Synopses & Reviews
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.
Synopsis
In this poignant look at the thirty-year journey of one of our countrys great naturalist writers, Rick Bass describes how he fell in love with the mystique of the West--as a dramatic landscape, as an idea, and as a way of life. Bass grew up in the suburban sprawl of Houston, and after attending college in Utah he spent eight years working in Mississippi as a geologist, until one day he packed up and went in search of something visceral, true, and real. 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, and in Why I Came West he chronicles his transformation into the writer, hunter, and environmental activist that he is today. He explains how the rugged, wild landscape smoothed out his own rough edges; attempts to define the appeal of the West that so transfixed him as a boy, a place of mountains and outlaws and continual rebirth; and tells of his own role as a reluctant activistsometimes at odds with his own neighborsunwilling to stand idly by and watch this treasured place disappear.
Rick Bass is the author of many acclaimed books of nonfiction and fiction, including The Lives of Rocks, The Diezmo, and Winter.
Synopsis
A poignant look at the 30-year journey of one of the country's great naturalist writers, "Why I Came West" explores how Bass fell in love with the mystique of the West and describes his role as a reluctant environmental activist, unwilling to stand by and watch this treasured place disappear.
About the Author
RICK BASSs fiction has received O. Henry Awards, numerous Pushcart Prizes, awards from the Texas Institute of Letters, fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, among others. Most recently, his memoir Why I Came West was a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award.