Time and Tilt

It was Eugene Peterson, translator of the popular “Message” paraphrase of the Bible, who introduced me to a man named Rick Bass. Rick is a writer, former geologist, and an environmentalist. A child of Texas and a product of that state’s oil fields, Bass now actively works to protect the Yaak Valley, a wild, pristine wilderness in northwest Montana not too far from his adopted home of Missoula.

The Yaak, as it is usually shortened, is as rugged and remote as any place in North America, and beautifully so. It’s as if the landscape has gone remarkably undisturbed since the last Ice Age. It’s that Age, with its powerful and pulverizing glaciers, that intrigues Rick Bass.

It used to be, the former Texan says, that whenever he was confronted with a difficult task, he imagined that it was like a building project: Lay a foundation, drive a few nails, stack…