When Robyn Scott was seven years old, her family swapped a tranquil existence in New Zealand for an adventurous new life in Botswana.Twenty Chickens for a Saddle is Scott's beautifully written portrait of her idyllic childhood there. A graduate of Cambridge University, she lives in London but works and travels frequently in Africa.

"What does your family think?"

This question is the unchallenged front-runner among those I've been asked about Twenty Chickens for a Saddle, the story of my childhood in Botswana. It is also the second question I put to myself when I set about writing, and one that I have asked my family and myself repeatedly ever since. The answers, unsurprisingly, have been varied and evolving, and, while never disapproving, thankfully became more positive as the initial clumsy pages slowly metamorphosed into a respectable book.

That is, except in one case: one that illuminates the heart of the challenges for me in writing this story.

My literary agent, meeting my maternal grandparents a few months ago, had posed the well-worn question. We were having sundowners – whiskies, brandies and salted peanuts – which, but for the lush backdrop of a Cape Town garden, were straight out of the now faraway world of the book. "It's a decent read," replied my grandfather. "And quite nicely written," he added. Then he frowned, almost accusingly. "But maybe now you can explain to me what on earth the fuss is about? Why would anyone care what we all got up to in a little town in Botswana?"

This had been the first question I asked myself two years earlier, when it was suggested I should write a book. "No one would," I'd told myself. The conclusion was persistent: When, after a few months of others' encouragement, I dusted off the idea and wrote a hesitant first few thousand words, I reviewed them with dismay.

I had begun – unimaginatively – with my first day in Botswana, when I met both the country and my paternal grandfather; and when, in the gathering darkness, two brown fruit moths fluttered down and sipped red wine-laced grape juice from the corners of my grandfather's lips. The memory was vivid and magical. But in the unforgiving light of the morning after words met page, it seemed suddenly indulgent: Two moths? Who cares? The magic was in being there as a little girl . . . magical only to me.

Snakes, I decided: safely, objectively, indisputably exciting.

I rewrote the beginning, featuring a large, poisonous, ultimately disembowelled puff adder in the first few paragraphs, relegating the humble moths deep into the story. Increasingly confident, I proceeded over the next weeks to describe – littering adverbs and adjectives – the black mamba that had dangled menacingly over my shocked father from a shower head; the heart-stopping evening my little sister had heroically chased another (even bigger!) black mamba poised to fatally strike our tiny terrier; a burly, scarred friend of ours who'd bravely broken a crocodile's jaw; several swashbuckling snake-lion-mortal-danger stories from my wild grandfather's early days in the wilds of Botswana.

I soon ran out. And after four frustrating discussions with my parents and siblings, I had just a couple more. Beyond these, the dinner party hits, nothing. Think harder, I pleaded. By then putting together a proposal, I was becoming concerned that even if an agent liked the idea I might nevertheless, horribly, find myself with nothing more to say.

My agent, David Godwin – now eyed quizzically over a crystal whisky glass – had liked the idea. "But the book came alive for me with the moths," he'd said to my astonishment. "You should begin with the moths." And so began for me the delightful process of discovering how the quieter, character-rich moments, hovering discreetly in the shadows of grander memories, often most comfortably inhabit the page. And in evoking these, began in each of us a gathering snowball of recollections.

The recollections came, naturally, in varying shades. But when I showed the first draft to my family, all but two differences were quickly resolved. My father disputed that he and his father stopped talking to each other. "He stopped talking to me," he maintained. My mother disputed a description of the mechanism of a catapult built to stun geckos, to scare them into dropping their tails, to feed to the pet snakes in our schoolroom. On both, I stood my ground.

Hours before the deadline for the final draft, my mother was helping me do a last frantic fact check. I walked into the lounge to find her perched on the sofa, surrounded by hundreds of pages – several including arguably less-than-flattering descriptions of her. In her hand was a wooden ruler, pierced with a drawing pin, almost a la the catapult. Seeing me, she smiled, pointed it at the bookcase, and released a rubber band stretched along its length. The band flew wildly off course. "See," she said triumphantly.

The moths begin the book. Of the early stories, the puff adder alone is found in its pages. The catapult mechanism remains unresolved. We are all still talking to each other.

How I came to write ‘Why I Came West’ It seems like I’ve always been writing books about the Yaak Valley: or have been, at least, since I first wandered into this valley in the most northwestern corner of Montana, in the summer of 1987. The valley is roughly a million acres of low-elevation Pacific Northwest rainforest nestled in a bowl of the Northern Rockies, the wildest and most biologically diverse valley in the West.

I inhabited that first year in a state of suspended bliss and wonder, wandering the hills and writing fiction. It was only after I had been there four full seasons that I began to notice, however, the slipping-away, then rushing-away, of wildness – new dust-riven logging roads being plowed far and high up into the valley’s wildest haunts. At that point, I began to write about my love for the valley, and my hopes for its future.

That’s what writers generally do when the object of their affection is at risk of being lost. There’s all the more inclination for a writer to write, trying to slow or deflect or outright prevent the damage.

I’m not sure when it occurred to me that in all my years and all my books, I had not yet so much changed anything in the valley, but had myself been changed by the struggling, entreating, lobbying and yearning – the ceaseless caterwauling of 21 years of activism on behalf of this hard-logged and overlooked place that doesn’t have a significant enough political constituency (only 150 people live year-round in the upper, wilder half of the valley) to gain much Congressional notice.

I’ve come to realize that everything about this valley has shaped me into who I am – has given me cause to question my faith as an environmentalist living in the woods. The only way to be effective, I think, is to dive deeper into the local community: tough duty for a hermit poet. And watching vast stretches of overstocked second- and third-growth forest die has turned me into a logger, of sorts – though I still cherish and demand, with what feels some days like every breath and every thought, wilderness designation and protection for the farther, wilder country: the true untouched remnant wilderness, guideposts of ecological health.

Living in the forest and tasting the wild grouse – hunting them with my dog – and following the elk in the snows of autumn, and gathering mushrooms in the spring, and berries in the fall, has turned me from a hunter-for-hobby into one who is about as close to a subsistence hunter as can still found in the Lower 48.

Living off the grid in deep cold winters has turned me from a sometimes-effete literary guy into a plumber and mechanic of sorts. A sharpener of saws.

This valley has shaped me, but everything about the West has shaped me. Growing up in petrochemical Texas in the 1960s, under the shield of Anglo-Western myths, shaped me; studying wildlife science and geology in northern Utah, a Gentile among the Mormons, in that beautiful landscape and gentle culture, shaped me. The American West has always buffeted and shaped individuals, and continues to do so; this is one of its great values to our nation and society, and one of the many reasons the protection of our last big wild vital places – our homeland – is so important, not just for the sake of the mountains themselves, and the shimmering dignity and vitality of intact wild places, and the plants and animals and processes that live there, but for our own questionable and malleable and puny selves, as well.

We need wilderness. The more confusing and crowded and "civilized" the world becomes, the more we need it. The faster it disappears, the more we need it.

Why I Came West is about the different paths that have led me to this understanding, and about the challenges that have been placed in my way. I’m pleased to report that our little community has drafted a legislative proposal that we sent on to our delegation, in March: one which includes some Yaak wilderness. We might finally be getting closer. The land is changing slowly, degree by degree and year by year, while the changes in me have been huge.

An acclaimed nature writer and novelist, Rick Bass worked as a geologist for eight years before moving West and settling in the Yaak Valley of Montana. His many books include The Lives of Rocks, Platte River and Colter: The True Story of the Best Dog I Ever Had. His latest book, Why I Came West: A Memoir, is being published this month by Houghton Mifflin.

My new book, The Mighty Queens of Freeville: A Mother, a Daughter, and the Town That Raised Them, is an affectionate memoir of my experience as a single mother. The book spans the 18 years I spent raising my daughter, Emily, with the help of my family.

I didn’t set out to write a memoir, however. My intention was to write a how-to book, full of tips, hints and useful information. Because I’m a syndicated advice columnist, I’m used to telling people “how to”—how to cure a heartache, how to confront a friend or how to manage an obnoxious mother-in-law. Due to the success of my column, writing an advice book seemed like a natural fit. My agent and various editors referred to the advice book project as a “slam dunk.”
I was pondering the challenges of writing my how-to book during a trip I took from my home in Chicago to visit family in Freeville, the little farming village in upstate New York where generations of my family have grown up and grown old.

While there, I went to the village school—the same one I attended as a child—to watch my niece’s kindergarten play. On the very same creaky wooden stage where I poured out my own pint-sized aspirations as a kindergartner, I watched my niece and her classmates act out and reflect the story of our lives in this small community. The kids were dressed as chickens, pigs and Holstein cows. They sang and danced in a make-believe barnyard.
It was adorable.
I looked around. The audience was populated with people, many of whom I’ve known all my life. I sat in my folding chair, flanked by my daughter, sister and mother in the old auditorium my grandfather and other men in the village had helped to build.
Given my surroundings, I couldn’t help but think about the arc of my own life. My how-to book idea went away in that moment and I decided instead to write my own story.

In my work as an advice columnist, people often challenge me by asking how I know what I know. I’m not a counselor. I don’t have an advanced degree. I got here the hard way, by living my life and making my share of mistakes. I took the back roads of life, through marriage and divorce and raising my daughter as a single parent. I got here with the help and support of the people in my little world.

My agent was skeptical when I told her I wanted to write about my daughter, aunts and cousins, my sisters and mother. We are ordinary people whose lives, nonetheless, have been blessed with incident. I told her I wanted to write about people and livestock and the little community I come from. 
My agent asked me to write a chapter. She said, “I want to see if there is any there there.”

The first chapter I wrote detailed the loss and longing I felt when my own father abandoned our family farm, leaving his four children to run our failing dairy. And then I wrote another chapter, about the fumbling hilarity of coping with the livestock he had left behind. As I was writing the book, Emily graduated from high school in Chicago and I made the decision to move back to Freeville permanently. Once again, I was surrounded by my family—the women Emily refers to as “the Mighty Queens.”

I wrote about blind dates and my work life. I wrote about my faith and personal failings. I wrote about sending Emily to college and saying goodbye to the person I had raised and was now launching into adulthood. I wrote about “the Mighty Queens,” those women who had supported us, championed our successes and wept with us during our difficult times.

During the course of working on the book, my dear aunt Lena died and we buried her in our family plot in Freeville. I reconnected with the people in my hometown who are all characters in my life story. I fell in love with a man I had known since childhood. And finally, my story felt complete.
 In my work giving advice to other people, I often feel that the two hardest questions for any of us to answer are, “Who am I?” and “What do I want?” I’ve struggled with those questions myself—but finally, through telling my own story, I found the answers.

Amy Dickinson succeeded the legendary Ann Landers as the advice columnist for the Chicago Tribune in 2003. Her column, “Ask Amy,” is now syndicated in 200 newspapers. She is also a regular panelist on the NPR quiz show, “Wait, Wait . . . Don’t Tell Me.”