The Clark Fork River in Montana suffers from more than a century of extraction, but there’s no shortage of praise for the resilience and enduring beauty of the river and its tributaries. Just as the river runs over boulders, drops through cascades, and meanders through its floodplain, the collection of works in The River We Carry With Us represents a wide variety of literary forms and perspectives.
Historical journals and newspaper articles,
literary excerpts, nature elegies, memoirs and poems all focus on
the people and places of the Clark Fork and its tributaries,
offering readers a thoughtful dialogue on the fate of the
watershed.
Writers Annick Smith and Rick Bass
reflect on the strength of the basin’s wild places and the threat
posed by extractive practices such as clear-cut logging and cyanide
leach mining. Edwin Dobb, a Butte native and contributing editor of
Harper’s, considers the contaminated upper river, its contribution
to American society, and the challenge of reclaiming one of the
largest Superfund sites in the country (HCN, 6/7/99: Mining the
Past). Authors Ian Frazier and Phil Condon recall daily lives in
Missoula, where the Clark Fork surges amid an urban
existence.
Carolyn Patterson, born and raised in
Missoula, sees the moods of the Clark Fork as a metaphor for her
own life and that of her great-grandfather, and historian Jack
Nisbet weaves his life with that of pioneer David Thompson. Poet
Richard Hugo describes local characters, while newspaper editor
Duncan Adams’ short essay struts a fine line between love and lust
for a river. The collection is illustrated with haunting
black-and-white photographs by Mark Alan Wilson.
The River was published as a
project of the Clark Fork Coalition, a nonprofit organization
dedicated to protecting the health of the watershed.
The River We Carry With Us,
edited by Tracy Stone-Manning and Emily Miller. Clark City Press,
Livingston, Mont., 2002. Softcover $22.95. 246
pages.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline A flood of admirers.
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