Why I Came West [Paperback]

Rick Bass (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 8, 2009

In this searching memoir, Rick Bass describes how he first fell in love with theWest — as a landscape, an idea, and a way of life. Bass grew up in the suburban sprawl of Houston, attended college in Utah, and spent eight years working as a geologist in Mississippi before packing up and heading west in pursuit of something visceral and true. He found it in the remote Yaak Valley of northwestern Montana, where despite extensive logging, not a single species has gone extinct since the last Ice Age.

 

Bass has lived in the Yaak ever since, a place of mountains, outlaws, and continual rebirth that transformed him into the writer, hunter, and activist that he is today. The West Bass found is also home to deep-rooted philosophical conflicts that set neighbor against neighbor — disputes that Bass has joined reluctantly, but necessarily, to defend and preserve the wilderness that he loves.

Editorial Reviews

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. (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From The New Yorker

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.
Copyright ©2008Click here to subscribe to The New Yorker --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books; Reprint edition (July 8, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0547237715
• ISBN-13: 978-0547237718
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,133,029 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good old Yaak - but same old Yaak, August 3, 2008

By 

T. Ahrenholz "Thom Ahrenholz" (Asheville, NC) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Why I Came West: A Memoir (Hardcover)

I have been a big Rick Bass fan for many years. I enjoy his non-fiction and I revere his efforts to preserve the wilderness areas of his adopted corner of Montana. However, I simply take issue with this book about how misleading the title and liner notes are about its major content. Why I Came West? There is a little about that. And there is some solid thought and writing here. Good writing. But the vast majority of this book is an update (and revision) of his efforts to obtain Wilderness designation for the Yaak since he moved West. It could more correctly be titled Book of Yaak II, or better yet, Book of Yaak Revised. There are large portions of this book that seem to be a letter to his neighbors correcting or updating his true views on Wilderness and logging and even a weak attempt to discourage outsiders from wanting to see the Yaak as a destination, as if he has drawn ire from fellow Yaakians for the notoriety he has brought the area. But his love for the area easily diminishes any intended effect.

As a reader, I want a fair chance to choose what I am reading. I couldn't help feel throughout most of this read, that I was erroneously lured into the prospect of some new and different writing by Mr. Bass - but instead was being given the same whine in a different bottle.

Having said that, I will still look forward to his new efforts both in regard to conservation as well as writing.

... and I mistakenly put 4 stars on this review and couldn't figure out how to edit that. Two and a half would have been generous. TA

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Brutally honest meditations, January 12, 2009

By 

Arthur Digbee (Indianapolis, IN, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Why I Came West: A Memoir (Hardcover)

This book begins with why (or rather, *how*) Rick Bass came West, but then becomes something more. The first two chapters explore his love affair with the Yaak Valley. He wonders if one can fall in love at first sight with a place, and muses on how the Yaak drew him to her, among other things. The musings that overlapped with _The Book of Yaak_ I tended to enjoy, while the rest were too intimate, too personal to interest someone who doesn't know Bass personally.

The next chapters were the most interesting. Bass muses on "meat," "wood," "oil," and other things that he (and we) consume. He is brutally honest and self-critical in connecting his own consumption with the wider world's desire to extract resources from the Yaak. He also recognizes the human role in the food chain and other "natural" processes, as well as the right of humans, no less than other predators, to eat.

Finally, he reflects on his personal need to fight to preserve some part of the Yaak as wilderness, and he discusses the personal costs of his activism. The Yaak has a small human community, and apparently most of its members hate Bass for his activism. This was perhaps the most compelling part of the book.

While Bass reflects on his own compulsions and sins, every reader will reflect on her own. Read it if you can take it.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I will read the truth even if it's not candy coated., August 8, 2011

By 

G. C. Picchetti (Country Lost Face) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Why I Came West (Paperback)

The introduction is so hard to read I put the book down for a couple weeks. Then it's fun. Then it's deadly serious. Bass's activisim has almost cost him his life. His success has been hard fought for & not completely won. His writing is a bit to poetic for the normal reader. I am glad I read Why I came West. I firmly believe my fellow citizens & the government will not be satisfied until the world is cemented over.