A Literary Revolt Along the Northwest Passage Scenic Byway

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Link to December 12 New York Times article, "Along a Course of Purling Rivers, a Raw Divide".

Excerpt:   The facility in Alberta that the modules will part of is an $8 billion project that will process oil from Canada’s tar sands, a giant open pit that is swallowing up huge areas. The equipment is made in Korea and shipped to Lewiston, Idaho. The easiest route from there to Alberta is over 1,300 miles through Idaho and into Montana, crossing the wild, forested spine of the Rockies on serpentine two-lane roads. The alternative, the company says, is to ship through the Panama Canal and up the Mississippi.

Ms. [Annick] Smith and other writers are bringing their literary weight to fight the project, using the mythos of America’s wildest trout streams, especially the Blackfoot River, the setting for Mr. Maclean’s novel.

David James Duncan and Rick Bass, acclaimed writers on the wilderness and rivers, live near Missoula and have each set aside a novel to work on a cri de coeur modeled, they say, after the 1941 book “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men” by James Agee and Walker Evans. Proceeds from their book, called “Heart of the Monster” after a Nez Perce Indian story, will go to All Against the Haul, an advocacy group.

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