Spring 2010
Memo to the Mountain Lion
Wallace Stegner
- In 1984, the author
Wallace Stegner was
asked by his good friend and fellow
conservationist Margaret Owings to write
on behalf of the California mountain lion.
Concerned about their loss of habitat and
the growing popularity of trophy hunting,
Owings and a small coalition were fighting
to convince the California state legislature
to ban taking mountain lions for sport. The
piece Stegner wrote helped garner public
support for the elegant, secretive cats.
- “Once, in every corner of this continent,
your passing could prickle the stillness
and bring every living thing to the alert.
But even then you were more felt than
seen. You were an imminence, a presence,
a crying in the night, pug tracks in the
dust of a trail. Solitary and shy, you lived
beyond, always beyond. Your comings
and goings defined the boundaries of the
unpeopled.”
- –From “Memo to the Mountain Lion”
by Wallace Stegner
Q & A with Mike Kutilek . . .
