The River You Touch: Learning the Language of Wonder and Home - Learning the Language of Wonder and Home

"We are matter and long to be received by an Earth that conceived us, which accepts and reconstitutes us, its children, each of us, without exception, every one. The journey is long, and then we start homeward, fathomless as to what home might make of us."--

Sommario

Preface ∙ 1

 

I. YOUNG MOUNTAINS

Headwaters ∙ 11

Thunderbird Motel ∙ 18

Dostoyevsky’s Koan ∙ 28

Visitors ∙ 45

Seeds ∙ 61

Emissaries ∙ 73

Begin, O Small Boy, To Be Born ∙ 83

Windfall ∙ 92

Neighbors ∙ 109

First Fall ∙ 122

The River of Real Time ∙ 135

 

II. LEARNING THE LANGUAGE OF RIVERS

Bed Rest ∙ 145

The Creaturehood ∙ 156

Road to the Buffalo ∙ 171

Heathen ∙ 183

Black River, Bright Stars ∙

194 Nine Months, Three Years Later ∙ 203

Three ∙ 215

 

III. THE NATURE OF WONDER

High Water Rising ∙ 229

The Deadstream ∙ 241

Old Mission ∙ 256

Good Harbor ∙ 265

Parr Marks ∙ 273

Great-Grandmother ∙ 294

Home Psalm ∙ 299

A Thimbleful ∙ 306

 

Notes ∙ 315

Acknowledgments ∙ 319

Info autore

Chris Dombrowski is the author of The River You Touch. He is also the author of Body of Water: A Sage, A Seeker, and the World’s Most Elusive Fish, and of three acclaimed collections of poems. Currently the Assistant Director of the Creative Writing program at the University of Montana, he lives with his family in Missoula.

Riassunto

“We are matter and long to be received by an Earth that conceived us, which accepts and reconstitutes us, its children, each of us, without exception, every one. The journey is long, and then we start homeward, fathomless as to what home might make of us.” —from The River You Touch

When Chris Dombrowski burst onto the literary scene with Body of Water, the book was acclaimed as “a classic” (Jim Harrison) and its author compared with John McPhee. Dombrowski begins the highly anticipated The River You Touch with a question as timely as it is profound: “What does a meaningful, mindful, sustainable inhabitance on this small planet look like in the anthropocene?”

He answers this fundamental question of our time initially by listening lovingly to rivers and the land they pulse through in his adopted home of Montana. Transplants from the post-industrial Midwest, he and his partner, Mary, assemble a life based precariously on her income as a schoolteacher, his as a poet and fly-fishing guide. Before long, their first child arrives, followed soon after by two more, all “free beings in whom flourishes an essential kind of knowing […], whose capacity for wonder may be the beacon by which we see ourselves through this dark epoch.” And around the young family circles a community of friends—river-rafting guides and conservationists, climbers and wildlife biologists—who seek to cultivate a way of living in place that moves beyond the mythologized West of appropriation and extraction.

Moving seamlessly from the quotidian—diapers, the mortgage, a threadbare bank account—to the metaphysical—time, memory, how to live a life of integrity—Dombrowski illuminates the experience of fatherhood with intimacy and grace. Spending time in wild places with their children, he learns that their youthful sense of wonder at the beauty and connectivity of the more-than-human world is not naivete to be shed, but rather wisdom most of us lose along the way—wisdom that is essential for the possibility of transformation.

Prefazione

• Major galley campaign, with galleys available for the sales force, major media, nonfiction media, environmental media, regional (Montana and the West) media, influential authors, social media influencers, booksellers and librarians; digital galleys available for download on Edelweiss
• Major media outreach, positioning this as an exciting follow-up to Body of Water from a rising star in the literary world, for readers of Jim Harrison and Lisa Wells
• Profile on USA Today to run in September 2022
• Major Indie Next campaign, with bookseller outreach focused on stores that sold Body of Water, as well as stores in the West and the Pacific Northwest
• Author attendance at SpringCon with MPIBA in April 2022
• Cover reveal and preorder newsletter campaign in collaboration with Literati in Ann Arbor; additional content—an excerpt from the book—promoted in the campaign
• Special marketing to major outdoor groups, including the Backcountry Hunters and Anglers group, with more than 100K members
• Audiobook ready by musician Jeffrey Foucault—who has almost 150K listeners on Spotify—released in tandem
• Newsletter promotion via the publisher to readers, sales and academic lists of more than 30K contacts
• Goodreads giveaway
• Advertising in Outside Magazine, Shelf Awareness, MPIBA and PNBA
• Major tour in Minneapolis, Missoula, Portland, Seattle, Point Reyes and Denver
• Reader's Guide available for download

Testo aggiuntivo

Praise for The River You Touch: Learning the Language of Wonder and Home

“With The River You Touch, Chris Dombrowski has established himself at the forefront of American writers of place. This beautiful, clear-eyed, tender memoir is as intimate as a love letter, brimming with wise observations on family, parenthood, home, duty, and passion. The Montana within these pages is wild and rugged, yes. But it is also as gentle as a cold stream running through your fingers or a child sleeping in your arms. I loved this book.”—Nicholas Butler, bestselling author of Godspeed and Shotgun Lovesongs 

Praise for Body of Water: A Sage, A Seeker, and the World's Most Elusive Fish

“Dombrowski’s writing exhibits a poetic sense of economy. There’s a tremendous amount of information here on the geological, botanical, biological and human history of the region, but the author uses only what’s necessary to the story and relates it in evocative, concise language that reminded me of Gary Snyder one minute and John McPhee the next. […] Dombrowski’s exacting descriptions of the sport make me long to try it again--and to wish that more fishing books were written by poets.”—John Gierach, Wall Street Journal          

“Body of Water is about bonefishing, but it is also about ecosystem exploitation, class conflict, wealth inequity, race relations, Bahamian history, mentor-mentee relationships, nature as the catalyst for self-awareness, and more. […] The lyrical narrative strikes a delicate balance between reflective memoir and reportage.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune

“Body of Water is wonderful, an evocation of the why and not the how in angling. Dombrowski has a way of describing that which may have become prosaic for the seasoned angler--the terminal tackle, the fly cast--in new and illuminating ways.”—Forbes

“Dombrowski elevates the fly-fishing-as-meditation narrative by the sheer fact that he’s so damn good at writing about it.”—Outside

“Rarely do cautionary tales dazzle like this. It’s a credit to Dombrowski’s prose, which torques and twists and glistens into view much like the bonefish itself. […] By book’s end, Dombrowski leaves readers with many lessons, thought this one most of all: whether on a skiff or in a book, the guide matters. And Dombrowski is the one you want.”—Los Angeles Times

“Uncanny and moving. This book will not only make you change your vacation plans, it might make you change your life. A reverent, almost holy, book of angling lore.”—Debra Magpie Earling, author of Perma Red                                                       

“At its core, Body of Water is about our increasingly tenuous connection to nature, from a poet who understands the source of that strange and melancholic joy that we are blessed with only when we stand in wild places.”—Steve Rinella, author of Meat Eater

“A lyrical, genre-defying tribute. […] Drawing on Caribbean history and the evolution of fly-fishing, Dombrowski’s foray into nonfiction proves thematically complex, finely wrought, and profoundly life-affirming.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“A metaphor-laced meditation on the art and practice of fly-fishing, the social and economic history of the Bahamas, the evolution of archipelago geology and the chronicle of Dombrowski’s personal struggle to juggle his fishing and poetry obsessions against the financial needs of his own family. […] Fly-fishing mysticism at its best.”—Shelf Awareness

Dettagli sul prodotto

• Autori: Chris Dombrowski, Dombrowski Chris
• Editore: Ingram Publishers Services
• Lingue: Inglese
• Formato: Copertina rigida
• Pubblicazione: 11.10.2022
• EAN: 9781639550630
• ISBN: 978-1-63955-063-0
• Pagine: 240
• Dimensioni: 139 mm x 215 mm x 31 mm
• Peso: 552 g
• Illustrazioni: Illustrationen, nicht spezifiziert
• Categorie: Narrativa > Romanzi > Epistole, diari; Saggistica > Natura, tecnica > Natura: tematiche generali, opere di consultazione; Scienze naturali, medicina, informatica, tecnica > Biologia > Ecologia; BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Environmentalists & Naturalists, FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS / Parenting / Fatherhood, NATURE / Ecosystems & Habitats / Rivers, NATURE / Ecosystems & Habitats / Wilderness, Parenting: advice and issues, The Earth: natural history: general interest, BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Memoirs