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 by David James Duncan

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 Reviews

• 
  Kevin

  From description of the beached Western Grebe struggling for life mentioned early on, to the virile brown trout attempting to spawn but held fast between Duncan's hands on the last page -- a truly compelling clarion call for cynical, retreating nature-lovers such as myself to retain hope for survival of our world's natural wonders.
• 
  Carson

  Fantastic book. It took me a long time to read because every single essay is so evocative, so richly thought-provoking, that I could only read one at a time, set the book aside, and think about it for a while. David James Duncan is one of my new favorite writers. Funny, wise, and at times scathingly angry about the destruction of the rivers he calls home, this book is a must read for anyone who wants a reminder of how powerful words can be.
• 
  Jonathan Hiskes

  With some books, I have no idea what to say about them. Those are the ones I love the best. This one floods the heart, so it feels silly to speak about it from the mind.
• 
  Carol

  David Duncan describes himself as a River Soldier working for God. This fiction writer (The River Why, one of the SF Chronicle's The 20th Century's 100 Best Books of the American West) was driven to activism and nonfiction by despair over the condition of our rivers and the plight of our fish, the Salmon in particular.
  
  I now know about cyanide gold mining (don't buy gold, you all), river destruction and the interrupted life cycle (from mountain to ocean)and life of the salmon. I also appreciate flyfishers, now, even though I don't want to be one.
  
  David Duncan is a river obsessed, dam hating, fish loving poet, philosopher, naturalist and eco-environmentalist.
  
  Favorite quote: "A court in Idaho recently ruled that though the Nez Perce have a right to fish in usual and accustomed rivers, they have no right to ask white irrigators to leave water in those rivers."
• 
  Daven

  one of my favorite books
• 
  Ellen

  I was excited to read this book because I LOVED 'The River Why' and 'The Brothers K'...but I was honestly a bit disappointed. I appreciate his quest to tell the story of the dams and mining exploits that are killing waterways, but I like it better when he does it in the form of a good novel instead of a preachy memoir.
• 
  Dave Allen

  Very much liked this collection of essays, but because it was a collection, rating it is difficult. Some essays were 5+ others a 3, but a very insightful look at conservation.
• 
  Jeremy

  Everything you probably need to know about David James Duncan's collection of essays, My Story as told by Water is all there in its subtitle: Confessions, Druidic Rants, Reflections, Bird-watchings, Fish-stalkings, Visions, Songs and Prayers Refracting Light, from Living Rivers, in the Age of the Industrial Dark. Pretty much anything you need to know about Duncan's writing is there in that subtitle. It's wordy, flecked with humor, obsessed with a near religious fervor with fish, fishing, and rivers, and spiritual too. The only thing missing is baseball. I've loved Duncan's past writings. I love the way he wends and winds his way around and through what he wants to say. I love how he uses his full arsenal to tell a wicked story. I love that in his fiction. I loved it less in this collection of his non-fiction writing. And maybe my enthusiasm for his novels have clouded how I feel about this here. He addresses it, the tension between his fiction and non-fiction writerly self, and as he gets more caught up in "frenzy" (as he puts it) of his passions, saving the rivers and fish (all good and worthy causes), his non-fiction side has been winning (see: Rants). His clear passion starts to make his writing feel bogged down. What he can accomplish in his fiction is symphonic, and I may be selfish in this, but I would like, no, love, to see his writerly fiction side start to win again. But this book was originally published 18 years ago, with no new novel published to date. I'll wait.
• 
  Colby Holloway

  My story as told by water is a deceptive title, for that describes well the first 100 or so pages, but then the books takes a hard left and spends about another hundred pages republishing various activism articles he has written over the years, before ending with some mystical ruminations inspired by his time romping around rivers. While I enjoyed every section and found the activism section really interesting, I was fairly disappointed when the strong beginning failed to land the the title failed to materialize into a fully fleshed out story. But I suppose I may now learn my lesson and read the table of contents before I launch into my assumptions, I hate spoilers but sometimes there helpful to properly set my expectations. All in all, I can say I certainly have a greater appreciation for fish and skepticism towards the effectiveness of dams.
• 
  Heather

  Did you know that fishermen and hunters were the first environmentalists? Take for example
  Teddy Roosevelt, serious hunter, and serious conservationist. (TR's conservationism is how we got Yellowstone National Park and Yosemite National Park, for starters.) The concept of fishermen/hunters as environmentalists has often confused me, as a vegetarian, and I've often quipped, "We want to save 'em...so we can kill 'em!"
  
  After reading My Story as Told by Water this paradox seems much more plausible. After all, without healthy habitat, wildlife would cease to be abundant. And not all fishermen aim to kill—that's not necessarily what they enjoy most about the activity. In 2010, Henry Winkler was promoting his book
  I've Never Met an Idiot on the River: Reflections on Family, Fishing, and Photography and when interviewed on "Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me" (NPR) he talked about how he always catches to release during his annual fishing trips to Montana. He is on the river for more inward reasons—complete focus on one activity, thinking like a fish, that sort of thing.
  
  Looking for an A to B to C trajectory in your environmentalist memoirs? Nothing to see here. This book meanders around like the rivers Duncan waxes philosophic about throughout. In the beginning he's recalling his childhood, but before you know it he's including a speech given to a group of steelheaders (I'm going to assume this was Oregon Steelheaders) on the Sternwheeler while it paddled up and down the Columbia River. Then he's ranting about cyanide leach mining, in a piece that feels in many regards dated considering this book's release 15 years ago. Then he's including a piece of fiction which is a thinly veiled story (although quite amusing!) about the aforementioned method of mining. Ranting again, about damming the Snake River. Offering advice on how to get along with people who claim wildly different political views. Then recalling a dream where he helps
  Sherman Alexie catch an enormously large fish. Including a rejected essay about his favorite fishing guide, who happens to be invisible—framed by a conversation with the fishing magazine editor who called him to reject it.
  
  I suppose since I was expecting a more singular story (and was quite enthralled by his discussion of his early personal life in my hometown of Portland, and why he chose to move to the place I'd like to move), the jumps around weren't really my thing. Talking about fishing wasn't really my thing, although my understanding of fishing in general has increased since reading
  A River Runs Through It and Other Stories. Of course, now living a stone's through from Maclean's stomping grounds and sharing a passion for fishing, Duncan gets compared to Maclean an awful lot, but also uses Maclean's most famous piece as a touchstone in the book.
  
  Since there's a LOT in the book, I'd say there's probably something for everyone, including people who may not otherwise read a book published by the Sierra Club. Personally, my favorite parts of the book were when he talks about his childhood in Portland, Oregon. He speaks of places I know, and his narrative serves as an oral history of the development of East Multnomah County in the post-war years:
  I felt so panic-stricken by Fairview Creek's death that I tried—as if attempting to keep a stranded fish alive in a bucket—to transfer my need for water, whole, to the other stream in easy driving distance: Johnson Creek, source of my first glimpse of a coho and an inner realm. But a decade and fifty thousand industrious new human inhabitants had been murder on this old friend, too. I encountered none of the magic of Fairview Creek, little of the wildlife, no native fish species, few of the birds. Johnson Creek's only catchable trout were drab hatchery rainbows, planted in March by Fish and Wildlife to entertain local yokels on the April Opening Day. By May, no one fished for them because the same Fish and Wildlife people pronounced them too toxic to eat.
  (I live about three blocks from Johnson Creek, and the story of the creek is the story of man attempting to interfere with nature. As I write, it continues: the City of Portland has been working to "restore" certain stretches along the creek. In the case of the stretch they're currently working on, this has required diverting the creek...which is how Fairview Creek died in the author's narrative.)
  
  Duncan also tells of how he came to live in Montana. As a person who spent six months in Missoula and who is now convinced her hometown is just not good enough anymore, I found Duncan's words in "Who Owns the West Wrong Answer #3: The Personal Geography" to ring true for me: "...just as the Hudson is as far west as Joe can go without ceasing to be the Manhattanite he is, so the Continental Divide is as far east as I can go without ceasing to be me." And of course when Duncan calls upon Norman Mclean, he includes the universally acknowledged truth: "the world...[is] full of bastards, the number increasing rapidly the farther one gets from Missoula, Montana."
  Duncan eventually moved from Portland to Tillamook County and then settled in Lolo, which is just eight miles south of Missoula. So he knows. : )
• 
  Elizabeth

  I love this author's combination of science, history, keenly-observed nature memoir, and often-hilarious self reflection. His writing is distinctly flavored by his interest in eastern religions, which I appreciate, and he knows his way around Christian metaphors, too.
  
  As another reviewer described, it took me ages to read this (years!) because I kept having to stop... to recall my own near-religious experiences in nature, to reflect on modern man's unfortunate habit of ruining things, and/or to check the latest on various dam removal projects. I will confess that the essays that went deep into the politics and advocacy or river restoration were the hardest for me to get through; even though I know this is really importantant stuff, it just doesn't sing the way his other writing does.
• 
  Matt

  I fell in love with The River Why, and it will always hold a special place in my part. Since then I've also enjoyed quite a few of Duncan's other books and collections. I'd previously read some of the essays here (or maybe all?), and while there were certainly plenty of bright spots, the truth is I've read an awful lot of naturalist writing, and as such, my definition of success continues to evolve into something more and more difficult to attain.
  
  This was fine, I guess is what I'm saying. Plenty of great moments, but mostly, just fine. If you need naturalist recommendations, I can think of better work.
  
  [3 stars for adequacy combined with the aforementioned bright spots.]
• 
  Steve Congdon

  Not his best but still quite enjoyable; an impassioned reverence for salmon, trout and steelhead who (can't use the reflexive pronoun 'that' here cuz Duncan sees these as fellow travelers of the planet) are watching their rivers and lakes being destroyed by corporate America.
• 
  Mossy Kennedy

  Unlike the novels, this work is much more specifically geared to fly fishers- soulful fly fishers at that. ( With every pun intended) Duncan sets the hook in that particular reader. Intense connection.
• 
  George

  There are books you read that, even in your later years, you feel you have known all your life. This is such a book. I ached reading every page. DJD has such a remarkable way of stirring the deepest reverence for life with the most irreverent prose.
• 
  David

  Fly fishing, environmental advocacy, childhood memories, and philosophy combine for an enjoyable read.
• 
  Darren Hawkins

  His life reflection pieces are great. His "non-fiction" (most of the book) consists of pissed-off populist screeds.
• 
  Ronald Mackay

  T
• 
  Sam

  
  Duncan's best book of essays. Funny, beautiful, heart-breaking. A must-read.
• 
  Michael

  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.
• 
  Sean

  Hard for me to not love David James Duncan writing. This collections of essays is moving, funny, smart and a great journey through Duncan's life with fish and the world. The middle section of essays on activism are a little weightier to get through; but as always Duncan ties activism to spiritual life in a much needed way.
  
  "strategic withdrawal: to step back, now and then, from the possible to take rest in the impossible: to stand without trajectory in the God given weather till the soul's identity begins to come with the weathering: to get off my own laboriously cleared and maintained trails and back onto pristine hence unmarked path by moving, any old how, toward interior nakedness; toward silence; toward what Buddhists call "emptiness", Christians "poverty of spirit", Synder "wild", and Eckhart "desireless: the virgin that eternally gives birth to the Son".
  
  "strategic withdrawal: this prayer: when I'm lost, God help me get more lost. Help me lose me so completely that nothing remains but the primordial peace and originality that keep creating and sustaining this blood-, tear- and love worthy world that's never lost for an instant save by an insufficiently lost me.
  
  "We're all in the gutter," said Oscar Wilde in the throes of just such a withdrawal, "but some of us are looking at the stars"
  
  strategic withdrawal: look at the stars"
  
  
• 
  Julie

  Interesting essays set around Portland OR
• 
  Tara

  Amazing writing: clear, original, poetic, deeply felt...too many superlatives going around in my head, so I'll stop before I go there, because you get the picture.
  
  This book is a collection of related essays, and I have my definite favorites, but there's nothing here in which I cannot find great value. If his conversation is anything like his writing, I'd love to go hiking with this guy. (My favorite way to have long conversations.) I think we'd have some good debates.
  
  It's hard to label the genre, but I suppose you could call this an environmental memoir. Environmental writing can be tedious and preachy, and Duncan gets a little preachy sometimes, but it's always so sincere and so RIGHT ON that I forgive the man instantly. Clearly, because his EM is on my top shelf of books that deeply changed the way I see the world.
• 
  Eddie Merkel

  This may be one of the most beautiful and disturbing books I have ever read. I found myself at times almost in tears at the beautiful imagery and word pictures Duncan painted. Other times laughing out loud, then agape in awe, then terrified by what we are doing to our world.
  
  I love fly fishing. I love books about fly fishing. Before my favorite book was "Trout Fishing in America"by Richard Brautigan. This one does not overtake it, but is a wonderful compliment to it.
  
  I have three kids, all three are different, but I am giving a copy of this to each for Christmas because I know each will get something meaningful from it. If you read this book I can't imagine you not getting something from it as well.
• 
  Diane

  This book is part memoir of a Western writer, fly fisherman, and naturalist, but is also a description of the plight of the salmon in the Northwest and the declining rivers in the West. I believe most of the book is a collection of the author's previously published articles and essays about Oregon, Montana and Nevada rivers. David Duncan's ability to write of his love of rivers and nature is absolutely amazing. Those essays, hands down, would rate a 5. The fly fishing essays I could relate to only because I am married to a fly fisherman who shared that same joy of rivers and fly-fishing as the author. If I could I would have rated the book 4 1/2 stars.