Pretty obviously this is a book that would be classified as ‘nature writing’: writing that is ‘about’ ‘nature’. Scare quotes alert us to the possible problems, or questions. Like what is Nature after all? We all think we know, even as it is disappearing in many of its forms right before our eyes. Where are the rain forests of yesteryear? Recall that in the 18th century, thinkers, including the Founding Fathers, regarded Nature as a well-regulated machine, a clock in fact.
This book is also, though, a series of tales, about tails. So, story-telling. Like me you’ll probably never forget Jim’s lengthy search for a single permit to cast a fly to, while his buddy casts to bonefish. When the permit is spotted and the sneak begins, the buddy walks right off the bow of the boat, spooks the permit and ends the day. Hilarious. And that is what Jim Stenson’s writing is like almost all the time: clear, poetic, funny as hell and all of that with a haunting tense music playing in the background. It’s the tense music of possible loss, of the temporary nature of Nature. So the saddest sounds here are inseparable from the most beautiful music of the world of Nature, the world where we can still go fishing. The world that more and more needs our stewardship.
Alan Kennedy
Emeritus Professor of English
Carnegie Mellon University
