Synopses & Reviews
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 captures all the subtle harbingers of change that mark each passing month — the initial cruel teasing of spring, the splendor and fecundity of summer, and the bittersweet memories evoked by fall.
It is full of rich observation about what it takes to live in the valley — ruggedness, improvisation and, of course, duct tape. The Wild Marsh is also tremendously poignant, especially when Bass reflects on what it means for his young daughters to grow up surrounded by the strangeness and wonder of nature. He shares with them the Yaak’s little secrets — where the huckleberries are best in a dry year, where to find a grizzly’s claw marks in an old cedar — and discovers that passing on this intimate local knowledge, the knowledge of home, is a kind of rare and valuable love.
Bass emerges not just as a writer but as a father, a neighbor, and a gifted observer, uniquely able to bring us close to the drama and sanctity of small things, ensuring that though the wilderness is increasingly at risk, the voice of the wilderness will not disappear.
Review
“Classic in form, the journal of a year in an old loved place, The Wild Marsh is a lovingly-wrought chronicle from a writerly soul that has found its spot in the world: the one-of-a-kind Yaak Valley of northwestern Montana. Sure-footed in his approach whether topic is a forest fire in his font yard or the excitement of the first tiny cheerful glacier lilies in spring, Rick Bass is a stirring companion on the trail that leads west from the Walden Pond of Henry David Thoreau and the Sand County of Aldo Leopold.” —Ivan Doig, author of
The Whistling Season "[T]he author anchors his celebration of nature’s elegant order with his rhapsodic relationship to the wild marsh outside his writing cabin, and the uncompromising wilderness it represents." —STARRED, Publishers Weekly
"Bass, grounding his book in science well, takes the facts and transforms them, as a musician transforms musical notes, into a work of great beauty. This walk through a year is a walk through the author’s soul, filled with passions, dreams, fears, and the exuberance of Walt Whitman." —Library Journal
"A welcome installment in Bass’s ongoing place-centered autobiography." —Kirkus
"A wonderfully poetic, evocative homage to a wilderness most of us will never see." —STARRED, Booklist
Synopsis
In his account of life in Montana, Bass emerges not just as a writer but as a father, a neighbor, and a gifted observer, ensuring that though the wilderness is increasingly at risk, the voice of the wilderness will not disappear.
Synopsis
Rod Giblett came to live by Forrestdale Lake in southwestern Australia in 1986. Based in part on a nature journal he kept for several years,
Black Swan Lake traces the life of the plants and animals of the surrounding area through the seasons. Presenting a wetlands calendar that charts the yearly cycle of the rising, falling, and drying waters of this internationally significant wetland, this book is a modern-day
Walden. The first book to provide a cultural and natural history of this placeandmdash;taking into account the indigenous peopleandrsquo;s concept of the seasons (six instead of four)andmdash;
Black Swan Lake will be enjoyed by conservationists, as well as others seeking connection with place, plants, and animals in their own bioregion.
About the Author
RICK BASSs 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
List of Illustrationsand#160;
Part I: Wetlands calendarand#160;and#160;and#160; 1. For a few years
and#160;and#160;and#160; 2. Rising waters (August/Djilba/late winter)
and#160;and#160;and#160; 3. Other place (September/Djilba/early spring)
and#160;and#160;and#160; 4. Other life (October/Kambarang/mid-spring)
and#160;and#160;and#160; 5. Wetland world (November/Kambarang/late spring)
and#160;and#160;and#160; 6. Drying up (December/Birak/early summer)
and#160;and#160;and#160; 7. Dry as a rule (Januaryand#8211;February/Birkand#8211;Bunuru/mid-, late summer)
and#160;and#160;and#160; 8. Still water (March/Bunuru/early autumn)
and#160;and#160;and#160; 9. Big puddle (April/Djeran/mid-autumn)
and#160;and#160;and#160; 10. Waterand#8217;s back (June/Makuru/early winter)
and#160;and#160;and#160; 11. Birds are back (July/Makuru/mid-winter)
Part II: The downflow
and#160;and#160;and#160; 12. The ballad of black swan lake: Homage to Henry David James
and#160;and#160;and#160; 13. The black swan: Homage to hoax writers
and#160;and#160;and#160; 14. The blackness of the black swan: Homage to Herman Melville
and#160;and#160;and#160; 15. Black swamp city: Homage to Hugh Webb
and#160;and#160;and#160; 16. The body of the earth and the body of Australia: Homage to the human body
and#160;and#160;and#160; 17. The way of water: Homage to Master Moy Lin-Shin
and#160;and#160;and#160; 18. The seasons: homage to Henry David Thoreau
and#160;and#160;and#160; 19. The black arts of sublime technologies: Homage to Henry Adams
and#160;and#160;and#160; 20. People and the place of the whistling kite: Homage to Haliastur sphenurus
and#160;and#160;and#160; 21. Living black waters: Homage to horrifying marsh monsters
and#160;and#160;and#160; 22. Living with the earth: Homage to home-habitatand#160;Further Reading