Drifting into Darien: A Personal and Natural History of the Altamaha River by Janisse Ray

Drifting into Darien: A Personal and Natural History of the Altamaha River Reviews

• 
  Jan Rice

  This book is about Janisse Ray and the Altamaha River, which she loves and wants to preserve. Her imagery is lovely and evocative—for example, on blackberries. (I have blackberries on my mind lately, since growing a small patch at home.) Here’s what she writes, having been thwarted at first on her blackberry mission by the residue of a recent forest fire:
  
  “…In the center of the thicket, where the canes were sturdy and more than head-tall, the fire had not penetrated, and here the blackberries were succulent, black, an inch and a half long, hanging in gorgeous clumps. A cool, rainy spring had been good to the plants; they were redolent with fruit.
  We ate our fill and picked enough for a pie, a smoky blackberry river pie.”
  
  My blackberries are pale copies of those!
  
  My favorite part of the book is the scary bullfrog chorus in the middle of the night, which was the selection she read at the 2011 Decatur (Georgia) Book Festival when the book was new.
  
  The only gripe I have is this—I wanted more of Janisse in the book. I think she was holding back.
  
  It may be just me. Other reviews were generally glowing. All gave four or five stars. So I may be out of line. Maybe I’m just dense. Take the following comments with a grain of salt. Yet, even though the reviews were all positive, I think more people should be reading this book. Why aren’t they?
  
  The author wrote that her job as a writer is to present the facts. She’s talking about the way we are manipulated by language. People won’t speak out or can’t do so clearly, and we get a distorted picture. She would like to give us the real deal and say what she means. She does, of course. But she could do so more resoundingly if she gave us more than the facts. I know she could impact us more intensely because of the way she came across in her presentation. She packs a punch! The book, in comparison, is muted. Sometimes truth is more than just the facts. Give us your whole truth, Janisse!
  
  In the book she criticizes herself for not being communal enough, not always being a group-experience sort of person who wants to share everything. She says that’s a weakness she’s tried to change. She calls her streak of individualism “dark.” But she is—herself. That’s what I wanted more of—to absorb all the facts and more, only refracted through the author’s truth and unified into a more organic and flowing whole through her story. (Finding out what happened with the frame-up perpetrated on her then-new husband at the beginning of the book wouldn’t hurt, either. I mean, we do find out, but in a sort of abstract way.)
  
  Could politics and social views in and around her home base be a muting factor? Is she treading too carefully around something?
  
  All I’m saying is don’t hold out on us! Tell us your truth that we need to know.
  
  P.S. Thanks for the shout-out on p. 116 to the Florida research biologist Paul Moler—if I’m not mistaken, a high school classmate of mine.
  
  Update, Sept. 12, 2013: The book has come out in paperback, and the local newspaper has done
  a feature, complete with pictures of author and river scenes. Nice!
• 
  Dianne

  Off to a great start - please set me adift on a river, any river.... And in the end, beautiful writing about a huge watershed that I've never explored but now will. Janisse is a fierce voice for conservation of the water and longleaf pine she loves in FL and in GA - her work and her writing are making a difference.
• 
  Patty

  Janisse Ray is an activist and writer whom I admire tremendously. I think I have read all her books. The first was my favorite...Ecology of a Cracker childhood...They combine personal history with natural history in a unique style of narrative. She analyzes and describes like a scientist, but puts so much feeling into her writing that I think of her as someone I know.
• 
  Jeff Garrison

  The Altamaha River is one of the most unspoiled rivers in America, and Janisse Ray has lived most of her life near its banks. As an infant she was baptized (accidentally) on her first river trip when her father’s homemade boat sunk. In this book, she sets out to explore the river with her husband and a group dedicated to preserving it. In the first half of the book tells the story of their trip down the river as she recalls its history and explaining its natural setting. The group feels a kinship with river men who built log rafts out of longleaf pines and floated them down the river in ages past. Along the way they pass Ragpoint, where raft men used to tie a rag onto a tree for good luck, a tradition that continues to this day. They float past some of the largest cypress left standing, trees that have been spared the logger’s saw. In addition to the narrative, the first part of the book contains a numbers of lists that include one of what they are carrying along with lists of birds seen and trees observed.
  
  The second half of the book consists of a series of personal essays in which the author explores various aspects of the river. These essays include a night fishing trip with a politician and a guide, a trip to the Bartram Botanical Gardens in Philadelphia where she investigates a “lost†species that had been found along the river. And then there is a humorous story about a trip with botanist to an area within the river’s watershed and the language gap that existed. She produces a rant directed at the United States Forest Service for their “liberal†definition as to what constitutes a forest. She tells of threats to the river from the discharge of a paper mill, the nitrogen that runs from farmer’s fields, and the problems with clear-cutting. She makes a case that a river is only as healthy as the forest through which it flows.
  
  These quotes come from the final chapter of her book:
  
  What I needed was to watch the amber water sliding past the ivory sandbars under a high blue sky. I needed the peace of wildness.
  We go to lay our burdens down, to refuel ourselves, to fill our eyes with beauty, to enter the unchanging, to experience metaphorical time. We go to be transformed. (211)
  
  This is the third book I’ve read by Janisse Ray. My favorite is still the Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, in which she tells about growing up with the longleaf pines and issues a call for their protection. I, too, grew up under longleafs, a few hundred miles to the north and share her concern for these majestic trees. I also liked Ray's second book, Wild Card Quilt. This is a good book, but in my opinion it doesn't rise to the level of the other two books of hers I've read.
• 
  Nikki

  Although Janisse Ray is mostly known for her book Ecology of a Cracker Childhood , Drifting into Darian which was written over ten years later, shows a lot of growth and is a much more beautiful read in my opinion. The reviews on the back cover insist that every endangered ecosystem should have a spokeswoman as passionate as Janisse, and she certainly gave me an appreciation of "her" river. The essays in this collection are all woven together well, and while the language and tone isn't always consistent, the book is structured in a way that lets you slip into a river. Unlike a lot of other nature writers, Janisse's story is hard one - she's trying to call attention to a region that many have forgotten about, and so in a lot of cases her essays never find happy endings, or endings at all, which can be frustrating to those of us used to reading and writing fiction who want things to be all tied up at the end of 230ish pages. The Altamaha River is still in danger; Janisse never finds out who wrote the threatening letter; she never finds her spiny mussel; there are no great environmental victories in this collection . But the collection does do what nature writers are meant to do - it calls attention to an area in need of saving. A great read for anyone who wants a good introduction to this imperiled and beautiful area of the South.
• 
  Mark Hainds

  It always add an element of complexity to review a book by someone you know and respect, but here goes.
  The meat of the book is about the Altamaha River and everything that surrounds, influences, or inhabits it: forests, people, plants, mussels, birds, the weather. All of this is excellent and first rate writing typical of Janisse Ray.
  After the river is a diatribe against clear-cutting and the nuclear plant in which the usual beauty of her writing is obscured by her anger. I didn't like this part - not because of things she says, but because it wasn't the quality of writing that I expect from her.
  
  But in the last chapters, her style returns and she more than makes up for what a few chapters lack.
  
  I will stick with my 5-star rating, and I look forward to reading the Seed Underground.
• 
  Deborah

  Drifting into Darien is the 3rd book by Janisse Ray that I have read. The Altamaha River is the thread that holds this work together, mysterious, dark and wild. The 1st part of the book consists of an actual journey down the river and the 2nd part consists of related stories and essays. The 2nd part seemed disjointed at first, but soon the reader is pulled into the rhythm of that part also. She is an effective champion of the river, presenting facts and statistics, examining the effects of pollution on every aspect of the river, its flora and fauna, its tributaries, and the whole watershed area. She is perhaps an even more persuasive crusader when she expresses her joy in the natural environment, the waters she paddles, the mussels she digs, every bird, fish, insect, salamander, tree and bush observed. The love flows through from the pen to the paper.
• 
  Josh

  Sometimes she raves too much but I don't know why it should bother me since I agree with her for the most part. However, when you read passages like the one below (and there are many), you know this is a good book and worth your time.
  
  "I, then, pull against all the force of the outgoing tide, and of the gravity of the emptying river, and also the cloud-thick sky. And I bring back the entire sea in a fish, and the universe, and when the senator scoops it out of the night waters, it is a channel catfish possibly a hair bigger than his own, the first one. I never dreamed I could catch such a thing." Janisse Ray
• 
  Randall

  An excellent guide to drifting down the Altamaha River in South Georgia . A wonderful introduction on the biosphere which is contained in the longest undammed river in the US. A trip I would like to take in a Kayak.
• 
  Diana

  Janisse Ray is my hero. This is a beautiful book so far.
  
• 
  Elliott Walsh

  This is a beautiful and passionate account of a precious river. Very good writing in this book, if a few too many lists at times.
• 
  Susan Stans

  Janisse Ray writes wonderful stories about the natural environment. I also enjoyed this book although it's not as good as the Ecology of a Cracker Childhood. She sure can bring the woods alive.
• 
  Taylor Brown

  Wow. In my top 10 of all time, and not just because I have a personal relationship with the Altamaha. Just incredible.
• 
  Terry

  I wrote Ray personally and thanked her for this book, for her love and anger and joy and for the pictures she painted in my mind.
• 
  Karen

  Altamaha is a significant river crossing South Georgia and ending up on the coast at various barrier islands. This is an interesting book on the ecology and history of the river.
• 
  Robin Wright Gunn

  A must read for anyone interested in coastal Georgia and its inextricable link to the communities up the rivers.
• 
  Jaclyn

  i felt like i read this book before.. i had to finish early because, someone at the library was waiting for it.
• 
  Susan

  I really enjoyed this book, following along on a canoe trip and memories of the author. And learning about the river and South Georgia.
• 
  Ray Zimmerman

  This book is an in depth look at the Altamaha watershed, and an enjoyable read. The first 1/2 is the story of a float trip on the river.
• 
  Diana Richtman

  I really enjoyed the first section of this book. I didn’t like the second half quite as much. But it did make me want to kayak down the Altamaha!