Conservationist’s Writings Flow Like A River
To have paddled more rivers than Tim Palmer, a boater would almost need to have been born between gunwales.
Palmer is one of the country’s leading river conservationists. An appendix to his latest book, “America by Rivers,” (Island Press, $26.95 hardback) lists 259 rivers that he’s canoed or rafted in the United States and Canada. And he’s a guy with likely half a life ahead of him.
His book is partly travel guide, partly diary, partly a water’s-eye view of the landscape.
Palmer’s work shines not so much in the occasional brightness of his prose as the sheer illumination of his reporting. His accounting of pollution and dams comes in a factual, uninflammatory style - but with an underlying sadness at the environmental loss.
In a chapter on the Sierra Nevada, for example, he writes about a California landscape with more dams than anywhere but New England (1,336 big ones) - and bigger reservoirs than anywhere, period.
“As the rivers flow through the foothills and enter the Central Valley, sizeable diversions bend water away from every stream and into a water-tank, pipe-fitting triumph of engineering. Rivers have been connected into networks and conduits and tunnels and dams transporting water to neighboring basins for hydropower, irrigation and city supplies.”
Palmer finds some beauty in nearly every waterway, including forbidding and beleaguered ones like the Rio Grande.
“At night, all the hardships turned to pure rapture when a full moon shone white light into the canyon. Fairy-tale landforms jutted upward in black and gray. A roughly textured cliff climbed to the right, and a shiny, moonlit wall of polished rock rose to the left. Stars sprinkled a fissure of sky between canyon faces, and a fuzzy mane of clouds drifted by.”
The book is easy to use, its 10 chapters giving a region-by-region tour of the continental U.S. and Alaska. The book is well indexed, and includes lists of the largest rivers and the longest, undammed sections of rivers.
There’s also a good list of reference material for those thirsty to know more about specific rivers.
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo