One of finest evocations of life in Western America in recent memory... Powerful and profoundly moving.

We tell stories to talk out the trouble in our lives, trouble otherwise so often so unspeakable. It is one of our main ways of making our lives sensible. Trying to live without stories can make us crazy. They help us recognize what we believe to be most valuable in the world, and help us identify what we hold demonic.

The specific danger is us; we are rampant; this earth is our only friend; we are destroying it increment by increment at a horrific rate. We must understand that we can't buy it back.

Up there on Huckleberry Mountain, I couldn't sleep ... As the sky broke light over the peaks of Glacier, I found myself deeply moved by the view from our elevation - off west the lights of Montana, Hungry Horse, and Columbia Falls, and farmsteads along the northern edge of Flathead Lake, and back in the direction of sunrise the soft and misted valleys of the parklands, not an electric light showing: little enough to preserve for the wanderings of a great and sacred animal who can teach us, if nothing else, by his power and his dilemma, a little common humility.

Our old pilgrims believed stories in which the West was a promise, a place where decent people could escape the wreckage of failed lives and start over. Come along, the dream whispers, and you can have another chance. We still listen to promises in the wind. This time, we think, we’ll get it right.

We live in stories. What we are is stories. We do things because of what is called character, and our character is formed by the stories we learn to live in.

Writing is a funny business. You sit in your room and listen to voices and write everything down. What kind of a profession is that?