A Temporary Refuge Fourteen Seasons with Wild Summer Steelhead [Paperback]

As featured in the documentary,DamNation(Patagonia, 2014).During his first summer, Spencer built a sheltered viewing platform, a place to sit with Sis and his notebook, and observe the denizens of the pool for months, and, finally, years on end. Shortly before setting up camp during his first season, Spencer cut the points off the hooks of all his steelhead flies, freeing himself to see more deeply the beauty of his surroundings. As the predatory urge faded, a kind of blindness went with it, and Spencers eyes and mind became figurative hooks, enabling him to capture the stunning lives and behaviors of these charismatic wild creatures with an intimacy that has rarely been offered before.

A distillation of fourteen years of detailed observations, in this surprisingly engaging almanac, Spencer records a natural history teeming with fish, water, vegetation, birds, mammals, insects, reptiles, and amphibians, seasonal changes, and interesting events and stories. Spencer is a modern-day Thoreau, and the steelhead pool is his Walden Pond.This is strong nature writingdescriptive and thorough, and helped by Spencers obvious devotion to his task.Foreword Reviews (STARRED REVIEW)There is more to dwell on in this book than in any other I have read about fly fishing. Its not just about the way of the steelhead. Its about an entire world of forest and stream teeming with life amid seasonal changes: fish, birds, amphibians, reptiles, mammals. &High Country NewsLee Spencer was born in Portland, Oregon, in 1950 and was raised in Minnesota.? After being awarded a Masters in Anthropology in 1978 by the University of Oregon,lC.