Run, River, Run: A Naturalist's Journey Down One of the Great Rivers of the West

Ann Zwinger is a peerless writer. Each paragraph, sentence, and word is like a drop of sunlit dew; sparkling and yet sublime. You need a dictionary sometimes, but her great use of the King's English raises your consciousness without being tiring or boring. Each sentence invites a tour to the next, just as Zwinger's favorite river, the Green River in Wyoming and Utah, always seems to have just one more tantalizing view around the next bend.Mrs. Zwinger combines notes from several trips on the Green into a single, seamless narrative traversing the river from its source to its meeting with the Colorado. The only areas left out are the Fontanelle and Flaming Gorge reservoirs, which are but temporary vandalizations by the Bureau of Reclamation. The book visits the river both from a naturalist's and a historian's viewpoint, with plenty of metaphors and visualization of an an almost lyrical nature included. It is never-ending delight to read Mrs. Zwinger's loving prose about one of the few still partially wild places in our country. You can close your eyes every paragraph or two, and be magically transported to the scenes and events she unfolds. The book also has a gently humorous quality, as when Mrs. Zwinger describes clouds of mosquitoes, and losing a Dutch oven in the murky water.Mrs Zwinger's knowledge of geography is absolutely correct when she points out that the Green River is the true master stream of the Colorado watershed, and that only a historical accident has resulted in the former "Grand" river being renamed as the "Colorado". I should note that the author is also a gifted artist and cartographer. Her maps at each chapter's start are excellent guides, and her numerous charcoal sketches of plants, birds, tools such as the old Green River knife, and the like, more than make up for lack of photographs in the book. Indeed, such would only be distractive. Mrs. Zwinger's last sentence in the book, penned as the Green River meets the Colorado at the foot of Stillwater Canyon, reads "I do not want to hear the river ending." This is an apt sentiment as applied to her book as well. This was one of the first books I ever read on the West. Since then, I hunt up and read everything she writes. I have never been disappointed. You may wish to read ""Wind in the Rock" and "The Mysterious Lands", among others. I close by simply stating that any library that doesn't have this fabulous book on the West, the river, and the human spirit, is incomplete.