The eloquent voice of Rick Bass has been raised often in celebration and defense of America’s wilderness and wildlife. In Caribou Rising, Bass journeys to one of the sole remaining landscapes on Earth where the wild is entirely untrammeled—Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, where great caribou herds gather, calve, and migrate, and where the ancient bond between animals and human hunters still informs daily life. As the Bush administration was pressuring Congress to open the Refuge to oil drilling, Bass traveled to Arctic Village to join the native Gwich-‘in in their annual caribou hunt. He wanted to witness and report on what we all stand to lose if that comes to pass. Caribou Rising details Bass’s time hunting as well as talking with the Gwich-‘in and their leaders, and offers his reflections on the profound differences between that culture and our own, and on the ancient physical and spiritual connection between the Gwich-‘in and the caribou. Those who read this extraordinary testament to the Refuge, the caribou, and the Gwich-‘in will come to appreciate the interconnectedness of all three, and cannot help but be inspired to make a stand in their defense.
Author
Rick Bass was born in Fort Worth, Texas, and grew up in Houston, the son of a geologist. He studied petroleum geology at Utah State University and while working as a petroleum geologist in Jackson, Mississippi, began writing short stories on his lunch breaks. In 1987, he moved with his wife, the artist Elizabeth Hughes Bass, to Montana’s remote Yaak Valley and became an active environmentalist, working to protect his adopted home from the destructive encroachment of roads and logging. He serves on the board of both the Yaak Valley Forest Council and Round River Conservation Studies and continues to live with his family on a ranch in Montana, actively engaged in saving the American wilderness. Bass received the PEN/Nelson Algren Award in 1988 for his first short story, “The Watch,” and won the James Jones Fellowship Award for his novel Where the Sea Used To Be. His novel The Hermit’s Story was a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year in 2000. The Lives of Rocks was a finalist for the Story Prize and was chosen as a Best Book of the Year in 2006 by the Rocky Mountain News. Bass’s stories have also been awarded the Pushcart Prize and the O. Henry Award and have been collected in The Best American Short Stories.
