College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press (1986)

Rick Bass’s deer pasture is centered in the rustic beauty of the Texas Hill Country—a land of ravines and hallows, dark and shady, with near-vertical bluffs. In the fall there the hickories turn gold and drop a ton of leaves into the creeks; the water is clear and cold and still.

Also in the fall the Bass men come there for a week of camping and hunting, for the deer pasture is in the heart of white-tailed deer country, and the Basses have leased that same 956 acres for hunting each November for the past forty-nine years.

In these seventeen delightful essays, handsomely illustrated with forty-one original drawings, the author tells the story of the deer pasture and its significance as a family tradition. It is not just a place to stalk deer – hunting is merely the frame for most of the stories. The deer pasture is also a place to get together, a place to chase armadillos, a place to tell campfire stories, listen to quail, make camp biscuits, and watch the antics of ringtails—and most important, a place to recharge spiritual and emotional batteries and to renew family ties.

In his celebration of rock houses and full moons of the Hill Country, of waterfalls and the habits of deer, Bass conveys the close relationship of man and nature even in this modern age. In his sketches of grandparents, uncles, and cousins and their ties to this piece of land he touches on the depths of the common bonds of family.

This book is not only for deer hunters and their families, but also for nature readers, even those who never go on a hunt.

New York, NY: Norton (1989)

In a collection of stories exploring the meaning of time in human encounters, some characters fight against it, others strive to recapture more innocent times, and still others create their own time and place

Athens, GA: The University of Georgia Press (1998)

Fiber is a story about the ravages of activism and the healing properties of art. It is a story about last chances, about crafting solutions from the wreckage of a devastated place, and about the high cost, emotionally and physically, of hope in the presence of despair. Writing from the Yaak Valley of northwestern Montana, the wildest valley in the Lower 48, Rick Bass portrays the plight of the artist deeply embedded in a place he loves. The author asks how a writer survives amidst the destruction of the natural world around him, if, like Bass, the writer must struggle passionately to protect a place like the Yaak from devastation.
As a work of fiction, Fiber elegantly follows the life of the narrator as he evolves from the geologist who takes, to the artist who gives, to the activist who fights, and finally to the troubling and magical “log fairy.”

New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin (1995)

Rick Bass’s recent trio of novellas, Platte River, was hailed by the San Francisco Chronicle as “a major step in [his] climb to the top echelon of American fiction writers.” Now, with this dazzling new collection, Bass establishes himself as a master of the short story. These tales embrace vibrant images of human life and exuberant explorations of the natural world. In the title story, a man remembers his youth in the Texas hill country when he participated in his uncle’s raucous escapades, which have taken new shape and meaning by what has happened since. Although his work is grounded in reality, Bass’s stories acquire fantastic proportions: enormous pigs charge through the streets and root beneath houses; a narrator meets a woman who runs up and down mountains; two wild boys converge deep in the woods to joust. Each of these ten stories is a mythical narrative celebrating the tentative, moving relationship between people and their environment.

Livingston, MT: Clark City Press (1992)

An essay advocating wolf reintroduction examines the fate of one small pack of wolves in northwest Montana, exploring, as well, the proper relationship between humans and nature.