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Wild to the Heart
A lyrical exploration of wildness and freedom in nature and in ourselves. In these thirteen essays, Rick Bass is a man divided, a lover of wilderness tied to the city. On long weekends, in his Volkswagen Rabbit, he drives away from Jackson, Mississippi, and the job that confines him. His excursions which take him to southern rivers, southern swamps, and sometimes to conservation meetings also lead to musings about his favorite mountains, grizzly bears, and the wildness in all of us. Drawings
176 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 1988
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About the author
Rick Bass
118 books483 followersRick Bass was born in Fort Worth, Texas, and grew up in Houston, the son of a geologist. He studied petroleum geology at Utah State University and while working as a petroleum geologist in Jackson, Mississippi, began writing short stories on his lunch breaks. In 1987, he moved with his wife, the artist Elizabeth Hughes Bass, to Montana’s remote Yaak Valley and became an active environmentalist, working to protect his adopted home from the destructive encroachment of roads and logging. He serves on the board of both the Yaak Valley Forest Council and Round River Conservation Studies and continues to live with his family on a ranch in Montana, actively engaged in saving the American wilderness.
Bass received the PEN/Nelson Algren Award in 1988 for his first short story, “The Watch,” and won the James Jones Fellowship Award for his novel Where the Sea Used To Be. His novel The Hermit’s Story was a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year in 2000. The Lives of Rocks was a finalist for the Story Prize and was chosen as a Best Book of the Year in 2006 by the Rocky Mountain News. Bass’s stories have also been awarded the Pushcart Prize and the O. Henry Award and have been collected in The Best American Short Stories.
Bass received the PEN/Nelson Algren Award in 1988 for his first short story, “The Watch,” and won the James Jones Fellowship Award for his novel Where the Sea Used To Be. His novel The Hermit’s Story was a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year in 2000. The Lives of Rocks was a finalist for the Story Prize and was chosen as a Best Book of the Year in 2006 by the Rocky Mountain News. Bass’s stories have also been awarded the Pushcart Prize and the O. Henry Award and have been collected in The Best American Short Stories.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
March 25, 2021
3.5 stars
Over the past several decades, Rick Bass has emerged as one of America’s most prolific and important environmental writers. He’s probably best known for his nonfiction, particularly about the American West, but he has also published a number of rich and engaging books of fiction. Wild to the Heart is early Bass, a collection of personal essays showing the emerging environmentalist. Most of the essays focus on his life in Mississippi and his repeated lighting out into the wilds of nature, either into the mountains of Utah (where he feels most drawn) or into various spots across the Southeast. As the title suggests, Bass sees his excursions as the means to keep his fundamental wildness alive amidst the numbing routines of work and everyday concerns. His epigraph, words from Robert Frost (and from which Bass draws his title), clearly expresses his own feelings: “I lead a life estranged from myself. . . . I am very wild at heart sometimes. Not confused. Just wild—wild. . . .” Great lines—they make me want to go back and read Frost.
Unlike much of Bass’s later work, which at times pushes toward the didactic (his environmentalism can become strident), Wild to the Heart is more relaxed, more joyous, showing the free-spirited Bass delighting in the natural world, both alone (when he heads West) and with a company of friends (when he stays closer to home). In one beautiful passage, Bass calls for the reader to embrace the spirit that drives him and that underlies everything in this collection: “If it’s wild to your own heart, protect it. Preserve it. Love it. And fight for it, and dedicate yourself to it, whether it’s a mountain range, your wife, your husband, or even (heaven forbid) your job. It doesn’t matter if it’s wild to anyone else: if it’s what makes your heart sing, if it’s what makes your days soar like a hawk in the summertime then focus on it. Because for sure, it’s wild, and if it’s wild, it’ll mean you’re still free. No matter where you are.” My only comment to Bass here is that it should not be “heaven forbid” if you are wild to the heart about your work, but rather “thank heavens.” It’s incredibly fulfilling to find wildness in what you do—work and otherwise.
Over the past several decades, Rick Bass has emerged as one of America’s most prolific and important environmental writers. He’s probably best known for his nonfiction, particularly about the American West, but he has also published a number of rich and engaging books of fiction. Wild to the Heart is early Bass, a collection of personal essays showing the emerging environmentalist. Most of the essays focus on his life in Mississippi and his repeated lighting out into the wilds of nature, either into the mountains of Utah (where he feels most drawn) or into various spots across the Southeast. As the title suggests, Bass sees his excursions as the means to keep his fundamental wildness alive amidst the numbing routines of work and everyday concerns. His epigraph, words from Robert Frost (and from which Bass draws his title), clearly expresses his own feelings: “I lead a life estranged from myself. . . . I am very wild at heart sometimes. Not confused. Just wild—wild. . . .” Great lines—they make me want to go back and read Frost.
Unlike much of Bass’s later work, which at times pushes toward the didactic (his environmentalism can become strident), Wild to the Heart is more relaxed, more joyous, showing the free-spirited Bass delighting in the natural world, both alone (when he heads West) and with a company of friends (when he stays closer to home). In one beautiful passage, Bass calls for the reader to embrace the spirit that drives him and that underlies everything in this collection: “If it’s wild to your own heart, protect it. Preserve it. Love it. And fight for it, and dedicate yourself to it, whether it’s a mountain range, your wife, your husband, or even (heaven forbid) your job. It doesn’t matter if it’s wild to anyone else: if it’s what makes your heart sing, if it’s what makes your days soar like a hawk in the summertime then focus on it. Because for sure, it’s wild, and if it’s wild, it’ll mean you’re still free. No matter where you are.” My only comment to Bass here is that it should not be “heaven forbid” if you are wild to the heart about your work, but rather “thank heavens.” It’s incredibly fulfilling to find wildness in what you do—work and otherwise.
October 14, 2022
“If it’s wild to your own heart, protect it. Preserve it. Love it. It doesn’t matter if it’s wild to anyone else: if it’s what makes your heart sing, if it’s what makes your days soar like a hawk in the summertime, then focus on it. Because for sure, it’s wild, and if it’s wild, it means you’re still free.”
May 6, 2018
For years Rick Bass has been one of my go-to naturalist authors, and one of my longstanding favorites. This collection of his, though, I honestly wish I hadn't stumbled into. There are far too many (wholly unnecessary) sentences and misogyny* within it that made me lose respect for Bass as both a writer and a human.
It's one of his earliest books, published in 1987 when Bass was 29, but more than a cohesive collection, it's a shoddy patchwork quilt of 13 essays that read, at worst, like personal journal entries that should have stayed in his journals, and at best, like mediocre blog posts that might have been intriguing to a handful of readers who knew Bass personally and wouldn't think twice about him talking about skinny-dipping with "slim girls," changing where he's from inside each essay, or perpetually whining about "having" to live and work in Mississippi (for oil companies) instead of getting paid to disappear in the mountains.
*Like: "I felt like an Indian, and was glad and grateful for everything, and cannot explain why," which is the exact moment I said to hell with this book. (But don't worry, there are plenty more where that came from. Sentences like "Winn calls the waitress 'dear' again," and page after page of Bass diminishing and condescending to 99.9% of the women in the book as if they're decorative and delicate caricatures.)
There's something to be said for a writer learning who they are through storytelling, becoming naturally better and wiser and more connected to their specific sense of place as they go. I don't mean to devalue that experience for Bass, or to assert he wasn't allowed to grow up in between 1987 and some of his later (and far better) writing. I'm just altogether confused as to why someone saw fit to publish this particular collection when so often it reads like half-formed ramblings of a young man with an inflated sense of self and heaps of white privilege trying to assert he's "from the West," when in reality he was born and raised in Texas and didn't move to Montana until the year this book was published.
I'm not saying there weren't moments of backcountry goodness—shimmers and glimmers of the acerbic, wisened, conservationist Bass I would come to love in later years. (They were there, peppered sparingly throughout a text that otherwise seemed altogether sluggish, immature, and unfinished.) I'm just saying that for me it wasn't worth the slog and effort it took to get to those rare shimmers and glimmers.
My advice: Skip this book and read The Book of Yaak instead.
[Two halfhearted stars for the two sentences that made me laugh.]
English Nerdery P.S. Goodreads doesn't technically have the version Matt and I read: 174 pages, published in 1987 by W.W. Norton & Company.
It's one of his earliest books, published in 1987 when Bass was 29, but more than a cohesive collection, it's a shoddy patchwork quilt of 13 essays that read, at worst, like personal journal entries that should have stayed in his journals, and at best, like mediocre blog posts that might have been intriguing to a handful of readers who knew Bass personally and wouldn't think twice about him talking about skinny-dipping with "slim girls," changing where he's from inside each essay, or perpetually whining about "having" to live and work in Mississippi (for oil companies) instead of getting paid to disappear in the mountains.
*Like: "I felt like an Indian, and was glad and grateful for everything, and cannot explain why," which is the exact moment I said to hell with this book. (But don't worry, there are plenty more where that came from. Sentences like "Winn calls the waitress 'dear' again," and page after page of Bass diminishing and condescending to 99.9% of the women in the book as if they're decorative and delicate caricatures.)
There's something to be said for a writer learning who they are through storytelling, becoming naturally better and wiser and more connected to their specific sense of place as they go. I don't mean to devalue that experience for Bass, or to assert he wasn't allowed to grow up in between 1987 and some of his later (and far better) writing. I'm just altogether confused as to why someone saw fit to publish this particular collection when so often it reads like half-formed ramblings of a young man with an inflated sense of self and heaps of white privilege trying to assert he's "from the West," when in reality he was born and raised in Texas and didn't move to Montana until the year this book was published.
I'm not saying there weren't moments of backcountry goodness—shimmers and glimmers of the acerbic, wisened, conservationist Bass I would come to love in later years. (They were there, peppered sparingly throughout a text that otherwise seemed altogether sluggish, immature, and unfinished.) I'm just saying that for me it wasn't worth the slog and effort it took to get to those rare shimmers and glimmers.
My advice: Skip this book and read The Book of Yaak instead.
[Two halfhearted stars for the two sentences that made me laugh.]
English Nerdery P.S. Goodreads doesn't technically have the version Matt and I read: 174 pages, published in 1987 by W.W. Norton & Company.
May 5, 2018
The shortest version: Having read this, I feel like I now need to deduct a half-star to a full star from every other Bass I've ever read, because this makes him far less likable as an author. Not only is he regularly misogynistic and douchey in this journal/book of essays, but man, he really could not write.
(No, really. Remember when we were all still writing blogs? We all wrote better than this collection. Like way better.)
Also, Rick? If you're born in Texas, you're not from Utah because you spent a few years of college there.
Look, I appreciate the author Bass is now. The Book of Yaak is one of my favorite love stories for a place. But this collection was straight garbage. (I'll let me wife take the time to detail all of the myriad ways in which it was so; when she finishes her review, I'll link to it here.)
[1 star only because a) Goodreads doesn't allow reviews of 0 stars and because b) Bass turned into a good writer.]
(No, really. Remember when we were all still writing blogs? We all wrote better than this collection. Like way better.)
Also, Rick? If you're born in Texas, you're not from Utah because you spent a few years of college there.
Look, I appreciate the author Bass is now. The Book of Yaak is one of my favorite love stories for a place. But this collection was straight garbage. (I'll let me wife take the time to detail all of the myriad ways in which it was so; when she finishes her review, I'll link to it here.)
[1 star only because a) Goodreads doesn't allow reviews of 0 stars and because b) Bass turned into a good writer.]
October 31, 2019
tread read He said, in brief, and he did "Five or six words a year: well chosen, made beautiful by the exclusion of all the others."
January 18, 2023
These early personal essays hint at the writer Bass was to become, but sometimes get by on charm rather than the character of his prose.
July 6, 2025
Charming and captivating. One of my moae favorite authors
March 23, 2012
This book is a collection of thirteen essays written by a man with an obvious love of nature and being outdoors. The first essay was my favorite and will have you driving to the nearest Sonic for a strawberry milkshake. (I did)
I am a road tripper and love to spend time outdoors, and the book did a good job of jarring memories of trips I have taken. For that, it was a worthwhile book.
Some of the essays dealt with fishing and camping and things that I felt no connection with. While I feel bad for the plight of the bears, I think the book lost me at that point.
It's such a nice thought to read that if we focus on the right things, and ignore the others, we can find wildness and freedom anywhere. I just have a hard time putting that to practice at work with call lights dinging and old people yelling Help Me!
On second thought, maybe that is wildness.
The best part of the book is this:
If it's wild to your own heart, protect it. Preserve it. Love it. And fight for it, and dedicate yourself to it, whether it's a mountain range, your wife, your husband, or even your job. It doesn't matter if it's wild to anyone else: if it's what makes your heart sing, if it's what makes your days soar like a hawk in the summertime, then focus on it. Because for sure, it's wild, and if it's wild, it'll mean you're still free. No matter where you are. --Rick Bass
I am a road tripper and love to spend time outdoors, and the book did a good job of jarring memories of trips I have taken. For that, it was a worthwhile book.
Some of the essays dealt with fishing and camping and things that I felt no connection with. While I feel bad for the plight of the bears, I think the book lost me at that point.
It's such a nice thought to read that if we focus on the right things, and ignore the others, we can find wildness and freedom anywhere. I just have a hard time putting that to practice at work with call lights dinging and old people yelling Help Me!
On second thought, maybe that is wildness.
The best part of the book is this:
If it's wild to your own heart, protect it. Preserve it. Love it. And fight for it, and dedicate yourself to it, whether it's a mountain range, your wife, your husband, or even your job. It doesn't matter if it's wild to anyone else: if it's what makes your heart sing, if it's what makes your days soar like a hawk in the summertime, then focus on it. Because for sure, it's wild, and if it's wild, it'll mean you're still free. No matter where you are. --Rick Bass
August 21, 2007
I don't think I'm allowed to review this book because I fe1l in love with the author while I was reading it. That being said, this is as close as you'll come to having road trips and camping experiences with someone you don't know. I do not like short stories, but I loved these. And, by the way, Rick Bass is just great (none of the ego of some of the other outdoor writers, but a wonderful, straight-forward writer - very uneven, though, so do a quick read through before you buy something - this though, you can take my word on). Come to think of it, Rick Bass is another Liz author. Are there ANY authors I've come by without Liz? Very few.
February 23, 2008
Las Cruces, New Mexico & Boulder, Colorado
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews