For a Little While (2016)
Rick Bass (1958)
471 pages
But other nights the storms would wash through quickly, windy drenching downpours that soaked us, and it was fun to sit on the rocks and let the storm hit us and beat against us. The nights were always warm, though cooler after those rains, and the smells were so sharp as to make us imagine that something new was out there, something happening that had never happened to anyone before. (31)The deep and powerful connection between people and the natural world animates the 25 short stories by Rick Bass collected in For a Little While. Whether a pristine wilderness in north-west Montana or a refinery-polluted river emptying into the Gulf of Mexico, nature plays an indispensable role in his characters’ lives, grounding their thoughts and actions in something bigger and more enduring than themselves. Reading these empathetic and affecting stories reminds us to cherish the wonder and grandeur of the world, when we might otherwise pass through unawares, lost in our quotidian concerns.
As in his earlier collection, The Sky, the Stars and the Wilderness, (my review here) the rhythms of nature seem to guide Bass’ writing in these stories, with a meditative, almost reverent pace giving way to occasional moments of intensity and clarity for his characters. And the nature they encounter is not some simplified, picture-book ideal to be looked at from afar; rather, its true beauty reveals itself as one engages with it, enters into it with a spirit that seeks out its mysteries. It can be dangerous --- making one pay for ignorance of its ways, inattentiveness to its signs or just plain bad luck --- but if open and sensitive to its rhythms, Bass’s stories show how nature can also complement and deepen a person’s life in myriad ways.
The story In Ruth’s Country, from which comes the quote that opens this review, takes place in the open, desert scrubland around Moab, Utah, where a boy and his uncle herd cattle for a living. Unlike the majority of the town, the two are not Mormons, and when the boy develops a bit of a crush on a Mormon girl, he knows to be wary of crossing the strict defined, if unspoken, cultural rules that exist between the Mormons and the rest of the townspeople. One day the girl approaches him, however, and the two wander repeatedly into the vast, anonymous countryside, as they experiment with and in their new relationship. But the non-denominational power and beauty they experience in the nature they explore can only mask for a time the complexities of the human world against which they are pulling. Just as the cattle from different owners mingle together in the unfenced countryside before their masters periodically rounded them up into their respective herds, Ruth and the boy find it difficult to completely break free of the ties of their respective worlds.
The wonderful and moving story Her First Elk tells of “a young woman, just out of college --- her beloved father already three years in the grave.” (270) As the story opens, the young woman climbs up into the wooded mountains of western Montana in the pre-dawn. Her father had loved hunting, and she follows in his steps, seeking through this activity that he loved a connection to the father she misses so dearly. After she takes down a huge elk in the opening glory of the morning dawn, the implications and consequences of that one shot resonate forward, and eventually leading her to recognize a vast interconnectedness, between people and with nature, that has arisen from that one shot. Ultimately she discovers an even deeper connection to her father than she had expected or even hoped to find.
Though the woman in Her First Elk --- or at least her namesake --- appears in a subsequent story, the characters otherwise vary broadly from one story to the next, from high school students finding beauty in an industrial wasteland, to a dog trainer lost in the far northern wilderness of Canada; from loggers who love their work despite a stream of injuries, to residents of a decaying town who live in the nostalgia of their town’s past glories from a time before the Mississippi River suddenly one night shifted farther west. All of these characters share an intimate connection to the world they pass through, a recognition --- sometime only subconsciously --- of both its visceral wonder and its fundamental connection to their lives.
Bass does without sudden wild twists or dramatic deaths in his stories. Instead, this is writing to savor and delight in, writing that serves as an inspiration to get out and take a slow stroll through the woods or even just one’s local neighborhood. A reminder to not just pass through the world, but to observe its ways, and relish them; to recognize, in fact, our wondrous ability to do so, for, to recall Wordsworth
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
Read quotes from Rick Bass' writings here.
My review of an earlier collection of short stories from Rick Bass, The Sky, The Stars, The Wilderness, is here.
Used as a story preface in The Sky, The Stars, The Wilderness, find a beautiful quote from John Graves reproduced here here.
Have you read this book, others by this author, or even similar ones by other authors? I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts.
Other of my book reviews: FICTION Bookshelf and NON-FICTION Bookshelf
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