鈥榃ilderness Tales鈥� unfolds short stories with a sense of place
No doubt anyone who enjoys camping out under the stars, hiking along trails through sylvan聽landscapes, or spending meditative time in places with more bears than people will likely have presentiments about a collection billed as 鈥渨ilderness tales.鈥�
Editor Diana Fuss moves beyond typical nature stories in the anthology 鈥淲ilderness Tales: Forty Stories of the North American Wild.鈥� She鈥檚 after bigger game: the short story genre itself. As she writes in the introduction, 鈥淚n the first half of the nineteenth century, the explosion of cheap, consumable, and transportable magazines and journals proved to be the perfect vehicles for generating and sustaining a literary form also new to the scene, the literary sketch or tale, soon known as the short story.鈥�
To demonstrate the evolution of the American short story, Fuss has collected 40 stories by famous and not-so-famous writers, beginning with Washington Irving鈥檚 鈥淩ip Van Winkle鈥� (1819) and ending 100 years later with Tommy Orange鈥檚 鈥淣ew Jesus鈥� (2019). This progression from Wilderness Gothic to the present-day dystopian climate fiction offers a highly eclectic rendering of the continent鈥檚 natural history.
Fuss鈥� choices can sometimes seem puzzling. The collection consists of many great stories, but the wilderness link in some of them is tenuous. Perhaps it has something to do with her definitions: 鈥溾�榃ild鈥� denotes unsettled terrains and their wildlife, while 鈥榳ilderness鈥� encompasses the changing stories we tell about them,鈥� she writes.
Laying aside preconceptions, however, and diving into the stories themselves 鈥� and there are just enough really fantastic ones to keep you reading 鈥� offers insights and rewards. These include classic tales such as 鈥淭o Build a Fire鈥� by Jack London and 鈥淭he Wolfer鈥� by Wallace Stegner 鈥� both certainly standard bearers of the wilderness-tale genre. And Ernest Hemingway鈥檚 鈥淏ig Two-Hearted River鈥� never fails to bathe the reader in an ambience of quietude, contentment, and meditation.
There are a few stories that surpass any expectations one may have regarding聽wilderness tales or short stories of any genre. 鈥淭rail鈥檚 End鈥� by Sigurd Olson is the story of a wounded buck told from the deer鈥檚 point of view. Readers travel to the Big Woods of northern Minnesota during hunting season, following the intrepid animal as he outruns, outsmarts, and outswims his human and canine pursuers. It鈥檚 a white-knuckler from start to finish.聽
Marjorie Pickthall鈥檚 鈥淭he Third Generation鈥� is a masterpiece of a tale that follows two men who, in their small canoe, set out across the western Canadian wilderness, through 鈥漷he endless chain of unknown and uncharted lakes鈥� with an old map in search of a mythical river. This short story, like a miniature 鈥淗eart of Darkness,鈥� poses poignant questions about North America鈥檚 past. As Fuss puts it, 鈥淯nique for its time, this story goes well beyond the typical expedition adventure narrative, instead raising meaningful and far-reaching questions of historical guilt and generational atonement by asking whether the sins of the fathers might yet be visited on their descendants.鈥澛�
Other stories are drawn from the cli-fi, bio-punk genre and are great fun to read. T. C. Boyle鈥檚 鈥淎fter the Plague鈥� is a three-ring circus of entertainment, depicting the misadventures of a schoolteacher on 鈥渟abbatical鈥� up in the High Sierras during a world-wide pandemic that kills off most of our species except for a few 鈥渨inners.鈥� I won鈥檛 ruin the ending. 鈥淭he Tamarisk Hunter鈥欌�櫬� by Paolo Bacigalupi is a walloping broadside against the dysfunctional management of water resources, particularly in California.
In the end, this collection of stories about the North American wilderness聽does offer serious cause for reflection about the state of our wilderness. As Fuss herself writes:聽鈥淲hen will the domain of the wild be beyond all possible recovery, and who will we be without聽it?鈥澛�
