My Story as Told by Water: Confessions, Druidic Rants, Reflections, Bird-watchings, Fish-stalkings, Visions, Songs and Prayers Refracting Light, From Living Rivers, in the Age of the Industrial Dark

My Story as Told by Water covers a varied terrain ranging from environmental activism to the virtues of fly-fishing without a hired guide. The book is really a collection of essays (many published in other books and periodicals) about rivers in the Northwestern United States. Duncan shares much of his early life growing up in neighborhoods just beyond the growing tentacles of Portland, Oregon. He writes openly about this family, including his bitter confrontation over the war in Vietnam with his dad, and the loss of his brother. Given such a backdrop, it's easy to understand how Duncan turned to the solitude of fishing local streams to deal with the pain of his youth. Later in the book, Duncan finds his stride writing about the not-so-bright outlook facing wild salmon along the Columbia and Snake Rivers. You can almost feel the tears welling up in his eyes as he describes their near exit from his world. He sums up the disaster of the salmon run on the Snake River this way: "The babble of `salmon management' rhetoric has taken a river of prayful human yearning, diverted it into a thousand word-filled ditches, and run it over alkali. When migratory creatures are prevented from migrating, they are no longer migratory creatures: they're kidnap victims. The name of the living vessel in which wild salmon evolved and still thrive is not `fish bypass system,' `smolt-deflecting diversionary strobe light,' or `barge.' It is River."Duncan opens his heart to the connections he has to rivers and wild fish. But more importantly, he gives us inspiration for making our own connections to those wild places.

"I am haunted by water" (p. 132), David James Duncan writes in this collection of 21 essays. I discovered Duncan when two of his essays included here, "Who Owns the West?" and "god," appeared in The Sun magazine. It is no surprise that this book is a finalist for the National Book Award. Part memoir, part contemplative, wilderness love story, Duncan's STORY AS TOLD BY WATER runs deep. For Duncan, "trees and mountains are holy. Rain and rivers are holy. Salmon are holy. For this reason alone I will fight with all my might to keep them alive" (p. 107).Duncan suspected, as a boy, "that rivers and mountains are myself turned inside out. I'd heard at church that the kingdom of heaven is within us and thought, Yeah, sure. But the first time I walked up a trout stream, fly rod in hand, I didn't feel I was 'outside' at all; I was traveling further and further in." The wonders of his boyhood world, he writes, "the things that filled me at first sight with awe and yearning--were, in order of preference, (1) Rivers, (2) Mountains, (3) Ancient Forest, (4) the Ocean, and (5) Cute Girls (p. 9). In these essays, Duncan follows his "interior coho compass" (p. 13) through countless river walks, from Portland to Montana. Along the way, he discovers rivers are his "prayer wheels," and his "true home is wilderness" (p. 93). "Capitalist fundamentalism," he believes, "is the perfect Techno-Industrial religion, its goal being a planet upon which we've nothing left to worship, worry about, read, eat or love but dollar bills and Bibles" (p. 8).This is a book that moves with spiritual, passionate, insightful, and humorous currents, pulling its reader through calm, reflective moments to thrilling, white-water rants along the way. Duncan writes with the colors and sounds of nature. His STORY AS TOLD BY WATER is a story that will not only move you, it just might baptise you.G. Merritt

I am an unabashed fan of David James Duncan. Since I discovered "The River Why" 15 years ago, I have shared the sheer delight of his writing with everyone who would listen.This time Duncan chooses nonfiction. Part autobiography, part conservation plea, part apology and part explanation, he is always articulate and passionate. Take his explanation for the importance of the endangered Stillwater Marsh on the Truckee River:"Let me stress the Stillwater's importance in a storyteller's way:"Imagine running in one of the great American marathons. Or, if you're in the kind of shape I'm in, imagine jogging, then walking, and in the end possibly crawling to the finish line of an American marathon. Whatever your condition, by the time you reached the finish line you'd be in dire need of fluids, food and rest. Stillwater Marsh - for waterfowl and shorebirds enduring the marathon we call migration - is one such finish line. But now imagine that, after giving your all for twenty-six miles, you're greeted by a sign that reads:"SORRY. WE'RE FRESH OUT OF FLUIDS, FOOD AND REST AREAS HERE. YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE TO RUN ANOTHER TWENTY-SIX MILES TO ANOTHER FINISH LINE. MAYBE THEY CAN HELP YOU THERE."We've all read of the importance of wildlife refuges. Duncan puts it in terms that any high school athlete can understand. Self-deprecating, faintly amusing, but crystal clear. Passionate but not shrill. But this book is more than an exceptionally articulate set of essays in support of conservation. It's also a glimpse into the personal life of the author. Few autobiographers can be honest and complete. Katherine Graham comes to mind. Even fewer authors. From his youth, to his first book, to his reasons for leaving his beloved Oregon coast, to his move to Montana. It's all laid out with painful honesty.I wish Duncan would write more. "The Brothers K" and "River Teeth" were a long time coming. But "My Story as Told by Water" was worth the wait.

David James Duncan is one of those rare writers that leaves you forever changed after encountering their work. I know I will gratefully never be the same after reading this book. I walked into it one person, and upon completing it, was another. His perceptions of the world are so rare that the fact he can write them down with such fathomless talent, passion and care, verges on unbelievable. I only come across writing this powerful once every five to ten years and count it a true blessing when it happens. The portion titled "A Prayer for the Salmon's Second Coming" should be read by every single American period. In another chapter called "When Birdwatching Is a Blood Sport" he writes, "When wild elk, to remain alive, are forced to wipe out wild salmon, it is time, in my book, to get sad". This book woke me up to many things I'd slept through. If you are more fortunate than I, and already awake, the words in this book will make your own words even more powerful. Buy it, read it, treasure it, share it. You'll never regret it.

Once again, David James Duncan captures most eloquently the inherent spirituality of nature. This collection of essays, speeches, and 1 song has moved me just as much as "The River Why", perhaps even more so, as this book is set in beautiful, raw, besieged reality. I dare you to read this book and not be inspired to make your corner of the world a little better, and a little more hospitable to every living thing. Duncan writes that he "became a nonfiction writer--after no apprenticeship whatever--at the age of 40. I did so not out of a sense of calling, but out of a sense of betrayal, out of rage over natural systems violated, out of grief for a loved world raped, and out of a craving for justice." This is the passion that forms this book, a book created in love for the rivers his writing sings for, and anger for the desecration of those same rivers. BUY THIS BOOK!