The eloquent voice of Rick Bass has been raised often in celebration and defense of America’s wilderness and wildlife. In Caribou Rising , Bass journeys to one of the sole remaining landscapes on Earth where the wild is entirely untrammeled—Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, where great caribou herds gather, calve, and migrate, and where the ancient bond between animals and human hunters still informs daily life. As the Bush administration was pressuring Congress to open the Refuge to oil drilling, Bass traveled to Arctic Village to join the native Gwich-‘in in their annual caribou hunt. He wanted to witness and report on what we all stand to lose if that comes to pass. Caribou Rising details Bass’s time hunting as well as talking with the Gwich-‘in and their leaders, and offers his reflections on the profound differences between that culture and our own, and on the ancient physical and spiritual connection between the Gwich-‘in and the caribou. Those who read this extraordinary testament to the Refuge, the caribou, and the Gwich-‘in will come to appreciate the interconnectedness of all three, and cannot help but be inspired to make a stand in their defense. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, where corporate and governmental interests want to drill for oil, is the homeland of the Gwich'in, "people of the caribou," a group that has lived on this harsh land and hunted its animals for 20,000 years, making the ongoing debate over the preservation of the refuge as much a human rights issue as an environmental concern. Bass, a well-known, profoundly expressive writer, traveled to Arctic Village to get a sense of what's at stake. He couldn't be a better emissary. Not only is Bass a hunter and a lover of pristine terrains, he has also worked as an oil and gas geologist. In his knowledgeable, impassioned, and involving inquiry, he describes the stark beauty of the tundra (home to numerous animal species), profiles savvy and resilient individuals determined to protect the Gwich'in way of life, and explains the damage done by oil-drilling operations. Ultimately, Bass asks, which is worth more to humankind, an insignificant amount of oil (more could be conserved with improved fuel economy standards) or an ancient culture and a glorious ecosystem? Donna Seaman Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved "Rick Bass says we must not destroy an ancient culture and another ecosystem for petroleum. Simple as that. Caribou Rising is a great read and utterly compelling in its reasoning. Bravo!"--William Kittredge, author of The Nature of Generosity and The Best Short Stories of William Kittredge "Rick Bass, the gifted novelist and our most prolific western conservation writer, turns his keen hunter's eye to the besieged caribou land of the Gwich-'in--the Brooks Range and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. As an ex-gas and oil geologist, Bass argues with logic and passion, blasting away at the ignorance and greed of the Bush Administration's misled campaign to open the refuge to drilling."--Doug Peacock, author of Grizzly Years and inspiration for the rabble-rousing Hayduke in The Monkey Wrench Gang Rick Bass is the author of eighteen books of fiction and nonfiction, including The Ninemile Wolves, The Hermit’s Story, Colter: The True Story of the Best Dog I Ever Had, Winter: Notes from Montana, and The Book of Yaak. He is also the editor of an anthology, The Roadless Yaak Valley, one of the wildest and most biologically diverse landscapes in the northern Rockies. "This place at the top of the world . . . is, in both a scientific and spiritual sense, the place where the Porcupine caribou keep coming into the world, year after year . . . coming into the Gwich- in world again and again, as if issuing forth not so much from that one secret cleft formed by the base of the magnificent Brooks Range, and the edge of the Beaufort Sea ice cap, and the lichen-furzed sheet of tundra, but instead as if coming up through some vent or shaft or sacred bore-hole below: caribou rising vertically from that lower world like a blessing. . . . It is this bounty that has shaped the Gwich- in into what they are, as surely as landscape and the animal of time shape anything." Used Book in Good Condition