Going with the flow

I’ve been playing in and around, and working on and for, rivers, streams and oceans for more than half a century. I keep finding that my knowledge of water quality, hydrology, land use and pollution abatement could always stand more breadth and depth. I probably would benefit from a better understanding of human psychology, too.

Somehow, I’ve not yet read any of Luna Leopold’s books, nor have I read any of the tomes on riparian zones. One of my earliest reads was The Ecology of Running Water plus several photo essays on rivers. Then there’s the classic A River Runs Through It and multitudes of volumes on trout, trout streams, aquatic invertebrates, hatch matching, fly casting, and the ever critical “reading the water.”

heron in a riparian zone

Photo by J. Harrington

All the preceding is a lead in to a recent discovery of the only book like it I’ve come across: Field Guide to Wisconsin Streams:  Plants, Fishes, Invertebrates, Amphibians, and Reptiles. The book originally sold for $30.00. Most copies I can find these days are being offered for anywhere from $1,000 to $3,000. (Most stocks wish they appreciated like that.) The original publisher notes they don’t know when it will be available again.

This leads me to (leaves me and you with) several questions:

• What would it take for the University of Wisconsin to republish / reprint the volume at a reasonablle price? There seems to be a market.
• Why aren’t comparable volumes available for the other states?
• Should Trout Unlimited and its chapters be encouraged to create comparable volumes to accompany the Trout in the Classroom program and stream restoration projects such as DARE? 

Damselfly, Trout, Heron

By John Engels

The damselfly folds its wings

over its body when at rest. Captured,

it should not be killed

in cyanide, but allowed to die

slowly: then the colors,

especially the reds and blues,

will last. In the hand

it crushes easily into a rosy

slime. Its powers of flight

are weak. The trout

feeds on the living damselfly.

The trout leaps up from the water,

and if there is sun you see

the briefest shiver of gold,

and then the river again.         

When the trout dies

it turns its white belly

to the mirror of the sky.

The heron fishes for the trout

in the gravelly shallows on the far

side of the stream. The heron

is the exact blue of the shadows

the sun makes of trees on water.

When you hold the heron most clearly

in your eye, you are least certain

it is there. When the blue heron dies,

it lies beyond reach

on the far side of the river.

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