Story Writers’ Imaginations Endangered

All the worthiest intentions in the world cannot produce superior fiction. This is the disappointing lesson to be learned from “Off the Beaten Path: Stories of Place,” a volume of short stories commissioned by the Nature Conservancy that includes contributions from Howard Norman, Annie Proulx, Barry Lopez, David James Duncan and others. The collection came about when, as the estimable conservation organization’s President John C. Sawhill writes in his preface, authors were asked “to visit a place where the Nature Conservancy works, or to let inspiration flow from a place ingrained in their souls, and to let their imaginations run wild.”

The task would seem gentle enough to activate a writer’s storytelling juices, yet judging from the results, the imagination does not respond well to even the gentlest of requests. While essays can rise to an assignment, the short story, as a genre, is much more recalcitrant. A short story is like a stubborn child who, asked to clean up his room, takes more toys off the shelf or finds a crayon and begins drawing. He may tidy up in time but seldom when he is asked.

Pleased though she was to receive a story commission, Barbara Kingsolver understands its problematic aspects. “I can’t, reliably, go to any particular place on this earth and come back with a story,” she acknowledges. Craftily writing an introductory essay instead, Kingsolver makes several observations about the importance of nature in life and in art. She calls living in proximity to nature a privilege. She honors the sound of silence. From a night sky she learns to imagine the infinite. “Wilderness . . .,” she says, “reminds us that our plans are small and somewhat absurd.”

A sense of human smallness against nature’s vastness runs through these stories and at least imbues the lives depicted with a pleasing sense of scale. In “Pond Time,” Gretel Ehrlich writes about a woman, Madeleine, who is obsessed with her dead husband’s former lover and the child the pair had together. She travels to Alaska in quest of this girl, now grown, but when her plane crashes and she and the pilot must survive the danger of cold, hunger and attack by bears, Madeleine’s sense of proportion changes. “The Yup’ik say it’s best not to brood,” the pilot tells her, “not to follow your mind too closely, not to turn bad thoughts inside.” Only in nature, it appears, can Madeleine learn such wisdom.

Similarly, in Howard Norman’s “The Chauffeur,” the chauffeur in question, Tuttle Albers, learns from a regular client, Mrs. Moro, about the deep connection a human being may feel to a wild place. All year long, Mrs. Moro hires Tuttle to drive her to Point Reyes National Seashore in Northern California, where she searches for the elusive white pelican. Nature serves as foundation, background and metaphor. In the foreground are Tuttle’s tender relationship with Mrs. Moro and his quirky love affair with Grey Zamarkis, a research zoologist. Mrs. Moro’s death divides Tuttle and Grey, though, and the story turns into a kind of allegory when a wounded white pelican flies into the back seat of Tuttle’s car. The pelican may or may not be Mrs. Moro’s ghost, but it infuses a haunting quality and causes the story to vibrate with mystery.

But most of the other stories fail to vibrate. In “Fiber,” Rick Bass makes a passionate argument for saving the Yaak Valley in northwest Montana. Other stories also make pleas for respecting endangered places, but polemics are the bullies of fiction: They drown out less aggressive voices, which generally have more stirring stories to tell. Sadly too few subtle voices speak out in this well-intentioned but uneven book.