Wilderness Tales Forty Stories of the North American Wild

A dazzling collection of short stories about North American outdoor life—both classic and contemporary—from James Fenimore Cooper and Jack London to Margaret Atwood and Anthony Doerr and many more.

The North American landscape, in its rich and rugged variety, has inspired an equally wide and deep range of fiction over the past centuries. Diana Fuss has gathered a rich collection of timeless classics and contemporary discoveries summoning up our close and imagined encounters with all things wild.

From the nineteenth century’s Washington Irving (“Rip Van Winkle”) to the twenty-first century’s Ted Chiang (“The Great Silence”)—a panoramic view of wilderness fiction, from Gothic tales of mystery and suspense (“The Heroic Slave” by Frederick Douglass), to tales of danger and survival (“Walking Out” by David Quammen); from modern tales of retreat and solitude (“Happiness” by Ron Carlson), to never-before-told tales of our new reality—of environment and extinction (“the river” by adrienne maree brown): these are stories that reveal the many ways in which the American literary landscape has shaped—and is shaped by—our conceptions of the wild. 

Diana Fuss nimbly shows, in her introductory text and commentary throughout, the development of the wilderness story, from its emergence in the work of Nathaniel Hawthorne (“Young Goodman Brown”) and James Fenimore Cooper (“A Panther Tale”), to the height of its popularity in the stories of Jack London (“To Build a Fire”), to the environmentally conscious writing of T. C. Boyle (“After the Plague”) and Karen Russell (“St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves”).

Among those whose work appears in the collection: Wallace Stegner, Annie Proulx, Ambrose Bierce, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, L. Frank Baum, Margaret Atwood, Tommy Orange, Walter Van Tilburg Clark, and Ray Bradbury.

DIANA FUSS is the Louis W. Fairchild ’24 Professor of English at Princeton University where she has taught courses on fiction, film, poetry, philosophy, and pedagogy. Fuss received her PhD from Brown University. She grew up in Wisconsin and lives in Princeton, NJ. 

Introduction

Part 1 SUSPENSE AND TERROR
Washington Irving, “Rip Van Winkle” (1819)
Nathaniel Hawthorne, “Young Goodman Brown” (1835)
Frederick Douglass, “The Heroic Slave” (1853)
N. B. Young Jr., “Swamp Judgment” (1926)

Part 2 WOMEN AND PANTHERS
James Fenimore Cooper, “A Panther Tale” (1823)
Harriet Prescott Spofford, “Circumstance” (1860)
Ambrose Bierce, “The Eyes of the Panther” (1897)
Lauren Groff, “The Midnight Zone” (2016)

Part 3 FIRE AND ICE
Jack London, “To Build a Fire” (1908)
Charles G. D. Roberts, “The Vagrants of the Barren” (1908)
Howard O’Hagan, “Trees Are Lonely Company” (1958)
Wallace Stegner, “The Wolfer” (1959)

Part 4 ACCIDENT AND INJURY
David Quammen, “Walking Out” (1988)
Pam Houston, “Selway” (1992)
Gretel Ehrlich, “Pond Time” (1998)
Annie Proulx, “Testimony of the Donkey” (2008)

Part 5 CATCH AND RELEASE
Ernest Hemingway, “Big Two-Hearted River” (1925)
Robert Traver, “The Intruder” (1960)
Melinda Moustakis, “They Find the Drowned” (2011)
Wayne Karlin, “Memorial Days” (2020)

Part 6 HUNTER AND HUNTED
Sarah Orne Jewett, “A White Heron” (1886)
Sigurd Olson, “Trail’s End” (1933)
William Faulkner, “The Old People” (1940)
Anthony Doerr, “The Hunter’s Wife” (2001)

Part 7 MYTH AND MAGIC
L. Frank Baum, “The King of the Polar Bears” (1901)
Ohayohok, “A Human Kayak” (1940)
Jenny Leading Cloud, “ Spotted Eagle and Black Crow” (1967)
Karen Russell, “ St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves” (2006)
 
Part 8 PAST AND PRESENT
Marjorie Pickthall, “The Third Generation” (1918)
Walter Van Tilburg Clark, “ The Wind and the Snow of Winter” (1944)
Margaret Atwood, “Death by Landscape” (1989)
Ron Carlson, “Happiness” (2014)

Part 9 ENDANGERMENT AND EXTINCTION
Ray Bradbury, “The Fog Horn” (1951)
T. C. Boyle, “After the Plague” (1999)
Ted Chiang, “The Great Silence” (2015)
Lydia Millet, “Woodland” (2019)

Part 10 CLIMATES AND FUTURES
Juan Rulfo, “Luvina” (1953)
Paolo Bacigalupi, “The Tamarisk Hunter” (2006)
Adrienne maree brown, “the river” (2015)
Tommy Orange, “New Jesus” (2019)

Suggested Further Wilderness Reading
Suggested Further Story Reading
Acknowledgments