Rating: 
Summary: Winter...It takes Me Back...
Review: "Winter"...It takes me back...
Spent half a year (winter) taking care of one of the wonderful characters pictured in prose so well in this book.
Was hard not at all to close my eyes and find me back at The
Dirty Shame doing my laundry and talking with Donna and Rick
while feeding quarters into the poker machines.
This book makes it so easy to remember the beautiful scenery,
the deer who outnumbered us humans X100,the birds and just the
very excitement in getting up each morning...the very smell of the fresh air with a slight hint of woodsmoke.
For anyone just looking for a Good Book...a nice easy read that can prompt your mind to return to your own personnal unique world... "Winter" will take you back there...
I believe everyone has their own" personal place" and I thank Mr Bass for sharing the Yaak and hope it helps others return
to theirs.
Rating:
Summary: Of all of Rick Bass's books, this is the best I have read.
Review: Bass paints a hauntingly beautiful picture of winter in a rural place. Reading it again has made me look at the skies over Vermont and pray for the first flakes to fall to crush the opressive heat of summer. He details a lifestyle that is light on the land, and worth emulating. I intend to read this book again and again.
Rating:
Summary: Winter--more than Firewood!
Review: Call of the Wild Book Review-Winter: Notes from Montana by Rick BassCheryl Rife Rick Bass's book Winter is a journal about his experiences in the remote Yaak Valley, one of the last valleys in the Montana wilderness without electricity. In his writing, Bass describes his life and experiences during his first winter in this northwest corner of Montana bordering Idaho and Canada. With careful detail and descript feeling, he explains how he and his friend Elizabeth Hughes find themselves in the solitude of the wilderness. From the beginning one experiences the joy and luck both Bass and Hughes feel in being able to "caretake" a property in an isolated lodge-linked to civilization by a dirt road and two-way radio. Unlike a story that might be dramatic in its detail of such an adventure, Winter is a slow-moving, simple description of the daily activities that consume the thirty or so people that live in the Yaak Valley. Bass, intent on spending his time writing, recognizes that his ability to survive the winter here will be what allows him to be accepted by the valley people. He describes the life of solitude and nature that surrounds him in easy, straightforward detail-from the animals in the forest to the people at the Dirty Shame tavern. One of the things I enjoyed most about the book is the way Bass allows you as a reader to get to know the people he encounters. The men and women he describes show real personalities; they are not worried about acceptance or impressions. Likewise the relationships he forms seem uncomplicated and connected on a very basic level-sharing and understanding their need to be together as well as their need to be completely alone. One of my particular favorites was Breitenstein, a crusty character that Bass holds in high esteem. He describes his ranch "an oasis of control, of order, in the wilderness." A relationship develops between the two men as each learns to respect the other. Bass definitely learned many lessons on survival in the Yaak Valley from Breitenstein. Also as I read, I did find myself thinking about Hughes. One criticism I have is that I would have liked Bass to write more about her. The only time he really went into much detail was when she caught her robe on fire as she stood too close to the fire! Throughout his journal, Bass shares his necessary obsession with cutting firewood for the winter. While this is certainly important to survival over the winter, there are times in reading when I was tired of more talk of chain saws and woodcutting and hauling! In retrospect however, I think this obsessive accounting is reflective of the power of a survival instinct that is reborn for Bass. Truly there are few experiences in our modern world that link hard physical work so directly to one's survival. The intensity of that feeling is felt throughout in the whole "mood" of the book. There isn't a need to spin elaborate tales but rather to understand the "life" in each day. As Bass accounts his day to day activities one becomes enticed by the slow moving, spiritual-ness of the simple pleasures he experiences-from watching snow fall to following the path of an elk with his snowshoes. It is obvious that Bass is in a remote place that suits him completely (even though there are several time that he mentions the need to be connected to others and does travel to be with family and friends.) On October 27 he writes: "I'm falling away from the human race. I don't mean to sound churlish-but I'm liking it (p.73)." In much of the first part of the book, Bass accounts the anticipation of winter and the arrival of snow. At first I found myself wondering-what is going to happen when the snow falls! Once the snow arrived though I got the impression that it was the final "approval" that Bass has needed to commit to winter in the Yaak Valley. In continuing through the daily entries I realized the snow had an important impact on him. On November 24 Bass writes: "In cities I feel weak and wasted away, but out in the field, in snow, I am like an animal-not in control of my emotions, my happiness and furies, but in charge of loving the snow, standing with my arms spread out, as if calling it down...I am never going to grow old. The more that comes down, the richer I am (p. 90)." There are several times throughout the book that Bass gives the impression he would like winter to go on and on! Winter is truly a call to look at "solitude" and "time" in our life. We can learn from Bass's account-lessons that calm the soul-lessons that take us to a new level of discovery about ourselves...and yet a level that we know well if we allow ourselves to experience it. Its simplicity is powerful and comforting. Winter is a book I will read and reread.
Rating: 
Summary: A Moron In Nature
Review: Everything you need to know about this book can be summed up in the following: This writer, a supposed environmentalist from Texas, who spends most of the book complaining about loss of forest and pollution, nevertheless spends most of his winter cutting wood with a chainsaw so that he can heat his greenhouse until it's sweating hot -- like the land he left to come up north -- and exercise while he stares out at the snow. This is a textbook of how to be both smug and oblivious, how NOT to approach nature. I wonder whether he even realizes how stupid, self-righteous, and hypocritical he sounds in this.
Rating:
Summary: The Best of Rick Bass
Review: I have read 3 other of his books and this one is the best yet. It gives a great flowing story of spending a winter in Montana. I especially like the fact that he didn't go on and on about preservation. I like the fact that he raises awareness, but too often does it become dry.
Rating: 
Summary: Short Book
Review: I read this book during my first winter in Colorado which, having moved here from Arizona, has also been my first real winter ever. "Winter covers some things and reveals others" (p. 162), Rick Bass observes in his journal, which recounts the first winter he spent with his artist girlfriend, Elizabeth Hughes, without electricity, phones, or paved roads in Yaak Valley, Montana. In his 162-page "journal of winter, a journal of peace" (p. 28), Bass also discovers that winter has the power to transform. After "floundering for thirty years trying to figure this out, trying to get along in cities, trying to move fast," Bass encounters the "deep, dark woods," and the "quietness, a slowness" of winter (p. 161), which causes a change of seasons in his own heart. Except for a only handful of neighbors, and the "no glitter, no makeup" (p. 77) regulars at the Dirty Shame tavern, Bass shares his "wild, magical valley" (p. 3) with grizzly bears, grouse, moose, mule deer, elk, porcupines, ducks, geese, owls, rabbits, mountain lions, bobcats, black bears, coyotes, gray wolves, badgers, martens, fishers, wolverines, lots of snow, and silence. "We had never felt such magic" (p. 5), Bass writes. "This valley shakes with mystery, with beauty, with secrets" (p. 61). WINTER is to Rick Bass what DESERT SOLITAIRE is to Ed Abbey. Drawn from journals, both books address the important question of why wilderness is essential to man. G. Merritt
Rating:
Summary: Winter solitaire.
Review: I read this book during my first winter in Colorado which, having moved here from Arizona, has also been my first real winter ever. "Winter covers some things and reveals others" (p. 162), Rick Bass observes in his journal, which recounts the first winter he spent with his artist girlfriend, Elizabeth Hughes, without electricity, phones, or paved roads in Yaak Valley, Montana. In his 162-page "journal of winter, a journal of peace" (p. 28), Bass also discovers that winter has the power to transform. After "floundering for thirty years trying to figure this out, trying to get along in cities, trying to move fast," Bass encounters the "deep, dark woods," and the "quietness, a slowness" of winter (p. 161), which causes a change of seasons in his own heart. Except for a only handful of neighbors, and the "no glitter, no makeup" (p. 77) regulars at the Dirty Shame tavern, Bass shares his "wild, magical valley" (p. 3) with grizzly bears, grouse, moose, mule deer, elk, porcupines, ducks, geese, owls, rabbits, mountain lions, bobcats, black bears, coyotes, gray wolves, badgers, martens, fishers, wolverines, lots of snow, and silence. "We had never felt such magic" (p. 5), Bass writes. "This valley shakes with mystery, with beauty, with secrets" (p. 61). WINTER is to Rick Bass what DESERT SOLITAIRE is to Ed Abbey. Drawn from journals, both books address the important question of why wilderness is essential to man. G. Merritt
Rating:
Summary: captures exactly the feel of the yaak
Review: I read this book while living in Texas. I later moved to near the yaak. This book is written diary stylebut if you can overlook that its a real good read. It is fun to read if only a bit too obsessed with firewood . Go to the Dirty Shame in the yaak and say hello to willie and rick. it will make you want to go there
Rating:
Summary: A Moron In Nature
Review: I'm not a fan of memoir so first off, this isn't. "Winter" focuses on one season in the real life of the writer as he struggles with home life in rural Montana. Compact and clear, the stories Bass tells leave images that linger in my mind even years after I first read the book. A nice diversion if you're stuck in a hot climate and want a quick escape, if you're stuck in the city and want a view of the American West, or if you're just looking for a well-written glimpse at life.
Rating:
Summary: Images Linger
Review: I'm not a fan of memoir so first off, this isn't. "Winter" focuses on one season in the real life of the writer as he struggles with home life in rural Montana. Compact and clear, the stories Bass tells leave images that linger in my mind even years after I first read the book. A nice diversion if you're stuck in a hot climate and want a quick escape, if you're stuck in the city and want a view of the American West, or if you're just looking for a well-written glimpse at life.
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