Rick Bass is a wilderness advocate, activist, and the author of more than thirty books. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lyndhurst Foundation, the Montana Arts Council, and others. His stories, articles, and essays have appeared in The Paris Review, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Narrative, Men’s Journal, Esquire, GQ, Harper’s, The New York Times Magazine, Los Angeles Times Magazine, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, Tin House, Zoetrope, Orion, and numerous other periodicals and book anthologies. He lives in western Montana.
Rick Bass

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From the Oldest Forest in Montana
When a forest gets to be this old and untouched, it becomes something more than a forest. It becomes what we would think of as a mind, with history, knowledge, memory, and foresight. Continue reading
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Putting Things Back Together
I WASN’T A YOUNG writer when I first came to Wallace Stegner — I wasn’t even a writer of any kind — nor was I yet an environmentalist. I was just Continue reading
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Activism’s Paradox Mountain
Thinking about activism sometimes calls to mind the metaphor of climbing mountains, or even climbing one particular mountain, with repeated assaults on it so continuous and steadfast that, over the course Continue reading
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Wolf Palette
THERE IS COLOR IN THE LAND AGAIN. OR PERHAPS the color was always there, like a pigment in the soil, but was simply rendered imperceptible for a while. But not for Continue reading
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Paradise Lost
SUDDENLY WE’RE NOT the same nation. There is in almost all of us a place — even if some days only a small, postage stamp-sized place — that is off-balance, frightened, Continue reading
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This American Land
IN WORDS OF RICK BASS: These roadless areas in the Yaak are public lands: lands owned by you, by me, by these writers, and by all Americans. Lands that, against overwhelming Continue reading