With postmodernist philosophy and literary criticism, there has arisen a notion
that "nature" as a concept is purely a cultural construct; and not too big a
step beyond that position, a relativism about ground nature itself has become
chic. Since humanity's effects are everywhere, there is nothing pristine to measure
by, the thinking goes. Opponents of wildland protection have gleefully taken this
relativism as gospel and used it against those remnants of the wild still more or
less intact. All the talkers, however, may have forgotten one thing. the passion of
a true defender. They will not know how to deal with Rick Bass (b. 1958), for
whom the loss of wilderness is not just someone's view, one opinion among many.
And wilderness isn't something you can draw a line around. No: It is the whole
thing, and it is real. The decline of wild health is for Bass the great fact and definer
of our times. His fiction and straight-ahead essays, done in intimate, conversational
prose that gives rise somehow to soaring images, all grow within an overarching
passion for wild nature. The center for Bass is the Yaak Valley of northwestern
Montana, and the creative energy behind an outpouring of books clearly comes
from this writer's love for place. Bass may be a kind of throwback in displaying a
moral center in his work. but readers and critics have responded nevertheless,
making him one of the most-praised contemporary American writers. "The Sky,
the Stars, the Wilderness," the title story of a gathering of three novellas by Bass
published in 1997, is as provocative a piece of writing about nature and human life
as has been done in the West.

Their plans were to develop the valley, and my plans were to stop them.
There were just the two of them. The stockbroker, or stock analyst, had
hired me as caretaker on his ranch here. He was from New York, a big
man who drank too much. His name was Quentin, and he had a pro-
truding belly and a small mustache and looked like a polar bear. The
other one, a realtor from Billings, was named Zim. Zim had close-together
eyes, pinpoints in his pasty, puffy face, like raisins set in dough. He wore
new jeans and a western shirt with silver buttons and a metal belt buckle
with a horse on it. In his new cowboy boots he walked in little steps with
his toes pointed in.

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