Originally published in 1994, this book was a fly-fishing phenomenon in the way Howell Raines's Fly Fishing Through the Mid-Life Crisis was. Taking his fishing hobby to near metaphysical levels, Ted Leeson tells about his passions: rivers, trout, and fly fishing. With wry humor and rare insight, he explores questions that engage most fishermen: What is it about rivers that draws us so irresistibly, and why does fly fishing seem such an aptly suited...

When a loner, a jock, an outsider, and an Internet influencer go river rafting together for a school assignment, the four strangers end up sharing their secrets and relying on each other when the trip turns dangerous.

Water, the most critical fluid on the planet, is seen as savior, benefactor, and Holy Grail in these fifteen essays on natural and faux oases. Fluvial geologist and former Colorado River guide Rebecca Lawton follows species both human and wild to their watery roots--in warming deserts, near rising Pacific tides, on endangered, tapped-out rivers, and in growing urban ecosystems. Lawton thoroughly and eloquently explores human attitudes toward water...

A history of the role of rivers in shaping American politics, economics, and society draws on experts from diverse backgrounds to explore how the natural and human transformations of rivers have made a significant impact on the nation.

As featured in the documentary, DamNation (Patagonia, 2014). During his first summer, Spencer built a sheltered viewing platform, a place to sit with Sis and his notebook, and observe the denizens of the pool for months, and, finally, years on end. Shortly before setting up camp during his first season, Spencer cut the points off the hooks of all his steelhead flies, freeing himself to see more deeply the beauty of his surroundings. As the predatory...

Before the novel and the film Deliverance appeared in the early 1970s, any outsiders one met along the Chattooga River were likely serious canoeists or anglers. In later years, untold numbers and kinds of people have felt the draw of the river's torrents, which pour down the Appalachians along the Georgia-South Carolina border. Because of Deliverance the Chattooga looms enigmatically in our shared imagination, as iconic as Twain's Mississippi-or maybe...

Life is an adventure. Some things we can control, other experiences randomly happen. We can choose the environment, however, and the Deschutes River located in Central Oregon has had a significant impact on my life. Through poems, essays, and photographs with their captions, experiences will be shared in hopes that the reader can relate to shared feelings or vicariously enjoy a most refreshing immersion. Not all life's happenings are pleasant or have...

That one could "walk drishod on the backs" of schools of salmon, shad, and other fishes moving up Atlantic coast rivers was a not uncommon kind of description of their migratory runs during early Colonial times. Accounts tell of awe-inspiring numbers of spawners pushing their way upriver, the waters "running silver," to complete life cycles that once replenished critical marine fisheries along the Eastern Seaboard. This is a hugely important, fascinating,...

"Over the centuries, cities were built over rivers, hoping to address pollution and flooding concerns. However, naturalists now advocate freeing buried rivers to manage urban water issues"

At age eighty, Tony Taylor journeys from Sydney, Australia, to British Columbia to fish the Cowichan River with his eight-year-old grandson, Ned. The trip is an opportunity for Tony to return to a landscape that has had a profound effect on his life and his way of thinking, and to share this place with his grandson. As Tony teaches Ned the patient art of fly-fishing, a lifetime of memories, thoughts, and stories unspool in peaceful reflections by...