From Publishers Weekly
In the summer of 1987, nature writer Bass stumbled into the Yaak Valley in northwestern Montana and fell in love. A native of Houston, Bass worked as a geologist in Mississippi before heading west to find his home and his vocation as a writer. Over the years, Bass became increasingly drawn into the struggle to preserve the valley from logging and development, especially those areas that have yet to be marked by roads. This, his newest title, is a memoir in name only. Eight of the 13 chapters have appeared elsewhere in various forms, and each chapter stands more or less as a discrete essay. Actual biographical material is scant and often repeated, and his main points recur (the need to protect wilderness; the twofold nature of his beloved valley, its biological diversity and human venality and short-sightedness, for example). The book reads best as a series of variations on the theme of how our relation to the wilderness is essential to our being human. Bass is an eloquent defender of his precious valley.
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Review
In the summer of 1987, nature writer Bass stumbled into the Yaak Valley in northwestern Montana and fell in love. A native of Houston, Bass worked as a geologist in Mississippi before heading west to find his home and his vocation as a writer. Over the years, Bass became increasingly drawn into the struggle to preserve the valley from logging and development, especially those areas that have yet to be marked by roads. This, his newest title, is a memoir in name only. Eight of the 13 chapters have appeared elsewhere in various forms, and each chapter stands more or less as a discrete essay. Actual biographical material is scant and often repeated, and his main points recur (the need to protect wilderness; the twofold nature of his beloved valley, its biological diversity and human venality and short-sightedness, for example). The book reads best as a series of variations on the theme of how our relation to the wilderness is essential to our being human. Bass is an eloquent defender of his precious valley. (
Publishers Weekly )
The title of this memoir is somewhat misleading: despite early chapters on Bass’s journey from his childhood home, in Texas, and his years as an oil geologist in Mississippi, much of the book is a lament over the relentless development of the wild spaces of Montana—specifically, the Yaak Valley, where the author has lived for twenty-one years. Bass describes the forests of this Edenic valley (literally—it’s a place where no native species has gone extinct) and argues for its preservation, laying out detailed plans for creating economically viable tracts of wilderness. Bass’s passion has an unfortunate tendency to slide toward petulance—he bemoans the boorishness of his neighbors—but his loving evocation of the landscapes is stirring, as is his common-sense approach to conservation. (
The New Yorker )
