jamiereadthis
Written on Mar 11, 2012
God, I loved this book. I love anything Bass writes but here you can see the line between his fiction and not-fiction is so slim and pliable it’s sometimes barely there at all. Even Kirby and Tricia of the short stories make their real-life appearance. But really, the reason for that pliable line is that each of his stories is in its way a love story and all of Bass’s love is in that wild Yaak valley.
“I used to think it was bad, a failing, that I had to be in the wilderness to be happy— away from most things. Now I’m starting to discover that’s irrelevant— whether it’s good or bad, a failing or a strength: totally irrelevant. It’s just the way I am.”
If there’s a feeling I know, it’s that. Not the craving for wilderness and solitude, but the absolute requirement of it, the non-negotiable choices you make in order to draw all your breaths in that place. When I finished the book yesterday, I had hiked out to a favorite spot, was lying on my back by a creek deep in the woods. Pure solitude, pure treasure, and I’m not a spiritual person but that’s the vocabulary I’d use to describe it. Unless, maybe, that’s all ‘spiritual’ really means: when things are like some kind of prayer, a kind of salvation, the invitation to sit and sift and contemplate, and relish, being rich.