A Society of Wolves by Rick McIntyre (review)

Reviews 183 Willa Cather and the parallels between Twain’s attitude toward Huck and Cather’s toward some of her heroes. And Quirk’s final essay, written for this volume, seeks to demonstrate that Twain’s novel resists ideology. As Quirk says, what to do with Jim—black and human—posed a problem for Twain. In fact, the last words that we think Twain contributed to the novel were the ones ending the “Sollerman” chapter about learning a “nigger to argue”: “so I quit.”This last short sentence, Quirk suggests, reveals Twain’s own frustration with a novel that took up many years of his life. Readers’ own frustrations and pleasures with this novel may surface when reading Quirk’s essays, the product of someone who is trying to “come to grips”with why this novel has gotten under his skin for so long. KIM MARTIN LONG Texas Woman’s University A Society of Wolves. By Rick McIntyre. (Stillwater, Minnesota: Voyageur Press, 1993.128 pages, $29.95.) Early on, Rick McIntyre chose to trade the emotional securities of family and permanent home for the migratory life of a park ranger. Since earning a master’s degree in forest management, McIntyre has spent fifteen summers under a naturalist’s hat at Denali in Alaska, another three at Glacier in Mon­ tana. He winters in Death Valley,Joshua Tree, Big Bend, and other such sunny natural preserves. Along the way, McIntyre has become a superb wildlife pho­ tographer and a keen natural historian, as attested by his first two books, Denali NationalPark: An Island in Time (Albion, 1986), and Grizzly Cub:Five Years in the Life ofa Bear (Alaska Northwest, 1990). McIntyre’s most recent work, A Society ofWolves, is an attractively designed photo volume. The substantial text ranges briskly through topics as varied as an overview of human perceptions of wolves, a poignant history of the western livestock industry’s ruthlessly successful war against predators, a chronicle of the recent return ofwolves to Glacier and (perhaps) Yellowstone, a candid look at the controversial Alaskan aerial wolf “control”program, and more. Throughout, it’s no secret where the author’s sentiments rest, and in the end, McIntyre—who can (but doesn’t) boast of more than five hundred wolf sightings—concludes: “I think Thoreau hit upon the ultimate reason to restore wolves to their rightful place in creation. Without wolves, we live in an emascu­ lated land. The only way we can truly experience ‘an entire heaven and an entire earth’is to bring the wolfback.” Had the text been illustrated exclusively with McIntyre’s artful scenes of wolves living free and, it appears, happy, in spectacular settings, this book would have been merely .. . well, interesting and beautiful. (The frontispiece, ‘The Limping Wolf from the East Fork Pack,” is among the most sublime nature 184 WesternAmerican Literature photographs ever composed.) But the volume’s ninety-one color plates are punctuated with twenty-six shocking black-and-white archival images from the purgative days, elevating A Society of Wolves to the level of an important and moving documentary.© by DAVID PETERSEN, 1994 SanJuan Mountains, Colorado Counting Sheep: Twenty Ways of Seeing Desert Bighorn. Edited by Gary Nabhan. (Tucson: University ofArizona Press, 1993. 261 pages, $29.95/$16.95.) With this collection of essays, editor Gary Nabhan takes the armchair naturalist into the heart ofthe Sonoran Desert for avariety ofencounters with a southwestern icon. Several contributions early on suggest that the mythic im­ portance of the desert bighorn transcends cultural and temporal boundaries. Sonoran Desert authorityJulian Hayden discusses pyramids ofsheep horns found in these desert borderlands aswell as piles of ash from cremated bighorn bones—the only known sites in North America where humans cremated non­ humans. These remains, evidence perhaps of rituals related to hunting, along with the indigenous myths, songs, and poems presented in this section, empha­ size the diverse cultural dimensions of desert bighorns. Honoring his pledge to celebrate a diversity of perspectives, editor Gary Nabhan moves on from indigenous cultures to the Boone and Crockett per­ spectives of outdoorsmen William Hornaday and Kermit Roosevelt. Despite the big-game bravado of their hunting exploits, both writers demonstrate a keen eye for...