Riverwalking

Reflections on Moving Water

Publisher’s Description

In twenty elegant and provocative essays, Moore invites us to travel the West with her, and often with her family, as she rafts down rapids, hikes through dunes, camps in the desert, and walks along riverbanks. All along the way, she shares her remarkable observations about the life—both human and otherwise—that is sustained by rivers. Moore ponders love, loss, motherhood, happiness, evolution, and country music with ease and acuity.

Moore is a philosopher by training and a naturalist by sentiment. The way in which she sees the world and way in which she gracefully imparts how she sees it, is a mixture of both disciplines: part keen analysis, part sumptuous embrace, of all that she sees, hears, and feels in the moving water of rivers and of memory. The result is Riverwalking, a collection that is enlightening, moving, and brilliantly conceived. 

Selection

“It is ten o’clock at night,” Frank said. “We have skied. With full packs. For seven miles up a mountain trail. We are already in our sleeping bags. In a hut. With a woodstove. The snow outside is twenty feet deep. The wind is blowing. And now you’ve decided you’re not spending the night inside.”
“Right.”
“Why not?”
“Because it smells mousy in here, and because we’re missing out on the stars.”
Frank went to the door, opened it, and for a long time looked out into the night. Then he walked back toward the woodstove where his clothes were warming by the fire, and started to pull on layers of long underwear and socks. I put on my boots and everything else in my pack that was wool or goosedown, and we went outside. There were stars in every direction – galaxies thick in the sky around us, glittering in the snowbanks… 

Reviews

“A smart, compassionate, and wise meditation of living in place.” – Terry Tempest Williams

Purchase

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