The Book Of Yaak: A Passionate Defense of Love, Wilderness, and Montana's Threatened Wild Places

by Rick Bass

The Yaak Valley of northwestern Montana is one of the last great wild places in the United States, a land of black bears and grizzlies, wolves and coyotes, bald and golden eagles, wolverine, lynx, marten, fisher, elk, and even a handful of humans. It is a land of magic, but its magic may not be enough to save it from the forces threatening it now. The Yaak does have one trick up its sleeve, though: a writer to give it voice. In Winter Rick Bass portrayed the wonder of living in the valley. In The Book of Yaak he captures the soul of the valley itself, and he shows how, if places like the Yaak are lost, we too are lost. Rick Bass has never been a writer to hold back, but The Book of Yaak is his most passionate book yet, a dramatic narrative of a man fighting to defend the place he loves.

Genres: Nature, Nonfiction, Natural History, American, Memoir, Environment, Animals

208 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Rick Bass was born in Fort Worth, Texas, and grew up in Houston, the son of a geologist. He studied petroleum geology at Utah State University and while working as a petroleum geologist in Jackson, Mississippi, began writing short stories on his lunch breaks. In 1987, he moved with his wife, the artist Elizabeth Hughes Bass, to Montana’s remote Yaak Valley and became an active environmentalist, working to protect his adopted home from the destructive encroachment of roads and logging. He serves on the board of both the Yaak Valley Forest Council and Round River Conservation Studies and continues to live with his family on a ranch in Montana, actively engaged in saving the American wilderness.

Bass received the PEN/Nelson Algren Award in 1988 for his first short story, “The Watch,” and won the James Jones Fellowship Award for his novel Where the Sea Used To Be. His novel The Hermit’s Story was a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year in 2000. The Lives of Rocks was a finalist for the Story Prize and was chosen as a Best Book of the Year in 2006 by the Rocky Mountain News. Bass’s stories have also been awarded the Pushcart Prize and the O. Henry Award and have been collected in The Best American Short Stories.

Reviews

[Jamie · Rating 4 out of 5]

“You can’t reproduce the wild,” he says, speaking my language. “There is no substitute for the wild.”

This book is speaking my language. There’s a part, though, in the essay “Fires,” about the rule of the West and the rule of the world: if it doesn’t rot, it burns. “All over the West, scientists as well as residents are trying to figure out how to apply this most basic truth: the forests have to burn. Suppression only makes forests lean more toward this truth.”

“It all has to rot or burn, and there’s only so much in the bank. Forgive me if I keep repeating the obvious: it just seems like such a revelation to me that in the end it is all the same, and that it is really the part leading up to either of those two ends that makes life so sweet for us.”

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am a huge Rick Bass fan. This is perhaps his most vocal book on conservation. He cares a great deal about the Yaak valley in particular. He is adept at describing the environmental situation there and the efforts to get the Yaak protected from logging. This book was written twenty-five years ago and Rick is still leading the conservation effort there.

4 stars

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

This may be my favorite Bass. This feels like home, in a way I didn't know a place I've never been could. This feels like the kind of love poem all of our sacred wild places need. This feels like a kick in the pants, a reminder that we each have a voice, and if we aren't using it to advocate for the places and ideas we value most, what's the point?

This may become an annual re-read.

This should be on your to-read list.

This book does not feel dated. If anything, it feels extraordinarily hopeful, in a way I can't imagine being, as if we weren't in the midst of an administration that has made central to their platform the idea of pillaging (land, civil rights, the future) for personal gain.

This book might be one of the best sense of place books I've yet read.

And this book has definitely convinced me that I would love to have a beer with Rick Bass.

[5 stars for the dire need for books like this minus a half-star for how hopeless I felt at times that wild places not designated wilderness would ever not be at risk is 4.5 stars.]

[Julie Richert-Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

I always find a thrill in learning about a corner of this planet from someone who loves it, lives in it, chooses it over all other spaces. They have usually put together an eclectic and intimate collage of facts, stories and observations that showcase the progression of their love affair with the place, as well as the development of strong opinions about its future. Bass does this masterfully, colorfully, with beautifully captured vignettes and wide open emotion. While presenting a highly charged call to action, the politics remain in the sideline if what one really wants to experience is the sense of place and the sobering reminder of the responsibility we have toward our wild spaces.

[Ron · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Scott Bischke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this book long ago as I work my way through my shelves and get them up on-line. Enjoy Rick Bass's work--pretty much everything of his I've ever read. While this book is about his love of a special place, Montana's Yaak Valley (his home), he does write a bit about writers and I always love such reflection. Here's a favorite quote from the book that covers both Rick's take on writers, and also his love of the Yaak:
---
Writing--like the other arts--is not a hobby, but a way of living--a way, in the words of nature writing scholar Scott Slovic, of "being in the world". There is a rhythm that we must all find, in loving and fighting for place--the integration of advocacy into your "other," peaceful life.
---(pg 90)---

[Alexis · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’ve been wanting to read this book for years. I was fairly disappointed in it. It’s a compilation of his essays. It ends up feeling disjointed, repetitive, and alienating. I understand the cause. My career has been focused on natural resource management. Although, it seems to Bass, that nobody can truly understand the Yaak, but him. I lost count of how many times he says “roadless”. He urgently wants protection for an area that he seemingly doesn’t want to share with others, not even his massage therapist. It was all very odd.

p.s. it’s steller’s jay.

[Peter Gooch · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice book about the Yaak Valley in Montana. Some excellent descriptions of place and the virtues of solitude. Has a bit of a preachy undertone that seems unnecessary.

[Hannah Styres · Rating 1 out of 5]

literally only read this for school but i gotta track it on goodreads 😂

[Kerri Anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best, favorite, most poignant and powerful of all of Rick Bass' books/stories/essay collections I've ever read. This book speaks to me as if it were written yesterday, as if it's perpetually re-writing itself to remain (sadly) ever-relevant. As if it came from my own bones. I took notes on almost every chapter, could hardly put it down; nor could I read it anywhere I couldn't also be writing. This is one of those books I wish everyone in this country could, would, read. (My list of must-reads is steadily growing, but this one is particularly mighty.) It's a deep-dive into the power of place, and an even deeper dive into a conservationist's heart—and it's stunning, important, world-changing. Or, it should be.

This book will become one I re-read in whole and in parts each year. If I could I would wear passages of this book on my skin, invite them to live in my bones. If I could, I would have also encouraged Bass to end this collection with what is chapter fourteen: “Cores.” (Trust me, Rick. If you had it to do again, I could help, and would happily. “Cores” is where the heart of this story is, and these sorts of collections are better left with people's hearts singing, screaming, alongside yours.)

We need wildness, always. And we'll always need this sort of honesty, this sort of connection to these lands and to these ecosystems and to these threatened species if we ever hope to truly save them. We'll always need more books like this.

[Five (hundred) stars for voices crying out from the mountaintops and river valleys to save an ever vanishing wildnerness.]

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

My students used this book as our text for a developmental composition course I taught this semester. I have to say I was surprised at the choice, since it focuses on such a singular topic: Bass's efforts to protect the ecosystem of the Yaak Valley, Montana, where he lives. However, I soon saw its appeal: it is both a personal and a persuasive text that glides effortlessly from poetic descriptions of the forest and its animal "citizens" to statistics of how many acres of forest the Forest Service has allowed logging companies to clearcut. My students were exposed to a plethora of rhetorical strategies, from the use of metaphor and direct reader address to expert testimony to Bass drawing on his own background as a geologist to describe his tension between his feeling that we can measure and know all and the awe and wonder he feels while hiking in the woods and encountering a coyote or a grizzly. As we finish it, I am surprised at how many of my students are either drawn to Bass's environmental cause and/or his writing--one even ordered his other book Winter!

[Matthew Moore · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read and write, both to an incessant almost fanatical nature. I learn continuously and this book, this damn book has broken my heart and reaffirmed my disgust for all that is government. I knew briefly that the Forest Service merely existed to allow timber companies to ravage and rape what is mine, what is yours...public lands. Rick Bass laid out in black and white how big business and politicians, all politicians are stealing everything from us under the guise of bettering communities. They,politicians and timber companies, are all full of shit, liars and corruptors of human health.

The book and Bass give a brilliant and detailed account of one of the actual last remaining wild places in the lower 48; the Yaak Valley. I enjoyed his descriptions of his home valley and mountains and his views on how government entities are constantly stealing nature from the people.

[Judith Shadford · Rating 4 out of 5]

I long ago fell in love with the writing of Rick Bass. The Book of Yaak is a collection of essays that moves from his devotion to that narrow valley in northwest Montana to his unswervable work to save the valley from clearcutting by the big timber industry. Members of Congress know him as the guy that "writes all the postcards". They tolerate his visits to DC, his gifts of his published works, his unrelenting documentation of the consequences of placing money ahead of integrity. Very little has changed. I know this from my own trips to the Yaak, seeing the sites of tree massacres that last year were thick and beautiful and growing and are now bulldozed into slash piles, leaving the land eroding and ugly. If his desperate passion takes on a one-note melody, he's still right. Tragedy hasn't been forestalled yet. Maybe after 2021.

[Linda · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 stars? Certainly there were parts that were redundant - the environment and preserving it deserve redundancy. The message should be broadcast to all - the forest service is in the pocket of the logging industry and it is responsible for destroying the last of our natural heritage. This book is dated - written in the late nineties - but the story is the same. Until we value all life, trees to lichen to grizzlies to mayflies, over man made goods, we don't really understand the world and what it presents to us every single day. The writing is lush, I will read more of his work.

[The Cannibal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nous détruisons nos espaces, nous vidons la Terre de sa substance, nous polluons, nous prenons plus que nous ne rendons, bref, en un mot comme en cent, nous scions la branche sur laquelle nous sommes assis, nous nous tirons une balle dans le pied.

Je ne suis pas née de la dernière pluie, la Terre tiendra le coup, elle en a vu d'autres, elle qui s'est pris des tas de trucs dans la gueule.

Mais les animaux, les végétaux, survivront-ils à notre folie ? Ne sommes-nous pas en train de nous tuer à petit feu en épuisant les ressources de cette planète que nous ne possédons qu'en un seul exemplaire ?

Rick Bass nous offre un plaidoyer pour sauver la vallée du Yaak, Montana. Ne nous y trompons pas, si nous arrivons à changer certaines méthodes violentes de coupes à blanc là-bas, ça pourrait donner des bonnes idées à d'autres ailleurs.

On peut rêver, espérer. En tout cas, si on ne sauve pas les dernières vallées sauvages, que restera-t-il comme habitat aux animaux ? Les zoos ?

Vivre dans la vallée du Yaak n'est pas facile, les jours d'été sont longs mais il y a peu de journées, tandis que les jours d'hiver sont courts, mais nombreux. S'adapter au milieu n'est pas facile et l'auteur nous décrit bien la manière de vivre de sa famille, à la dure.

Sans virer vieil écolo bavant toujours les mêmes choses, l'auteur nous conscientise, nous explique le pourquoi il faut sauver cette vallée sauvage avant qu'elle ne soit plus qu'un désert sans arbres, sans animaux, sans rien.

Il nous parle du pourquoi il faut replanter des arbres après les avoir coupés et pourquoi il est inutile de couper des arbres centenaires pour les transformer en papier Q.

À travers tout le récit, on se rend compte que ce n'est pas tellement un plaidoyer pour sa vallée, mais aussi un grand cri d'amour qu'il adresse à cet endroit où il vit depuis un certain temps, s'étant adapté à ses hivers rigoureux, à la présence d'animaux et au rythme des saisons.

Certains passages racontant ses rencontres avec des animaux sauvages sont tout simplement magiques, empreint d'un grand respect pour l'animal, d'humilité aussi.

Non, ceci n'est pas un pamphlet contre la civilisation, non il n'interdit pas les coupes d'arbres, mais il préconise plus de le faire avec raison, correctement, en réfléchissant un peu et surtout, d'arrêter de confier ces coupes à des grosses sociétés avides de rentabilité.

Ses arguments sont étayés, expliqués, prouvés et plein de bon sens. On est loin de ceux qui crient qu'il faut arrêter de polluer alors que tous possèdent des smartphones, des télés, des PC, des voitures et qu'ils les utilisent en masse.

Moi aussi je pollue et même si j'essaie de faire attention, je sais que je passe sans doute à côté de choses énormes que je n'ai même pas vues, que je pense que c'est bien alors que je me goure. L'enfer est pavé de bonnes intentions.

J'ai exploré bien souvent l'Amérique profonde, celle des red neks, des loosers, des laissés-pour-compte, mais là, j'ai exploré une autre profondeur de l'Amérique, celle de ses grands espaces, de ses paysages magnifiques, de ses forêts, de sa faune et sa flore, qui, si on ne les protège pas, disparaîtront tout à fait en entraînant des conséquences qui pourraient être terrible pour tout être vivant.

[Badia · Rating 1 out of 5]

Je m'étais réjoui de lire cette chronique, elle ne m'a pas déçu quant au style, à une certaine atmosphère tranquille propre à la vie retirée en montagne et l'énergie que met l'Auteur dans la défense de sa vallée m'a séduit.
J'ai bien moins apprécié sa façon de "raconter sa vie" et je me suis demandé par moment si ses invitations à prendre parti pour ses causes (coupes forestières à blanc, constructions de routes,..) ne voulaient pas dire, en filigrane, "défendez mon environnement mais ne venez pas y habiter, moi et mes copains chasseurs on veut être tranquilles".
Et pour terminer j'aimerais glisser ici une "pépite" extraite d'une partie de pêche:
"Revenons à nos Gentlemans. Cet un honneur d'être en leur compagnie. Ils se fichent bien de prendre ou non un poisson et goûtent simplement cette sortie en plein air, en terrain inconnu. Depuis leur enfance, ils ont dû pêcher, à eux quatre, sept millions de poissons. Il n'est pas un poisson de par le vaste monde dont la mâchoire n'ait tâté de leur hameçon. Aujourd'hui, ils sont simplement heureux d'être vivant. Debout dans la pluie."
Il y a pour moi un truc qui cloche quand un écrivain de qualité trouve des justifications poétiques à la chasse et à la pêche. Dommage.

[Jolene · Rating 4 out of 5]

Une collection d’essais sur la vallée du Yaak (Montana) que l’auteur décrit par sa faune, sa flore et ses habitants. J’ai beaucoup aimé la manière qu’a Rick Bass de raconter cette région, malgré le côté un peu « ours mal léché » que prends parfois le ton du récit (pour résumer « c’est une vallée parfaite que seul moi et mes copains chasseurs et pêcheurs comprennent, ne venez pas nous y déranger » - mais bon, c’est un aspect qu’on retrouve chez beaucoup d’auteurs du nature writing donc rien de très surprenant).
C’est aussi un très beau manifeste de l’écologie et de la préservation de la biodiversité.

[AB · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Rick Bass' non-fiction, although sometimes there is this undertone of elitism? preaching? I cant quite put my finger on it... it appeared every once in a while here. The thing is that I get it though, he is passionate about saving something dear to him as I find myself about the natural places in the PNW. I strongly feel that The Book of Yaak should be read with Winter, his book about his first winter in the Yaak Valley. His awakening and unveiling of the very real threats behind the beauty is as poignant today as when he wrote this book.

[Katherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

*3.75 stars. Not as enjoyable as Winter, which I have just read, but of course there is a purpose behind this book--a political purpose. Enjoyment is not as prevalent, therefore. I did find the author's frequent use of the second person rather offputting, but I am still glad I have encountered its pages and these passages (among others):
"Stars, and goose-music..." (41).
"...in moose innocence" (53).
"...they fetch the year about to me" (67--from a quotation by Thoreau).

[Emilie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Retour au nature writing le plus pur… Rick Bass raconte sa vallée et la faune et flore qui y vivent… et désespère de voir les hommes et leurs engins la grignoter chaque jour un peu plus.
Un ensemble de textes, parfois très courts, avec comme point commun cet appel au grand air, à la randonnée, à la chasse et à la pêche.

Dans les thèmes et dans le ton, ça me rappelle un peu John Gierach… en moins drôle peut être.

Ça donne drôlement envie d’aller randonner dans le Montana, en tous cas !

[Margaret · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yaak was once a small, quiet little blip of a valley on the Montana state map in the northwest corner, up near Glacier National Park. One of the very few great wild places that remain magical with abundant silence where bears, wolves, coyotes, eagles (and a plethora of other wildlife freely wander) and even a few humans roam all the natural beauty God has to offer. But, not surprisingly, if when built, they will come. Even the harshest of winter habitats can't keep Yaak pristine.

[Pierce Heintzelman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book revolves around the preservation of the Yaak valley in Montana from destruction due to the interests of various groups including Logging Companies and the US Forest Service. The beautiful pastoral and descriptive essays drew me in. Rick has a way of writing eloquently without being haughty. Rick Bass is one of my favorite authors and I can't wait to read more of his work.

[Melody - AllyBing · Rating 2 out of 5]

Je voulais me replonger dans la vallée du Yaak mais aussi dans l'univers de l'auteur que j'avais bien aimé dans Winter. Ce ne fut pas trop le cas dans ce livre. Beaucoup d'ennui dès la moitié, c'était lent et long. Cela dit, il attire bien l'attention sur la nécessité de protéger des territoires afin qu'ils ne soient pas saccagés par les humains.

[Allie · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most beautifully detailed books I’ve read. The way Bass uses imagery to describe the Yaak Valley is incredible. You can picture everything he describes. You can also sense his passion and the sense of urgency in wanting to protect the valley. Truly an amazing read. If you want to understand why wilderness is important please do read this book. It was definitely a 10/10.

[Ruby · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very passionate account of a man's efforts to save The Yaak, an old growth wilderness in Montana from the Forest Service need to build roads and log it. This was published in the late 1990s and I'm curious how the Yaak is going now.

[Stuart Chambers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully crafted, this is a book that reminds us that we should live as we chose to be, who we chose to be, how we chose to be. Rick Bass puts all of our values back in the right order, exquisite and profound

[John Hieb · Rating 4 out of 5]

In some respects, I wish nonfiction could be realtime; in others, I’m thankful for a record from a point in time. This is Bass at his best, navigating the friction between the beauty of nature and the context of capitalism and politics.

[John Bly · Rating 5 out of 5]

doesn’t so much tug on your conscience as it drags it all the way to Yaak valley to understand at least a bit of what is happening to the few wild places we have, and what we stand to lose

[Mallory Meverden · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read for a class. A great insight on humanity's effect on the world around us.

[caroline · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like the conservationism I found of my home land while in Colombia. It's a bit rambly but never the less a great message of passion and hope for a great land.