Wild to the Heart

by Rick Bass

[jamiereadthis]

If it’s wild to your own heart, protect it. Preserve it. Love it. And fight for it, and dedicate yourself to it, whether it’s a mountain range, your wife, your husband, or even (heaven forbid) your job. It doesn’t matter if it’s wild to anyone else: if it’s what makes your heart sing, if it’s what makes your days soar like a hawk in the summertime, then focus on it. Because for sure, it’s wild, and if it’s wild, it means you’re still free. No matter where you are. (“River People”)

I’m in the deep cuts here, and Rick Bass may have struck one of the most personal chords with me yet. The summer of 2008, after and during the hardest, most lost two years of my life I was house-sitting in (coincidence of all coincidences) Jackson, Mississippi. These thirteen essays— stunners, all— could be so strictly autobiographical, down to the very geography. My panic to escape the confines. Every day of that free summer spent just driving, driving, me and the sweet yellow dog into the middle of nowhere. The woods, the swamp, the Delta— flanked on either side like a hug with the Mississippi and Yazoo. In search of the wild, deep solitude. Figuring out what to fight for, what it would take to heal me up.

And now, five years later, I’m here. A Monday afternoon. My favorite secret swimming spot, swimming to exhaustion and then lying in the dirt in the sun. Reading this book whole in one afternoon. Every word of it after my own heart. I made it, trills deep down in my gut. I did it. I made it. I’m here.

(Plus, all of this is pre-Montana. You can see the love story coming. It’s not there yet! He doesn’t know!)