NONFICTION - Sept. 15, 1991

STEPPING WESTWARD: The Long Search for Home in the Pacific Northwest by Sallie Tisdale (Henry Holt: $19.95; 272 pp.). The Northwest, writes Sallie Tisdale toward the end of “Stepping Westward,” was “a land meant for solitude and isolation, for the singular existence of the single man, and it (was) turned into a world of commerce and families.” That’s the nub of this book--the notion that the Northwest, however beautiful, needs to be a hard place, one in which nature is allowed to rule in the only way she knows. Explorers, Indians, octopi, rain, mountains, salmon and, above all, trees: These are Tisdale’s favorite subjects, and they stand in stark opposition to modern man’s contributions to the Northwest: clear-cut forests, hydroelectric dams, plastic totem poles composed of yellow happy-faces. Tisdale’s portrait of her home territory is personal and ingenuous, but sometimes overindulgent.