The Wild Marsh: Four Seasons at Home in Montana

by Rick Bass

Book Overview

The Wild Marsh is Rick Bass's most mature, full account of life in the Yaak and a crowning achievement in his celebrated career. It begins with his family settling in for the long Montana winter, and... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0547055161
• ISBN13: 9780547055169
• Release Date: July 2009
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 1.36 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Gorgeous writing

from one of my favorite short story writers - the man can do it all! I was not a big nature writing buff before I read this book and if you enjoy it be sure to check out Anthony Doerr too! My favorite part of the book was winter - so elegantly narrated and you froze just reading the beautiful passages, and spring took my breath away - very much worth buying and reading!

A pick for any collection strong in nature stories

THE WILD MARSH: FOUR SEASONS AT HOME IN MONTANA offers a fine, revealing story of life in Montana's Yaak Valley and follows his family's seasonal experiences of nature. Their ability to survive under rugged conditions, to improvise solutions to common problems, and more makes for a powerful account of Yaak Valley nature and living close to the land, making this a pick for any collection strong in nature stories.

Love of the Land and the Passing of Local Knowledge

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

EXCELLENT READ - A WORTHWHILE AND IMPORTANT WORK

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

Unprotected wilderness needs saving

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..."