Environmentalist relates personal tales for NE event
by Janet Chang
reporter

   “This is a big thing. Usually the place where a person is born doesn’t care much about him or her,” an environmentalist told students at the NE Campus celebration of Living Literature.
   Rick Bass returned to his hometown to read from his collection of stories, The Hermit’s Story, last week.
   For the event sponsored by NE student activities and English department, he selected a story in which the hazardous life of a firefighter affects his marriage and his attitudes about life.
   The story was filled with the details of firefighting, such as advice to exit a building when the earlobes start to tingle because they are the most temperature-sensitive part of the body.
   Bass said that he prepared to write the story by suiting up and going to fires along with volunteer firemen.
   Describing the hero of the story, Bass said that firefighters are real people with real weaknesses.
   “ There are no real rescuers,” he said.
   After the reading, Bass took questions from the audience. Many dealt with the writing process. When writing, Bass said he draws from reality and imagination, which can create some problems.
   “ I can never remember what parts I saw and what I made up, so I have to rely on others for verification,” he said.
   Bass told one student he has only recently experienced writer’s block.
   “ Never had it till this year. It’s no great loss,” he said.
   Bass explained that he does not worry about the inability to write, in itself, but about the situation that is causing the writer’s block.
   Some students asked about the mechanics of writing, such as the use of forms of the verb to be.
   “ Don’t worry about it in your drafts. Get your emotions down and then go through and beef it up with action verbs,” He advised.
   Born in Fort Worth and raised in Houston, Bass was a petroleum geologist in Mississippi and studied wildlife science in Utah before settling in Montana’s Yaak Mountains.
   Although many students came to hear his fiction, Bass also answered questions about his concern for the Yaak, which he says “still retains most of its bio-integrity.”
   Bass said he is now committed to protecting the area, but finds that it is tough to get the 150 residents to agree.
   “ Grizzlies and blizzards are the easy part,” he said.
   Bass described the Yaak as a unique ecosystem, the overlapping of two habitats, creating a land in which things come in twos: “fire and rot, the lynx and the bobcat, both the bald and the golden eagles.”
   Bass thinks tapping into the strategic petroleum reserve is still a good idea, but it tends to be used by both sides as a political adjuster and to influence prices.
   The activist life, Bass said, was not in his original plans.
   “ I didn’t start out in life thinking I was going to be hated,” he said.
   Some people, Bass said, fear that the protection of areas of wilderness will mean someone will take away their guns.
   Bass said that even though he used to think he would always be a writer, he is being shaped by the land.
   “ I have seen cities,” he said, “and I am not a hick, but I am a hick.”
   He said he redefines himself again and again, about every seven years, but his love of the land does not change.
   “ You want to relate to the land in every way you know how,” he said.
   Bass said his writing unconsciously, rather than by design, reflects the coloration of the land he inhabits: yellow and green when he lived in Mississippi, blue and white in the Yaak.
   Bass said that although he loves to write fiction, he does not think of himself as a writer much anymore.
   “ Writing is the most normal and least interesting thing I do,” he said.
   According to Bass, his creative writing output now consists of a short story every two years.
   He told his audience that good writing has three elements.
   “ Specificity, metaphor and voice are needed, and you’re home free—forget about the plot.”
   Discussing a writer’s background knowledge, he said the writer should also write when he does not know everything and has to use imagination.
   “ You need to feel deeply about a place to write on it. You don’t have to know all about it,” he said. “Now that I know more, writing consists more of observation and analysis.”
   Bass said that he is learning that activism and writing are not really complimentary activities.
   “ An activist already knows what he wants, but a writer wants to convey feelings and through the creative process finds out what he wants,” the author said.
   Bass said he has found that the manipulative thinking required to write on issues affects one’s art.
   “ It fries your brain,” he said.
   Bass reflected on why he has chosen to be an activist.
   “ The gratification from activism is a lot more than from doing something that is easy,” he said.
   Bass said that it took him 14 years to write his only novel.
   “ What I’m proud of is the process and not the book,” he said.
   He added that he still has goals as a writer.
   “ I’d like to write a novel,” he said. “To me a great novel is the gold standard in literature.”