The Spirited Review - Wild to the Heart

Wild to the Heart by Rick Bass

Some people, I have been given to understand, do not feel a strong tie with any one place. For them, there is no specific terrain that defines their inner landscape; instead, they are simply more or less adaptable to any particular environment. I won't pretend that I understand -- I don't. What I understand is about knowing and loving a place so dearly that it defines your imagination and your hopes, that it shapes your heart whether you are in its presence or not. Perhaps that is why I appreciate Wild to the Heart, Rick Bass' exploration of what it means to live away from his own personal wilderness -- in his case, working in Jackson, Mississippi while his heart beats on without him in the western mountains.

Bass is already at escape velocity when the book begins, driving out and away from the south, and then as he piles up a mountain in the Pecos Wilderness Area to spend two nights in the peaks before rushing frantically back to despised Jackson. He describes his own beloved mountains, that "no one should live to be eighteen without seeing," and as he writes, you can almost feel the high country air that intoxicates him over and again and binds his passion to a place.

But over time, Bass grows also into the southlands. He makes friends, he matures, his pace decelerates until he can immerse himself in the landscape around him. He sets down roots, undeniably temporary but also real. He comes to hear the voices of the rivers, of small wet canyons, of lazy lakes rich with fish. He begins to see the south on its own terms, rather than a place of not-being, for not being the land of his heart. While never turning his back on the place that carries him, Bass learns to live in the land where he resides, and maybe even to love it a little. He commits to staying until he understands the south well enough that he can say that it didn't rout him, until the running is only running forward and not running away, and in doing so, he learns something about the meaning of the wild -- something that possibly the high mountain perfection would not have taught him on its own.

If you have ever loved a place and been parted from it, if you have ever suffered stares from acquaintances who couldn't understand how you could be so enamored of a place, if you have ever struggled with yourself, trying to tame what is restless or quiet the voice that shouted for home, you ought to read Wild to the Heart. If you have tried to live well in a place that does not sound the depths of your existence, it is good to hear that it is not betrayal to let some shallow roots grow; we do, after all, have to live wherever we are, and I do not believe that one place will begrudge us our affection for another. And for those of us who are indeed less adaptable, bound by and to a place, it is reassuring to know that even if we are simply mad for the land after all, at least we are in good company. Wild to the heart.

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