The Lost Grizzlies: A Search for Survivors in the Wilderness of Colorado

by Rick Bass

Book Overview

The Lost Grizzlies chronicles the ongoing search for proof that a small number of grizzly bears still lives in the isolated mountain wilds of southern Colorado. Rick Bass turns his considerable talents to an evocation of wilderness beauty and the history of human encroachment that may, or may not, have wiped out the last of these massive, solitary bears from their southern range.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0395857007
• ISBN13: 9780395857007
• Release Date: June 1997
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.5" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Impassioned and gripping

Rick Bass does it again! This book, as much a character desription of grizzly expert Doug Peacock as it is a search for supposedly extinct grizzly bears in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado, is a great triumph. The story is compelling, the language is beautiful, and the search itself is important. Truly, our attitude toward grizzly bears must be a direct reflection of our attitude toward ourselves. Although sometimes Bass gets a little heavy-handed with his metaphors--we probably could figure out that Doug Peacock has many grizzly-like traits without his coming out and telling us--his plea for the protection and defense of grizzlies is compelling, believeable, and genuine. A wonderful read.

A large gulp of reality, IF we are receptive/perceptive.

Asking, "...how important are our lives....Do we have any more import than a mushroom or a spruce cone?... The fact that we can even ask that..."... with these observations/questions Bass leads us through the Colorado wilderness, alerting us to the fact that it is our OWN wilderness we just BEGIN to see, IF we can free our senses, as he and friend, Doug Peacock, seem to be able to do (not without pain). Were I only able to be there, too, but that would clutter the already "cluttered" world of the infringed upon bear. In this book is a fresh taste of that which we MUST preserve, for the sake of the wild, and, then, for our "selves".

A Superb Read!!

Lost Grizzlies is a superb read! Rick Bass is fast becoming (may already be) our premier writer of the american wilderness. Bass' descriptions of the books characters and the wilds of the San Juan Mountains of Colorado are vivid. I enjoyed Bass' descriptions of Doug Peacock's brilliance and brutishness. I enjoyed reading ABOUT Peacock almost as much as I enjoyed reading Peacock's book (Grizzly Years).

Beautiful writing. Highly recommended.

As Rick Bass and Doug Peacock go high and deep into Colorado's San Juan Mountains, on the chance there might still be grizzlies somehow surviving there, we are treated to glimpses of unspeakable beauty and wonder. It's as though Bass were able to blend his own Ninemile Wolves with Peacock's Grizzly Years. Their journey is both exhilerating and meditative. Reading this book was a pleasure.

Outstanding venture into Nature to learn of bears and man.

Rick Bass takes us into the mountains of Colorado not just on a search for grizzlies, but, with his stream of consciousness narrative, helps us feel the affinity of man as he goes back to Nature's bosom. Actually sighting the grizzlies becomes of secondary importance to feeling at one with nature much in the same way the bears do. To help us understand that we two species - at the top of the food chain - also share a need for survival