The Book of Yaak

Rick Bass lives in the Yaak Valley of northwest Montana. He wasn't born there, but he came to love the place and has made it his home. The people of the valley make a small, isolated community, with only weak versions of the infrastructure most Americans expect such as roads, telephone service, and shopping opportunities. This book is a collection of essays, as short as one page long, talking about the Yaak. They are presented in no particular order that I could determine, but that's OK - - Bass doesn't really write essays, he writes poems that look like essays. The chapters provide lyrical accounts of his love of the valley, daily life there, political activism on its behalf, and the friendships he has in the valley. There are encounters with grizzly bears and politicians, the deaths and illnesses of friends, adventures with a fishing guide, and the pleasures of waiting for the mail. I find it difficult to describe the book further. Like the Yaak, it is, and it is good that it is.

I first came across Rick Bass in the very readable collection "Big Sky Reader." His essay there about accompanying a friend on a fishing trip with several out-of-state fishermen was an enjoyable glimpse into the lives of folks in the thinly populated woods of the far northwestern corner of Montana. It's a self-sufficient kind of life, where people make do with few amenities in exchange for the beauty and solitude of the mountains and the isolation that comes with many months of snow and cold.That essay, "This Savage Land," appears in this collection of the author's nonfiction. However, instead of the self-effacing, quiet humor of that essay, the rest of this book is a poignant account of an apparently doomed effort to preserve the Yaak River valley as a wilderness and bring a stop to the clear-cut logging that has been steadily turning it into a vast area of devastation. Chapters describing the author's letter-writing campaigns and his trip to Washington DC to make his case before Montana's congressmen alternate with descriptions of walks on the mountains, sighting bears and other wildlife, discoursing on the delicately interrelated flora and fauna, and admiring what is left of the old growth forests. There's also a chapter on the experience of the winter months and another on a summer of fires in the mountains and the role that fire plays in the regeneration and preservation of forests.Through it all are the themes of loss and the ruinous harm of the logging industry, which he believes is not simply destroying a wilderness area but removing a critical link connecting regions where grizzlies, wolves, and other forms of wilderness wildlife still survive. When that connection is gone, he believes that these creatures will quickly die out. Meanwhile, the poet in him believes that something also dies within humankind when the wilderness is gone, and he reminds us that once it's gone it will be gone forever.I recommend this book to anyone interested in the mountainous West, nature writing, and the lives of people in sparsely populated and isolated areas. It's also a book for those whose hearts respond to the call of the wild and who are concerned by the destruction of national forests by the heedless economics of the logging industry and its strangle-hold in government and other seats of power.

I do alot of reading of Conservation related issues and I like the fresh and crisp approach Rick Bass used in waking up the frontier spirit that is in all Americans. Paul Schultz

Rick Bass has a knack for going far beyond the traditional environmentalist arguments about biodiversity and global warming, arguments that have fallen on deaf ears for the past thirty-plus years in this country. In his moving story of the Yaak Valley in northwestern Montana, he does touch on these subjects--the economic and other reasons why the Yaak should be protected from out-of-state corporate interests--but his story is more far-reaching than that. He understands that the value of a forest extends to something less tangible than economics, and he says it as well as any other living writer. His discussion of the correspondences he's had with the Montana Congressional delegation is entertaining and poignant, and his descriptions of natural scenes are visceral and succinct. At times his tone is like that of fellow naturalist Doug Peacock, but his skill with words is far greater. Bass gets a lot of bang out of few words. You'll come away feeling like writing to your Congresspeople. A beautiful and passionate account.

Rick Bass bares his deepest feelings about the forest where he lives in northwest Montana. This book is a collection of personal essays, some are straight forward pleas for the reader to take action, that show how important it is to to save the remaining ancient forests, not only in Montana, but anywhere. Other essays describe his experiences with the local people, wildlife, and the forest. Collectively, they all help us to understand the importance of saving our forests from the destructiveness of poor logging practices. Rick's passion for the forest comes through loud and clear. After reading the book, you'll be moved to write your congressperson