Caribou Rising: Defending the Porcupine Herd, Gwich-'in Culture, and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

"In Caribou Rising, Rick Bass journeys from his beloved Yaak Valley in Montana to Alaska, to witness firsthand one of the sole remaining landscapes on Earth where the wild is entirely untrammeled - America's Serengeti, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. It is a place where great caribou herds gather, calve, and migrate as they did in the Pleistocene, and where the ancient bond between animals and human hunters still informs daily life." "Bass's avid desire to meet this landscape and its native people, the Gwich-'in, had several sources. A hunter himself since childhood, he now pursues game with a primal passion coupled with an environmentalist's conscience, providing nearly all the meat his family consumes. He hoped to kill one caribou and bring home its meat. But the deeper intent of that act was to enter, even briefly, the experience of the Gwich-'in, who have been following, relying on, and praying to the caribou for 10,000 years, in a parallel relationship to that of the Plains tribes and the buffalo." "Waiting to travel upriver, Bass walks the land, talks to villagers about their lives, and interviews their leaders. He ponders the profound differences between this culture and ours: "the gunmetal hardness of their lives," their casual acceptance of physical risk, and their visceral knowledge that none can exist outside the community. And he reflects on the timeless dance of human, caribou, and land in this place."—Jacket.