BCJ_WINTER18 Digital Edition

A Fine and Pleasant Misery by Patrick F. McManus
There is a time for reflection, philosophy and politics. And there is a time to lighten up. The cure
for solemn self-importance is Pat McManus. No one can wring more laughs out of a hunting, fishing
or camping trip that the Idaho-born journalism professor who cranked out essays month after month
for Field & Stream and Outdoor Life magazines. His essays are nostalgic and farcical. Their wry jokes,
colorful characters and madcap hijinks hold up perfectly. The entire point of hunting and fishing is joy.
If we forget that, then we’ve lost it all anyway. McManus reminds us to smile.
- BEN LONG, Former BHA Board Chair, Outdoor Life Contributor,
Backcountry Journal Founding Editor
A Hunter’s Heart: Honest Essays on Blood Sport by David Peterson
Approximately 10 years ago I picked up this book after a reading a magazine interview with the
author, David Petersen, in which he nobly described hunters as the type of hunter we all strive to
be – thoughtful, hardworking and conservation-minded. This book includes a carefully selected
ensemble of personal essays that dive deep into the motivations and ethics of hunters from different
walks of life.
-TIM BRASS, BHA State Policy Director
A River Never Sleeps by Roderick Haig-Brown
I had difficulty choosing the aquatic addition to this list. The obvious, Norman Maclean’s A
River Runs Through It? The essential, David James Duncan’s The River Why? The classic short, Ernest
Hemingway’s Big Two-Hearted River? Ultimately, I had to select the seminal work, the most critical
to fisheries conservation, the benchmark for all angling literature to follow: Roderick Haig-Brown’s
1946 masterpiece, A River Never Sleeps.
Haig-Brown traveled as a young man from the chalk streams and brown trout of Sussex, England,
to the glacial flows and steelhead of my native Western Washington, before eventually finding his way
to Campbell River, B.C., where he would spend the rest of his life alternately as a logger, magistrate,
university chancellor, powerful conservationist, author and, above all else, angler. He fought many
battles in his later years against wanton logging, unsustainable fishing and hydroelectricity. Throughout,
Haig-Brown advanced the ideals of conservation in a region still in the throes of manifest
destiny. He also popularized river snorkeling to understand fish ecology. Though wandering broadly across North America and
Western Europe, A River Never Sleeps tracks the passage of the seasons with a chapter for each month and dives into infinitesimal
detail on the concurrent happenings within rivers, especially the Campbell and her salmonids.
Like with A River Runs Through It, I’ll often flip to the last page of A River Never Sleeps just to read a master’s finale of his
masterwork. I’ll let Rod show you why: “I still don’t know why I fish or why other men fish, except that we like it and it makes
us think and feel. But I do know that if it were not for the strong, quick life of rivers…I should fish less often. Perhaps fishing is,
for me, only an excuse to be near rivers. If so, I’m glad I thought of it.”
-SAM LUNGREN, Backcountry Journal Editor
Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
A professor assigned my class Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring,” the book credited with launching the
modern environmental movement, my senior year of college. I hadn’t heard much about the classic
then, but I was intrigued enough by Carson’s concern for the future, and the promise of a good grade.
I quickly understood why it is a critical read for conservationists and how it popularized the field of
ecology. The book details the deadly impacts of DDT and other pesticides on American ecosystems,
successfully putting together numerous case studies into an unprecedented summary and call to action.
What I think is most remarkable about the 55-year-old book is its first section, “A Fable for Tomorrow,”
and its eery relevance to today’s climate change-stricken world. In this section’s few hundred words
describing the robust environment of a hypothetical American town and its sudden lack of vibrance,
Carson comes to the same conclusion politicians deny and conservationists preach, the same conclusion
that deserves to be repeated until it clicks with the masses: “No witchcraft, no enemy action had snuffed
out life in this stricken world. The people had done it to themselves.”
-MADDIE VINCENT, Backcountry Journal Intern
42 | BACKCOUNTRY JOURNAL WINTER 2018