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Loading... Gila Descending: A Southwestern Journeyby M.H. Salmon
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Herein is the remarkable story of a 200-mile wilderness journey down the Gila River of New Mexico and Arizona. Traveling partly on foot, mostly by canoe, the author was accompanied by a hound dog and a tomcat. His trip is replete with whitewater thrills, and angling for trout, bass, and catfish; ruminations on the wilderness ethic, and the antics of two companions who promote humor, exasperation, and love. But besides being a modern-day excursion into the natural world, Gila Descending is a personal odyssey as well; and little by little that story, too, is told. "Gila Descending is a joy to read. M. H. Salmon and his feisty animal co-pilots have enough chutzpah to keep us laughing; enough literary audacity to delight and educate; and enough love of land, water, and wilderness to stir the most hardened conscience."--John Nichols ". . . a delightful book. No reader could ask for a finer river to read about than the Gila, or a better companion to explore it with than M. H. Salmon. May the Government (ugh!) and God (we hope) long preserve them both."--Edward Abbey "As you join the author--and his coyote hound and tomcat--on a float trip down the Gila, you will find a unique companion: a hunter with an informed environmental conscience; a fisherman with the sense to know that catfish are as good as trout; a wry observer whose prose owes more to local speech and the elegant essays of Aldo Leopold than to the high-tech fodder in the yuppie monthlies. Above all, he is a passionate and original defender of wilderness with its hair on."--Steve Bodio, "Bodio's Review," Gray's Sporting Journal No library descriptions found. |
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Salmon isn't the most poetic of travel or nature writers, and he's a little too fond of stories about killing various kinds of animals for my personal taste (or, frankly, comfort levels). But he's certainly readable enough, opinionated gruffness and all, and I found this a moderately interesting (if probably fairly forgettable) bit of local-interest writing. Well, local-ish, anyway. I live in a different part of New Mexico, but I have very fond memories of hiking and backpacking trips in the Gila Wilderness during my college days. ( )