The Book of Yaak

Rating:
Summary: Activism and life in the Yaak
Review: A very well written glimpse of life in a wild valley in northwest Montana. Book is an account of some of author's experiences in the Yaak, but much of book focuses on author's lifelong struggle to fight against the destruction of his home. As other reviewers have noted, this book serves as a powerful motivator for activism in the service of our national forests and against the wasteful, short-sighted strategies of Forest Service timber management. Much of his points can be found in Sierra Club pamphlets (e.g., through the forest service, U.S. taxpayers lose millions of dollars annually to build roads to allow timber companies to clearcut forests, the profits go to stockholders and executives and local economies suffer, etc., etc.) but his prose makes it all seem fresh. I got as mad as the author. However, this book is far from an "eco-rant", it's a moving argument for the importance of a place and community and a call to end the disastrous economic practices of the timber industry. Bass argues for sensible logging that sustains communities.

Rating:
Summary: Activism and life in the Yaak
Review: A very well written glimpse of life in a wild valley in northwest Montana. Book is an account of some of author's experiences in the Yaak, but much of book focuses on author's lifelong struggle to fight against the destruction of his home. As other reviewers have noted, this book serves as a powerful motivator for activism in the service of our national forests and against the wasteful, short-sighted strategies of Forest Service timber management. Much of his points can be found in Sierra Club pamphlets (e.g., through the forest service, U.S. taxpayers lose millions of dollars annually to build roads to allow timber companies to clearcut forests, the profits go to stockholders and executives and local economies suffer, etc., etc.) but his prose makes it all seem fresh. I got as mad as the author. However, this book is far from an "eco-rant", it's a moving argument for the importance of a place and community and a call to end the disastrous economic practices of the timber industry. Bass argues for sensible logging that sustains communities.

Rating:
Summary: The True Wild
Review: I bought this book after visiting the Yaak. and loved the wonderful prose and the enormous feeling of the wilderness.

I loved the book, and recommend it highly -- it really focuses on the valuable resources we have but often don't appreciate.

Rating:
Summary: Review of "Winter" Notes of Montana
Review: 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

Rating:
Summary: Woodsman, spare that old growth. . .
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Woodsman, spare that old growth. . .
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: A plea to save our remaining ancient forests
Review: 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

Rating:
Summary: Not for the
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Don't Hack the Yaak
Review: Rick Bass has written a plea that is at times elegant and at other times shrill. The best writing in the book are the stories of long-time valley residents (both human and animal) trying to exist in a habitat that is shrinking in the hands of indifferent government and corporate stewards. Every 30-40 pages there is the ripe whiff of the holier-than-thou that usually occurs when a gifted writer transplants himself to the West and somehow comes to believe he is the only one who can truly interpret its significance. But this is possibly a quibble based on the prejudices in my head as a longtime Wyoming rancher. In any case, it's good to know that each member of the Congressional delegation received a copy of this book, although it's doubtful that Conrad Burns or Craig Thomas ever cracked the thing.