Downstream

"Downstream is an immersion (almost literally) in the streams and rivers of Appalachia in the company of two university professors, friends who through the years have developed both competence and knowledge in fly fishing. From its early pages I was riveted. Their language is exuberant but also disciplined. It didn't take me long to know that it would soon take its place on my bookshelf alongside John Muir and Henry David Thoreau. They are that good."

--Eugene H. Peterson, Regent College, Vancouver, BC, Canada



"O'Hara and Dickerson remind us that a fly fisher must think like a trout--then they lead us on a rugged and beautiful adventure through an ever-expanding 'riparian cosmos.' Downstream radiates out from Manitou's brookie into seamlessly shifting currents of ecology, philosophy, biology, personal history, engineering, natural history, theology, and management until we don't know where the human perspective begins and the brook trout's ends. They present a universe both stunning in its magnificence and terrifying in its fragility."

--Andrea Knutson, Oakland University, Rochester, MI



"O'Hara and Dickerson embark on an angler's quest for the fragile but resilient Appalachian brook trout, from the brawling rivers of Maine to tiny Smoky Mountain headwaters in Tennessee. But their journey reveals much more than that, about why we seek the places that trout live--the rivers and streams that allow us to know ourselves and find our way. This book is the vessel for a philosophy that celebrates nature, place, family, and home."

--Kurt D. Fausch, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO



"This book traces and enacts the intricacies of confluence within the Appalachian chain's fissured topography. Just as the rich terminology related to aquatic invertebrates, the life cycle of trout, and fly-tying gathers into a larger ecological, geological, and social vision, so too the distinctive voices of these two fine writers join in a moving dialogue on friendship and family, literature and the land."

--John Elder, Middlebury College, Middlebury, VT