Splendid Isolation: Review

After moving to the Yaak valley -- a place without electricity in the northwest corner of Montana -- [Rick Bass] admits to himself, "Everything I have learned so far has been wrong." In "Winter: Notes From Montana" he explores his attempt "to listen and feel for myself, and to learn rather than always having to be told." He focuses on his relationship with his surroundings and its impact on him as he yields to his vision and finds a validation of something he's always felt -- that sense of being most true to himself when he is in the wilderness, separate from the rest of the human race. "It's as if you'd looked down at your hand and seen the beginnings of fur. It's not as bad as you might think." His descriptions of the Yaak -- of the wind and the quality of light and of a woman who weaves "dream hoops" that free people from nightmares -- are as powerful and lucid as the details in the title story of his collection of short fiction, "The Watch." In both, he creates moments that shimmer with an almost mystical quality.