NONFICTION - Feb. 10, 1991

WINTER: Notes From Montana by Rick Bass (Houghton Mifflin: $18.95; 144 pp.). Anyone who’s spent an eternity on a clogged freeway probably has had time to weave the fantasy right down to the fringe: You pack up all your earthly possessions, escort your loved one to the passenger seat, and set off down life’s highway, headed for the vast unclogged unknown. For most of us, tethered to mortgages and careers, it’s an ephemeral notion, as fleeting as a puff of exhaust fumes. For Rick Bass, it was a life choice: With more imagination than money, he and his girlfriend set off in search of an isolated plot of land for rent, where they could write and paint in peace. They found it, to their good fortune and the reader’s, in Montana--where Bass kept this elegant journal, in addition to writing a novel and coping with life in the great outdoors. As in: Never cut wood wearing a sweatshirt with a drawstring, lest you get the string caught on your wrist and almost cut your foot off. Bass’ writing is lean and remarkably frank. He confesses that he and Elizabeth were deeply saddened, not thrilled, to hear that another escape-from-civilization couple were going to have a baby; the four adults would no longer be a special quartet. He admits that, ever the writer, he asked Elizabeth to take notes on the pinochle-game gossip. This slim volume covers September to March. Let’s hope Bass decides that spring and summer are worth a sequel.