The Book of Yaak by Rick Bass Page B

in winter the male deer will be worn out from the rigors of the breeding season, and that that is another of the selective advantages of antler-shedding that has been sculpted into the deer, over the aeons. And doubtless there are other reasons as well which we will never know: but every year the trails are out there, lined with the casting-off of things—signposts of trouble in the present, but signals also of hope for a future.

    There are times when I waver, when I think,
How foolish, how idealistic this is—a letter-writing campaign, like something one might do as a class project in the third grade. How totally inefficient, ineffective, in these days of corporate-owned politicians, and the corporations themselves so much more massive than ever.
The forest activist John Osborn has called money the "mother's milk" of western politics. (I don't understand why southern congressmen, in districts where trees are grown, indulge the massive subsidies made to the districts of western congressmen, where trees are liquidated and then the companies flee town; unless it is that the companies are so total now, so huge, that the timber companies have offices in both Georgia and Washington—in Arkansas as well as Oregon.) There are times when even the most idealistic among us must wonder, Are ideals even worth anything, any more?
    Despite your knowing better, you begin to dream of the quick fix. Such dreams are born of winter-tiredness—a thing we must always hold at arm's length, no matter how bad things get—no matter if they get even worse, as current trends suggest may happen.
    You tire of licking stamps and addressing envelopes—you tire of being voiceless. You notice that Boise Cascade, Plum Creek, Georgia Pacific, Potlatch, and Weyerhaeuser are active donors to the elected Congress; but then you notice that Microsoft is, too. What if the giants could be turned against one another? What if rather than continuously merging, they could be turned, like bulls with rings in their noses—or by idealism—to do good rather than such avaricious harm? What if Microsoft decided that the world needed a place like Yaak—not to visit so much as to just hold in one's mind? What if they, or someone as powerful—and their stockhold ers—decided that a thing did not have to be measurable to be valuable?
    These dreams are dangerous. In the end, the answers always return to the gruntwork, to the rolling up of one's sleeves; the redoubling, or tripling, of one's efforts. If letters cannot change things, then we're screwed anyway, so you might as well believe in them, and keep pushing, keep believing—please keep believing. But on a winter day, staring out the window at six feet of snow with more coming down, you cannot help but let your mind wander, and dream of being rescued, rather than rescuing yourself....

    What is the value of the imagination? We probably won't really know until it's gone: until everything has been either decided for us or taken from us; until disorder and fragmentation completes its destruction of our social and judicial systems, mirroring our destruction of the woods. We probably won't fully know the value of imagination, spontaneity and creativeness until they are relics or artifacts from a more indulgent, excessive—richer—time.
    The power of imagination is still rich in the Yaak. It is a force that is still intact in all of us. Whether in the pleasure, the anticipation, of looking forward to an evening's meal, or in the hand-to-hand wrestling of some great problem of the intellect—or in spiritual matters, or any matters—the tool of the imagination is still our greatest asset.
    It is no coincidence that the more timber we clearcut, the poorer the communities around these clearcuts become; and that the more mines we dig, the poorer we get. The last of the money goes somewhere but never to us, and in the end we have nothing, have less than nothing, for our