WINTER: Notes From Montana by Rick...

WINTER: Notes From Montana by Rick Bass, illustrated by Elizabeth Hughes (Houghton Mifflin/Seymour Lawrence: $9.95). A respected short-story writer and scientist, Bass documents his attempt to survive a subzero winter in a remote cabin on the Kootenai River in northwestern Montana. In what initially sounds like a hair-brained scheme, Bass and his girlfriend volunteer to become caretakers of a ranch in a valley with no electricity and only 30 other inhabitants. As both of them are Southerners, they have only the vaguest notions of how to cope with the arctic cold, and Bass describes the learning process with understated good humor: “It can be so wonderful, finding out you were wrong, that you are ignorant, that you know nothing, not squat.” Although he comes to savor the isolation of their home (relieved by trips to the local tavern for beer and televised football), Bass discovers that the extreme cold and the need to prepare for its numbing presence assumes a dominant presence in his life: His need to cut firewood becomes both an obsession and a metaphor for his growing skill as an outsdoorsman.