In this passionate and wide-ranging collection, David James Duncan fuses memoir, science, comedy, and spiritual meditation into a urgent defense of wild rivers and native salmon—a book that insists our relationship to water is not merely ecological but deeply, irreducibly human

In this remarkable collection of essays, acclaimed author David James Duncan braids his contemplative, rhapsodic, and activist voices together into a potently distinctive whole, speaking with power and urgency about the vital connections between our water–filled bodies and this water–covered planet. All twenty–two pieces in this collection swirl and eddy around his early–forged bond with the rivers of the Pacific Northwest and their endangered native salmon. With a bracing blend of story, science, and comedy, Duncan relates mystical, life–changing adventures; draws incisive portraits of the humans and wild creatures who shaped his destiny; rips the corporate greed and political folly that have brought whole ecosystems to ruin; and meditates on the spiritual and practical necessity of acknowledging our dependence on water in its primal state.