Land is an ongoing theme in the stories and essays of Rick Bass. His characters fixate on what the land means to them, and Bass himself is worried about the fate of the Yaak Valley in Montana, where he has lived since at least 1992.

In “Winter: Notes from Montana,” Bass worked in the tradition of Thoreau, describing how it is to live less than 20 miles from the Canadian border, west of Glacier National Park. Wishing to confront the essentials of nature and self, those old bromides, he heads for the remotest place he can find - the Yaak Valley of Montana, with its 30 inhabitants and lack of electricity.

This journal focuses on his adaptation to the harsh climate, stressing his growing knowledge of backwoods skills and lore. Unfortunately, Bass rarely goes beyond recording daily tasks and encounters. He conveys little insight into the spiritual changes he is undergoing and has surprisingly little to say about the relation of man and nature, standard topics of books of this sort.

Bass expands upon his feelings about the valley of Yaak in his next book about the area, “The Book of Yaak,” written five years later. The book opens, “Yaak is the Kootenai word for arrow and it is the name of the valley where I live.” In it Bass has become defensive and argumentative about the changes that civilization has brought to this remote place. His tranquility expressed in “Winter” has been shattered with the intrusion of outsiders who want to put up palaces of ostentation where moose and wolves roam. Developers want to clear-cut the timber and build rural castles for those who can afford them. Bass' dismay is clear.

Rick Bass' stories reflect the same concern and anxieties about the land, but through his characters. “The Sky, The Stars, The Wilderness” has three stories that range geographically from the Appalachian Mountains to Texas to Alaska. “Where the Sea Used to Be” is about the exploration for oil in the Appalachians by two methods, one friendly to the land and one rapacious.

Wallis has the knack of finding oil where others have come up dry. Old Dudley, his estranged mentor, isn't interested in the people who are sitting on top of the potential oil. Wallis eventually finds a mountain woman who distracts him from his success for a while, but at the end of the story they are still together, Wallis is still finding oil in odd spots, and Old Dudley has become old and decrepit.

Bass likes full-bodied metaphors, what John Donne called conceits, an elaborate metaphor that transcends the simple simile, such as “he lived like a bear,” or a metaphor like “he was a bear of a man.” In describing the male in “The Myths of Bears” Bass gives him full bear characteristics. Trapper is protective of his territory, covered in hide and fur, and involved in a mating ritual that involves a chase over a full winter and across miles of terrain.

Judith, Trapper's quarry, prey and love, is outsized. She is six feet tall with size 13 shoes, so large she doesn't need snowshoes. She escapes from Trapper's cabin one January night, and the rest of the story is a chase, until Judith and Trapper fall back together, bear-like.

The demands of the land lie heavier in the title story. The sky and the stars are in Texas, and they look over 10,000 acres of wilderness in western Texas which the unnamed narrator's family has owned for at least three generations.

Her mother was buried in almost the exact middle, under an old oak tree on a bluff high above the west fork of the Nueces River. Bass describes the land so well that you can almost find the Prade Ranch on a map if you have one detailed enough.

The woman's family has kept the 10,000 acres together in spite of property taxes, drains to the artesian water supply, and the threat of exotic species, like cattle. The family puts up a fence to keep neighbors' cattle out.

They mourn the passage of buffalo. The last one in Texas was shot in 1885. As a child, the narrator caught dormant whippoorwills and tended to her grandfather. The Prade Ranch and the narrator's life is an homage to the past and what the land was like when Coronado came over the hill and left. The story is paean for a West that has almost disappeared.

It is obvious on what side of the debate for development in the west Rick Bass is on. How realistic he is, is not important in his stories. He is writing modern fables of times that never were or what he would like the west to be.

Bass has written over 16 books, ranging from a eulogy for his dog, Colter, to many collections of stories in a similar vein to “The Sky, The Stars, The Wilderness.” He is a staunch advocate of wildlife and stepping carefully on the land where we live.

Ralph Mohr taught English and Latin at Marshfield High School for 31 years. Retired, he is currently teaching Latin through CyberSchool. He welcomes comments and suggestions regarding the column at rmohr1565@charter.net.