There's enjoying nature, and then there's the desire to be one with it. Poet Chris Dombrowski is in the latter category. A native of Michigan, he left the world of his "forbearers' General Motors jobs" when he was 19 "in search of wild trout [and] vast systems of unfettered freestone water." That journey is the subject of his memoir, "The River You Touch."
He wasn't alone in his journey. His future wife, Mary, left her hometown of Chicago and traveled west in search of "a life less bound by convention." This book is an account of the life they built together near Rattlesnake Creek in Missoula, Montana, "a love song to the rivers on which I've guided for twenty-five years and the land through which they pulse like veins."
Dombrowski cobbles together a living by working as a fly-fishing guide and teaching composition classes while also helping at a homeless shelter and, in his spare time, writing poems. He describes in great detail the many hours he spent not only hunting and fishing but also cooking his quarry, with loving descriptions of smoked pheasant, "elk shanks osso buco," and braised antelope.
