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
Duncan Leaves Me Speachless...
When David James Duncan was growing up in suburban Portland,
Oregon, he had no river to call his own, so he would routinely create one
by flooding his mothers garden with a hose. He would then revel in his
creation until he received the inevitable scolding. The poor kid couldnt help
himself: Running water ... felt as necessary to me as food, sleep, parents,

and air, he explains. In time, he exchanged his nozzle for a fly rod and
went in search of grander gardens, eventually developing an interior coho
compass which he has traveled by ever since. As any reader of The
River Why knows, Duncan is a master of the art of writing about fishing--
which is also to say life, since the two for him are indelibly linked. But these
essays deal with far more than leaky waders and rising trout. Part memoir,
part activist treatise, My Story As Told by Water is Duncans love song to
wild places and the creatures which inhabit them. The books highlight is
his powerfully convincing essay A Prayer for the Salmons Second Coming,
in which he argues that saving salmon is crucial to both man and fish alike:
A modern Northwest that cannot support salmon is unlikely to support
modern Northwesterners for long, he writes. In this elegant demand for the
removal of four Snake River dams (out of 221 on the Snake/Columbia
system), Duncan declares the wild salmon a holiness, a divine gift, a role
model rather than a resource: Salmon are a light darting not just through
water, but through the human mind and heart. Salmon help shield us from
fear of death by showing us how to follow our course without fear, and how
to give ourselves for the sake of things greater than ourselves. He also
ruminates on the true meanings of place and home; offers a fable on the
1872 Mining Act, the most anachronistic and devastating piece of
corporate welfare in the world; and details how Montanans rallied to
prevent a giant mining company from extracting gold near the Blackfoot
River, the setting of the Norman Maclean classic A River Runs Through It.
All in all, My Story As Told by Water is a moving collection by an exquisite
writer endowed with wit, compassion, and the rare ability to appeal to both
emotion and reason in equal measures. --Shawn Carkonen
Personal Review: 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 is a fantastic read for anyone who has spent
time along, on or in the streams and rivers, or who lives or works in the
wider watersheds West of the Continental Divide. David James Duncan
has an uncanny ability to put you back in the places you may have been,
or places like the places you have been, and then he shows you things you
might have missed, or might have taken for granted. Duncan has
characters in his fiction, and in his essays, step forward and speak from
the heart but with facts and truth on their side. Some might call this
"preachy," I call it electrifying. He is not playing games. He is not soft-
peddling the true crises that are staring us in the face. I too have seen
rivers choked by silt and landslides from logging. I too have seen dams
bury spawning beds. I too have seen so many caring thoughtful people
oblivious to their contributions to the collective tragedy that is the
destruction of our life blood--our rivers and streams. Hats off, bow at the
waist, and a hearty thank you. This collection of essays is funny, it is tragic,
it is creative and it will stay in your heart for a long time after you finish
reading it.

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