Synopses & Reviews
“An extraordinary exploration and meditation . . . [Bass] transports us along on this wonder-filled tour, full of hardness and hope, into an otherworldly place that mirrors our own.” —
National Geographic Traveler Black rhinos are not actually black. They are, however, giant animals with tiny eyes, feet the diameter of laundry baskets, and horns that are prized for both their aesthetic and medicinal qualities. Until recently, these creatures were perched on the edge of extinction, their numbers dwindling as they succumbed to poachers and the ravages of civil war. Now their numbers are rising, thanks to a groundbreaking new conservation method from the Save the Rhino Trust: make sure that rhinos are worth more alive than dead.
Rick Bass, who has long worn the uneasy mantle of both activist and hunter, traveled to Namibia to find black rhinos. The tale of his journey provides a deeper understanding of these amazing animals and of just what needs to be done to protect them.
“Bass provides a singularly thoughtful portrait of a unique animal, and a meditation on mankind’s relationship to both it and the natural world as a whole.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune
Review
"A well-known nature writer travels to the Namib Desert, ‘one of the oldest unchanged landscapes on earth . . . an exciting adventure."
—Kirkus
Review
"about striving to find something lost in ourselves, something that can be supplied only by solitude and wilderness and the presence of creatures more powerful and self-assured than we are" The Washington Post
Review
"...luminously transcendant passages on the education and sorrowful loss of a brilliant
chocolate brown pointer that will transfix anyone who has ever loved a dog." Publishers Weekly, Starred
"Bass is a masterly writer . . . Your dog loves you, Bass, and this reviewer does, too." USA Today
"Bass' writing is cinematic -- he lets readers run with Colter through the fields . . . [we] feel Colter's energy as he experienced it." Denver Rocky Mountain News
"Has anyone ever written so perfectly of a dog shaking water from its fur, curled up tight during sleep?" Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
". . . A book to be savoured. . . on a lazy summer afternoon, with your dog asleep on the ground below." Bookpage
". . . A book to be savoured. . . on a lazy summer afternoon, with your dog asleep on the ground below." Bookpage
"Colter is a dog of boundless spirit, all grace and wild genius. And his terrific master, Rick Bass, happens to be a national treasure. What a terrific team they make!" -- Carl Hiaasen, author of SICK PUPPY
Synopsis
Acclaimed nature writer Rick Bass takes us on a journey into the Namib Desert to follow a group of poachers-turned-conservationists as they track the endangered black rhinos through their ancient and harsh African homeland.
Synopsis
Rick Bass takes us on a stunning exploration of an unique landscape, one of the most ancient and harshest on earth, and the improbable and endangered animal that makes its home there.
The black rhinos of the Namib Desert are super-survivors — muscle-clad, squinty-eyed giants with feet the diameter of laundry baskets. But until recently, the survival of these animals was very much in question and their numbers dwindled on the edge of extinction in Namibia.
In the tradition of Matthiessen's The Tree Where Man Was Born, Bass captures a slice of Africa — the haunting sound of doves cooing at first light each morning, the laughter of hyenas at night, the otherworldly heat — and most enduringly of all the "black" rhinos that glow ghostly white in the gleaming sun.
Synopsis
From one of our most gifted writers on the natural world comes a stunning exploration of a unique landscape and the improbable and endangered animal that makes its home there.
Rick Bass first made a name for himself as a writer and seeker of rare, iconic animals, including the grizzlies and wolves of the American West. Now he's off on a new, far-flung adventure in the Namib of southwest Africa on the trail of another fascinating, vulnerable species. The black rhino is a three-thousand-pound, squinty-eyed giant that sports three-foot-long dagger horns, lives off poisonous plants, and goes for days without water.
Human intervention and cutting-edge conservation saved the rhinos — for now — from the brink of extinction brought on by poaching and war. Against the backdrop of one of the most ancient and harshest terrains on earth, Bass, with his characteristic insight and grace, probes the complex relationship between humans and nature and meditates on our role as both destroyer and savior.
In the tradition of Peter Matthiessen's The Tree Where Man Was Born, Bass captures a haunting slice of Africa, especially of the "black" rhinos that glow ghostly white in the gleaming sun.
Synopsis
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.
Synopsis
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
Colter was the runt of the litter, and Rick Bass took him only because nobody else would. Soon, though, Bass realized he had a raging genius on his hands, and he raided his daughters' college fund to send Colter to the best schools. Colter could be a champion, Rick was told, but he'd have to be broken, slowed down. Rick "could no more imagine a slowing-down Colter than a slow-motion bolt of lightning in the sky," and instead of breaking Colter he followed him. Colter led him into new territory, an unexplored land where he felt more alive, more intimately connected to the world, than he'd ever been before. In the course of telling us Colter's story, Rick Bass also tells us of his childhood fascination with snapping turtles and dirt, and of the other animals - including people - that have shaped his life. COLTER is an interspecies love story that vividly captures the relationship between humans and dogs. Like all of Bass's work, it is passionate, poetic, and original.
About the Author
Rick Bass's 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.
Table of Contents
Prologue vii
Part I: Pastoral 1
Part II: Wild 77
Part III: Dust 197
Epilogue 240
Acknowledgments 269