetch the year about to me. Very significant are the flight of geese and the migration of suckers, etc., etc. But when I consider that the noble animals have been exterminated here—the cougar, panther, lynx, wolverine, wolf, bear, moose, deer, the beaver, the turkey—I cannot but feel as if I lived in a tamed, and, as it were, emasculated country, would not the motions of those larger and wilder animals have been more significant still? Is it not a maimed and imperfect nature that I am conversant with? As if I were to study a tribe of Indians that had lost all its warriors."

  Thoreau, March 1856 journal

  LOOK WHAT I'VE DONE. Invited from my clearcut-riddled home to read in Whitefish at a benefit for Vital Ground, a nonprofit organization out of Hollywood that's trying to raise dollars to purchase lands in the West that are critica
l habitat for the beautiful glossy creatures that have been so kind to Hollywood in the past—the grizzlies and the wolves—I was perhaps unwise enough to make a scene. The reading had been advertised to the public as an evening of "bears, wolves and writers"—implicit in the invitation and the fact that donations were requested was the notion that it would be an evening of fun and celebration, a day off from the never-ending struggle to stitch the West, the American Rockies, back together. As luck would have it, I'm first up at the mike. They're trapped now, everyone in their seats, smiling and expecting poetry—literature—about the muscled hump of the grizzly and the night howl of the wolfpack.

  Instead, I ambush them. Instead of giving them something—a nice reading—I ask for something. I read them a shrill diatribe about the Yaak, a small but vital cornerstone to the entire health of the West, and unfortunately a perfect example of the fragmentation that's going on all throughout the Rockies. I harangue my tender audience about the need to write letters to members of Congress so that they will designate the last few remaining roadless cores in the Yaak as wilderness. I hold up a copy of the ink-smudged mimeographs that will be on the table on their way out. Harsh facts are involved, I tell them. I tell them about the twelve hundred miles of logging road throughout the valley, and of the nobility of the animals that remain. I spell out the names of the senators and representative to write; I spell out the addresses. The members of the audience shift, squirm, yawn, roll their eyes and check their watches; they're aware already that the West is being fragmented.