Yellowstone Autumn: A Season of Discovery in a Wondrous Land

Maybe you need to be male, in your 50's and a fly fisher to get this book ... but then again, maybe not. It's about trying to age with some grace, the joys and problems of family life, Yellowstone Park and how we interact with the environment ... and yes, some fishing ... with flies. Wetherell has won numerous writing awards, but doesn't have the following that I think he deserves. I highly recommend his trilogy of Vermont River, Upland Stream and One River More. If you are of a certain age and find the rapidly changing world a bit confusing, you might enjoy North of Now, A Celebration of Country and the Soon to Be Gone.

I've been reading W.D. Wetherell's Yellowstone Autumn, which is exceptional. This is a true fly-fishing experience book, where the author engages the fishing and environment of the place he is fishing to increase his awareness of his "self" and his current life situation. He begins with the truthful premise that we are connected to "place", to the greater environment, and to lose that connection is to lose the essential authentic (my words not his) awareness of one's self. So he goes off alone on his 56th birthday to do the hard work of re-establishing that connection in Yellowstone. His vunerable honesty is comforting and inspiring, regardless of your age. How successful he is . . . is important, but not as important as him making the effort to fish, to observe, to engage, and to understand. His writing reminds me of the Paul Shepard's Coming Home to the Age of Pleistocene, Melville'S Moby Dick, and my own unspoken intentions when planning fishing trips. If you love Yellowstone, if fishing has somehow lost an emotional/spiritual dimension for you, if fishing has uncomfortably become more about success than journey/experience . . . this read may be helpful.