“For many of us who teach Literature and the Environment, Yaak and Bass have now joined the company of Walden and Thoreau, Yosemite and Muir, Arches and Abbey, Great Salt Lake and Terry Tempest Williams . . .. He elaborates on wilderness as an anchor, as the root of art, on writing as sculpture, but also on the artist as a sculpture—as a creator sculpted by the even greater creative spirit of place.”

“In Brown Dog of the Yaak, Bass uses his encounters with the natural world to galvanize his thoughts about activism, the writing life, and his passion for the wilderness . . .. Brown Dog of the Yaak is filled with nuggets of wisdom and provocative questions. Bass challenges us to lead authentic, inspired lives, to engage in both activism and art. He urges us not to rein back.”

“Brown Dog of the Yaak gives insight into the creative process—the very life—of one our finest writers has he comes to terms with why he writes and lives as he does . . .. [It] combines Rick Bass' heartfelt meditation on the life and the loss of his hunting dog Colter with his equally passionate thoughts on the place of activism and art in his life . . .. His writing of the hunt with Colter, of being swallowed up by the experience of the wild, is fine and true. His depiction of the work of fighting to save the valley that he loves, of presenting the rational side of his spiritual, faith-driven quest in the face of apathy and opposition, is both instructive and chilling.”

“The first two books in the new Credo series from Milkweed [Editions] articulate some simple truths about the outdoors and American writing that play brilliantly off each other. The deeper the writers go into their subjects, the clearer things become.”

“In this collection, Bass combines several memorable, short nonfiction tales about living in the Yaak Valley wilderness in southern Montana with an illuminating exploration of literary and political activism.”