The Book of Yaak Read Online Free PDF

to make sure my saw's in the back of the truck, just in case I happen to come upon the mail lady, and just in case she needs my help.
    Even more anticipatory than wondering if the mail will come that day is awaiting the arrival of the UPS Man. His deliveries are less frequent. He usually brings books, which we open ravenously. He's got a 250-mile route, and our cabin is the last stop. Sometimes he'll stand around in the falling snow and chat, in no great rush to start that long drive back across the snowy pass at dusk.
    "I saw a mountain lion today," he might say, or, back when Mr. McIntire was still alive, "Today I delivered a package to the wagonmaster." (Most of the movie people live in other valleys, but we've always had the McIntires, since they came here over sixty years ago, just married. Mr. McIntire was, among other things, the wagonmaster on the 1960s television series
Wagon Train.)
    We stand there and talk, the UPS Man and I, as if to ward off the dusk, as if to hasten spring—and then he drives away, his big brown high-topped van swaying and slipping down the snow-crooked driveway, then disappearing into the falling snow.
    The Federal Express Guy is the rarest of all sightings. But reliable: he carries a chain saw. He's a big strapping young man, with arms like some kind of melons; if his van gets stuck in a drift or a ditch, he simply wades out into the snow and lifts it free. He's got the kind of build that old fogeys like to believe they used to have, back in their glory days, and the Federal Express Guy is often overly cheerful, refusing to match the frequent glooms and silences of the landscape. He drives up in a rush, sliding to a fishtailing stop much too close to our parked trucks. He hops out as if he's got a bomb, or a live animal, in his envelope, and rushes across the snow like a commando.
    But always, as with the others, he's welcome. And then he's off, in a rush.
    In winter the woods are alternately motionless and then busy. We sit and watch, and wait, for glimpses—just glimpses—of the rest of the world's strange fury and speed. The mail is just the right arm's length. We sit, and wait, and move slowly, at our own pace, and at winter's. It's not quite like hibernation, but almost. Voices of friends, family and strangers come to us like whispers, in the mail, or like echoes. There's time to think about what's being said, and what to say back. There's time for everything—no rush—all the time in the world. It's a little frightening, and a little reassuring, both. It's why we're here.

The Land That Congress Forgot
    S OME ANTHROPOLOGISTS SAY that our species began in the homeland of the forest before venturing out into the grassland, while others say we rose up in the savannah, and that we were then driven into the forests for sanctuary. I don't really care which version is accurate, for I like where I am now, and it makes me feel right. It used to bother me that I loved the deep forest more than the sylvan meadows. I would acknowledge that there was some familiar longing, some sparkling blood affinity, whenever I came upon some small opening in the woods, some place of light—but still, I love the symphony and magic of the deep woods best, and for a while this seemed to suggest to me—if the savannah anthropologists were correct—that I was a misanthrope, turning back and away from the human race; that I was more ape than man, and that I had shaken off old human loyalties.
    But the truth is the truth, and after a while it didn't matter.
    It is dark here and rains a lot and the trees are big and there are mysterious assemblages of animals, groupings and relationships found nowhere else in the world. It is my home and I do not think any longer I will rush out into the bright meadow, lemming-like.
    The Yaak Valley lies within Montana's northwestern boundaries like the corner of something—like the edge of all things, making the center of a new thing. If you were to