WEBVTT

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--Nonfiction, including Winter,
Oil Notes, Platte River,

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In the Loyal Mountains,
The Ninemile Wolves,

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Wild to the Heart, and
The Lost Grizzlies.

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His most recent books are The
Book of Yaak, a nonfiction work,

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and The Sky, The
Stars, The Wilderness,

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a collection of
three novellas, both

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out from Houghton
Mifflin in 1997.

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There are certain
writers and they

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are as few and far between
as wilderness areas, who

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can convince a reader
on the very first page

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that they have the authority
to guide you into what follows.

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This happens to me
every time I pick up

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a piece of Bass's
writing, whether it

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is a short story, an essay or
a letter of political advocacy

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on behalf of the Yaak Valley,
where he and his family

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live in Northwest Montana.

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What gives his voice
such authority?

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Among other things,
a clarity of language

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that is sharpened like a
blade, a fusing of lyrical

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abandon with scientific
restraint, born perhaps

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of his roots as a geologist,
and a passion of purpose

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that fuses form and subject
in that mysterious alchemy we

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know to be art.

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When Bass first saw
the Yaak Valley,

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he stopped driving and settled.

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In reflecting about
that choice he wrote:

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it was the gravity of the
place that caught my heart,

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and he has inhabited
that gravity,

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giving it a voice
in his writing,

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and working
politically to preserve

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what is distinct,
beautiful, and mysterious

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about that wild place.

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And he has enlarged the
frame of our concerns

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about wilderness
by connecting them

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to our most private concerns
about how we live and love.

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And to our most
public ones, as he

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said in a letter that went out
about advocacy for the Yaak,

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we are talking about what
values, what treasures shared

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by the republic
we intend to take

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with us into the next century.

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Please, welcome, live from
Picacho Peak, Rick Bass.

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[APPLAUSE]

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