Customer Reviews

The Wild Marsh: Four Seasons at Home in Montana

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

In this book, Rick Bass chronicles the seasons in his beloved Yaak valley. He's partly motivated by a fear that the nature in which he loves will be destroyed all too soon, so that someone with an observant eye should write it all down for future generations.

While Bass observes nature in the Yaak as the year progresses, this isn't a Montanan version of the Sand County Almanac. He spends much more time on human interactions with the natural world. Some of this, he admits, is navel-gazing; but much of it just tells the story of a human community that lives close to nature - - gathering berries, chopping wood for fuel, relying on autumn hunts for meat. The bulk of the book lies in its longest chapters, which reflect very human concerns: April (rebirth), July and August (wildfires), and November (hunting season).

Bass also muses on many purely human issues that follow the rhythm of the seasons. He is middle-aged and aware of aging and his own eventual death. He has buried his mother, and some friends. He has two daughters representing the next generation. Like many parents, he worries about the world in which his daughters will live.

If you've already read some of Bass's books, much will be familiar. In this book, however, I wish he had edited himself more forcefully. The book seems much too close to its origins as journal, just reporting the thoughts of the day. It doesn't tighten up those thoughts, revisit them - - or, most importantly, decide which thoughts need to be deleted as not fitting the themes he wishes to emphasize.

This could have been an interesting answer to Sand County Almanac, emphasizing the human role in nature, and the way that a human community lives and loves in a wild place. But it sprawls too much in its present form, and has too much navel-gazing. It would have benefitted from some sharp editorial scissors to release the great book that wants to be born here.

With Thoreau as his inspiration, Rick Bass tackles "Walden West" with this loving tribute to his home in the Yaak Valley, THE WILD MARSH. He writes from a cabin perched on the marsh and uses the calendar as a means of structuring the book, starting with January. Here we get detailed accounts of nature's every breath -- flora, fauna, and the fodder for thought that they cause.

Fans of Rick Bass and readers who enjoy nature essays will take to this book straight off. Other readers might enjoy it more as a "dip in" book rather than a "read cover to cover" book. That is, with his descriptions and ruminations so rich, readers could equally enjoy the book by, say, reading the month they are in or headed toward, then moving on to other books, then returning to this the next month. Here's a sample of Bass's style from the chapter "March":

"It's a joy to be out walking in the woods, traversing bare ground. I love winter, and snow, but cannot help but think of the bare earth as the "real" world. Some folks go out in early spring, hunting the winter-shed antlers of the deer to sell to curio shops and so forth, but I go simply out of pleasure, and perhaps worship: to see, and touch, the echo of the secret deer that have been passing through our forest. It's hard to describe, and harder to explain, the feeling of richness one gets, spying an antler just emerged from the snow: treasure, discovered."

You hear echoes of Thoreau when you see the word "worship" and the words "the echo of the secret deer." Nice stuff. Contemplative. This is not fast food. Like a walk in the woods, you need to be in the right mood to enjoy what it has to offer. You need to be inspired by a whole page dedicated to a deer's antler (or a painted turtle's carapace, or an aspen's bud). If this sounds like you, then I highly recommend the book.

I have been a fan of Rick Bass for a number of years. I especially enjoyed his books titled "Oil Notes," "Platte River," and "Colter" in addition to his earlier works on the Yaak Valley. I also enjoyed this book but feel he has covered this territory in depth in his other books on the Yaak and this is an effort to just publish one more book.

There is no question the Yaak Valley is a special place deserving of a writer of Bass's talent but there is little new in this volume that is not contained in his earlier works on the subject. Perhaps had I not read his earlier efforts I would have enjoyed this book more and to be sure there are some wonderfully written, lyrical passages marking the four seasons of the year that will resonate with many readers. His chapters on each month of the year contain some really insightful, touching descriptions of a landscape and geography most of us will never encounter for any length of time. However, the book to me is a bit sad given Bass's 13 year unsuccessful effort to gain some type of federal protection or wilderness designation for his beloved valley. Given the tenor of his past books this one leaves me with the impression he is leaving a record of what was and could have been but probably will never be again.
Bass is, without question, one of the best environmental writers and thinkers practicing today. This book is more of a journal than a book of advocacy. A good read but contains material found in his earlier works.

I'm very surprised by my rating for this book. Nature writing is my favorite genre and though I've never considered Bass in my highest group of favorites, I've owned four of his books and read many more through the library.

The introduction certainly seemed promising with discussion of the need to pass on information to the next generation about where to find the best berry patches and so on. He also writes there about whether and how much of Walden, a book of the east, applies to the west.

And I think it's his attempt to be a Thoreau of the west which makes this book a failure for me. There are specific Walden allusions, such as questioning if we are awake or sleeping, but mostly the problem for me was a writing style unlike his previous books. Paragraph-long sentences overflow with dashes and commas and asides until all the natural flow is lost. He just doesn't have the wit and intellect of Thoreau to pull this style off.

I'm no fan of the hunting which is always a part of Bass's books, but here he really seems to overdo it with hunter's rhetoric such as supposedly worrying about how the deer are escaping from the mountain lions in the deep snow, the same deer he has no problem killing himself.

The specifics promised in the introduction tend to get lost in lots of aimless introspection and spirituality. A lot of editing could have turned this long book into a fine book; as it stands, I'd stick to his earlier work.

Rick Bass tries to get readers to appreciate the Yaak Valley as much as he does. I have no doubt of his sincerity and love of the region but he doesn't really stir your emotions and make you see the valley through his eyes. He seems to write as if we have already decided he has the perfect life and this is what happens during a given year. I found his writing both very dense and difficult to follow. I think in the future he needs to be more creative and realize that he needs to entrance his readers rather than just passively record what goes on around.

I have always wanted to visit Montana and this book could be the next best thing to actually going there. Rick Bass does a very good job describing what is happening during each month and what it takes to live through the year. I got a good chuckle at some of his stories, like when he lost his keys while skiing. I was even more amazed that he was able to find them. I gave this 4 stars because there were parts that seemed to drag along, but it always picked back up.

This book is an ode to phenology and local knowledge, and Bass' love of his home, the Yaak of northwest Montana, which some consider to be a "Noah's Ark of Diversity," with mountain lions, moose, elk, bobcats, grizzly and black bears, lynx and wolverines. He took inspiration from Thoreau's Walden, wondering what it would be like to re-imagine such work so profoundly Eastern in a remote wild landscape of the West. Bass writes from a pioneer homestead on a marsh in the Yaak, tracing the changes and events of a year's cycle, month-by-month, the transect of a year, of time rather than space. Although Bass is well-known as an environmental writer, the focus of this book is not advocacy and politics, but celebration and observation. Why? Said Bass, "I'm not sure why I made that choice, with this book; perhaps in order to simply stay sane longer." (6) As someone who grew up in the Helena valley in Montana over the last 40 years, and being roughly the same age as Bass, I am coming to share his views on the retention of sanity in the world that is coming to pass.

But even the remote Yaak valley is not immune to change:

"The thought occurs to me again how strange and perhaps hopeless this chronicle is, destined to disappear like melting snow, with regard to its calendrical observations...That these days will never again have compare; that not only is time rushing past, but so too is the four-seasoned, temperate nature of this place. As if it is all finally, after so many centuries, becoming only as if but a dream. ...But my God, what beauty." (p. 159)

"It's not just for the scientists of the future that I've profiled the passage of a year, here in a northern land still fortunate enough to have four full seasons despite the rising tide of the world's increasing heat, the ever-increasins global exhalations of warmth and carbon. I like to imagine that this record has value, in a scrapbook sort of way, to my family, and to others who will in the future inhabit, and love, the Yaak. ...That the passing on of such knowledge constitutes a transfer of some of the most valuable currency, other than love, possible; that the transfer of that kind of intimate and place-based knowledge, the knowledge of home, is a kind of love, and rarer and more valuable now certainly than silver or gold...Some days I worry that there is a sand-through-the-hourglass effect to such observations, and the passing on of that knowledge; that though the knowledge might be passed on to the next generation, and the next, so rapid now are the ecological changes in the West, so severe the dissolution of various biological underpinnings as one piece after another is pulled from the puzzle, the map, of previous integrity, that the future will render such knowledge irrelevant: as if, already, I am describing things that are gone-away, or going-away. ...But one of the key components of love is hope -- enduring hope --and to let fear replace hope would be a bitter defeat indeed, a kind of failure in its own stead." (p. 8)

This recordation and compilation of twenty years of place-based memory is a real gift from Bass. As a poet of natural history, he muses over the opening of the icy and snowbound land in March, the appearance of baby robins in July, a forest fire in August, hunting in November...It should inspire each of us to consider passing on our own legacy of local knowledge to future generations, although most of us, less gifted as writers and chroniclers than Bass, can only do bravely what we can, through writing, storytelling, record-keeping, and the arts. But it is not only a matter of the natural world; Bass is as sensitive and attentive to the importance and value of the human world in equal measure:

"Children grow up and move away, friends grow old and stooped, communities shift and flow, fragment and weave back together. The deliciousness of a moment, and of beauty, is almost always heightened by the consciousness of such brevity. It is a sweetness, and awareness, however, that I sometimes tend to overlook, or take for granted; and it's good for me, particularly during the holidays, to step back and remember that it is not merely the marsh, or the natural cycles of things, that give me stability and even peace in a tumultuous world, but also the braid, the weave, of people passing all around me -- a current of people, friends and others, as ceaseless and interesting as the wind itself, or the currents of some broad river, or again, the flow of the seasons themselves, passing around and around the globe, year after year, bathing us in change, and at the same time bathing us in regularity, with a constancy that is remarkable, and which in my opinion follows very much in the same pattern and logic as does the human emotion of love." (p. 375)

A highly recommended book, especially for folks who are in love with the land and their place on the land, who would like to pass on their knowledge to the future, and for those of us who wish "to simply stay sane longer."

Rick Bass has matured as a nature writer/natural historian. The separate chapters of this book are mostly works that had appeared in older magazine editions, with an added emphasis on wilderness and preservation.

The intent of this book is to persuade readers to fall in love with Montana's Yaak Valley, one of the most northern, most remote valleys in the lower 48. His intent was not to get emotional about the landscape, but to record every detail of wildlife outside his cabin's window, or of describing a major event or observation each month and to let the reader decide if this area, the Yaak Valley, is worthy of wilderness protection like 15 other areas in Montana have already earned.

He doesn't always succeed at being unemotional about his observations. By May the cold and snow had gotten the best of him and wants desperately to witness spring to arrive, breaking the ice sheets that were trampled by neighboring deer and exposing wet, dark earth below. It's a small flaw of his character to break down in such cold, northern climes, but we learn that the author, much like the wilderness outside, is fragile and in need of tender loving care from time to time.

Sometimes his paragraphs do run on at times, sending out sensory overload to the reader. At times I want to give this book four instead of five stars, or 4.5 stars, but then decide this flaw is not worthy of any deductions.

Sometimes the loneliness of the wilderness is infectious in Bass' writing. But never does the writing stall or disappoint. The reader can sense the cold, sense the despair, smell the fresh new growth and anticipate the next deer to romp across the field before a hungry golden eagle swoops down to catch a doomed rabit. Entire pages are devoted to describe one frame of action in the wilderness. It takes a true talent to be able to observe the wilderness through his eyes.

There is no doubt that the reader is left to fall in love with the wilderness. There is also no doubt that Bass writes about Montana with deep-felt passion. Wilderness is to be experienced for anyone to want to preserve it. This is the message that resonates throughout this book: that we are all a part of nature and wilderness, we are born into it.

"Glacier-polished hillside boulders look like the muscular, rounded bodies of the animals--deer, bear--that pass among those boulders like living ghosts..."

I have to say that I did enjoy this read. Keep in mind though that I am a fan of rick Bass, and enjoy his writing style, attitude toward the world, and agree with many of his observations. Bass is one of our top natural history or nature writers and his skill shines through with this work.

What the author has given us is a view of his little part of the world, as seen through his eyes. This world consists of the wilderness in the Yaak Mountains of Montana. Here, he and his family live and the author practices his art of writing, and writing well, I might add. Bass has taken us on a year long journey, season through season, and treated us to his observations, thoughts and opinions of his small world around him. It must be noted though, that the saga portrayed in The Wild Marsh is being played out in many parts of our country, and while many of the other regions of the U.S. may not be as wild as the Yaak, they are never-the-less faces with the same problems and hold the same wonder.

Each chapter of this work is an essay within itself and a well constructed on. Not only do we receive vivid natural history images, but we are treated to one mans philosophy. Now you can disagree or agree with the author's thoughts about the many subjects he touches upon, but just because you might disagree with some of his statements, does not make this less of an important work. To take that view is being quite narrow. I was saddened to see that there are several reviews that attempted to turn this work into a political statement. To be quite frank, I am getting a bit sick of the whining from the left and the braying from the right concerning every subject under the sun. Of course I am pretty apolitical and think that both extremes are a bit silly and more or less shut them out.

I did enjoy the accounts of the author's family life while stuck in the middle of absolutely nowhere, and must admit to feeling twinges of envy as he described the environments surrounding his family. I fear that accounts of such wild places will be fewer and fewer in the future as we squander our wilderness areas and that our children and grandchildren are only going to be able to experience this through the written word, which I feel, is why works such as this are so important.

Folks, when you read this work, leave your politics behind in the dark smelly little closet of your mind where they belong; read the book and enjoy. It is really quite well crafted and you will be treated to some very nice writing.

As an added note: This is an extremely beautiful area of the country. I have had the thrill of traveling through it on seveal occassions. If you get a chance to visit...do so, it quite well may not be there that much longer.

I do very much recommend this one.

Don Blankenship
The Ozarks

I wanted to like this book, but I just never quite connected with the story. The book covers a year in the life of the Yaak Valley in Montana. There are a few high points, but most of the book is composed of long, florid descriptions of the scenery or wildlife at that particular point in the year. While that sounds potentially appealing in the abstract, it doesn't work out here. In the end it took me 9 months to finish this book, as I took every opportunity to read something else.

I think a big part of the disconnect for me is that there's not much humanity in the book. What I mean is that there just isn't much of a human presence. I suppose that's somewhat intentional, to convey the sparseness of human population in the valley, but at some point reading about rocks and flowers and trees gets a bit stale. This coming from someone who is quite fond of rocks and flowers and trees, but they don't make for interesting reading material. The author even admits to this a bit, at one point commenting "I don't mean to prattle on about a thing that should be of no more importance to the reader than the depth of my bellybutton." (Exactly what "thing" he's referring to at that point is rather unclear, leaving me to associate it with the whole book.)

I think the highlight of the book for me was the incident where the author is trying to burn off some grass and ends up creating a (briefly) out of control grass fire. The tension and fear trying to get the fire under control, and the embarrassment and relief afterward were the most entertaining events in the book, and one of the few points where I felt personally connected (having done a few similarly stupid things myself). Some of the hunting trips also add interest, despite my personal lack of interest in hunting. The author does an excellent job of conveying the suspense and quiet tension of stalking an animal for hours, and the great intelligence and skill wild animals have for evading capture which we humans have largely lost and forgotten.

If you have some particular interest in this area of Montana the book will probably be enjoyable, but otherwise I think it ends up as only somewhat palatable but mostly dull.