The problem facing Bass and his two friends is that the grizzly bear is believed to be extinct in Colorado. However, several undocumented sightings and signs have convinced them that the bears exist in the remotest regions of the mountain range. Thus they are out to do all they can to locate bears and document their findings.
In the resulting adventures we find the three companions trapsing through woods, sliding down canyon walls, confronting bureaucrats and tracking down bear sign. Things are complicated, and given a distinctly uneasy quality, by the behavior of Doug Peacock. Peacock, himself a well-known author and champion of the grizzly bear, is plagued by frequent and dramatic mood swings. His alarmingly volatile temper, moments of intense introspection and frequent outbursts of graphic profanity have the reader feeling like he/she is walking on eggshells. Because Bass has done such a good job of describing his friend, and how he came to be the way he is, it's easy to forgive Peacock his peculiar behavior. However, it is not easy or pleasant to read.
As the story unfolds, and the three men get closer to their goal, the tension becomes almost unbearable. When Bass finally sees a bear, after months of exhausting effort and disappointment, the scene unfolds in classic Bass technicolor with heart racing clarity and insight. "When I am ten yards from that fallen tree - which I am all but ignoring, focusing on the deer - a creature leaps up from behind it, seemingly right in my face, a brown creature with great hunched shoulders. It's a bear with a big head, and for the smallest fraction of time our eyes meet. The bear's round brown eyes are wild in alarm, and mine the same or larger, I'm sure. The bear's rich chocolate color, like a moose and nearly as big, an animal of such immense size that indeed my first thought, the one right before fear, is: That bear's as big as a moose!"
I won't ruin the suspense by telling you what happens next. It should be enough to know that Bass neither disappoints nor fails to find deeper currents of truth running beneath his experience. This is another book that shouldn't be missed. Just don't expect it to reveal its gifts easily.
The crowd of Earth First!ers from Tuscon and points north represented by the volatile-tempered Doug Peacock, that has allowed Rick Bass to join is a select band of outlaw literary types, that worship the wild and lament its demise. I share this sadness and want to prevent it myself, but my twelve years working as a fish and wildlife biologist did little to encourage me that this is possible. By aligning himself only with outlaw radicals whose personal behavior screams "left-wing enviro-nut" these noble ideas will be hard to sell by these messengers. Only with mainstream acceptance will change occur.
In Bass's home territory of Yaak, Montana this will be a hard sell. Libby is a devastated lumber town where I once worked for the U.S. Forest Service. I was so discouraged that I quit early and left town never to return. Bass runs with a select clique who live in Livingston, Montana a sort of "Hollywood North" of rich and famous actors and artists the likes of Peter Fonda, Tom McGuane, Dennis Quaid, the brothers Bridges, an endless list. But it's the outlaws like Dave Forman the founder of Earth First!that run the underground sects of the environmental movement, and they have a terrorist thesis; "Monkeywrenchers" as Ed Abby envisioned. Peacock is the model although he does not actually commit vandalism acts himself. They don't accept newcomers into their ranks easily; particularly impoverished writers from the "sticks."
I wrote Mr. Bass once of my efforts chronicled in my first book "Against A Strong Current," on these conservation matters and received no reply. Acceptance by this group is not my goal but credit is difficult to get, even if one has extensive credentials and a government work record that takes place on scene as part of the in house system working for the same change. It is easy to be upstaged by amateurs. Bass seeks to sell romance sans the "Guzzi" consumerish trappings. This work is a success at that, but it is not in any sense, biology.
