Living on the Northwest frontier in the age of railroad expansion, Grainier experiences firsthand the collision between the vast expanse of wilderness and the promise of progress through technology. This ultimately results in the erosion of the natural world, and the novel explores this tension between industrial progress and the environment through the Spokane International Railway, Grainier’s clinging to the past, and the howl of the wolf-boy in the theater.

Working construction for the Spokane International Railway, Grainier experiences conflicting emotions that exemplify this tension. After they finish a job, “the first locomotive crossed the 112-foot interval of air over the 60-foot-deep gorge, traveling on the bridge they’d made […] The men cheered and whooped. Grainier felt sad. He couldn’t think why. He cheered and hollered too” (11-12). This industrial progress—a bridge strong enough to bear a train—has conquered the seemingly impossible, but at the expense of the gorge’s natural beauty. When Grainier inexplicably feels sad, he subconsciously mourns the loss that accompanies technological progress. However, he is also excited about the feat. The idea of industry “winning out” over nature is evident again when the machinery used in logging is described: “The engine was an old wood-burning steam colossus throbbing and booming and groaning while its vapors roared like a falls, the horses over on the skid road moving gigantically in a kind of silence, their noises erased by the commotion of steam and machinery” (13).