The River You Touch: Making a Life on Moving Water
Written by Chris Dombrowski
Narrated by Jeffrey Foucault
3/5
()
About this audiobook
“We are matter and long to be received by an Earth that conceived us, which accepts and reconstitutes us, its children, each of us, without exception, every one. The journey is long, and then we start homeward, fathomless as to what home might make of us.” —from The River You Touch
When Chris Dombrowski burst onto the literary scene with Body of Water, the book was acclaimed as “a classic” (Jim Harrison) and its author compared with John McPhee. Dombrowski begins the highly anticipated The River You Touch with a question as timely as it is profound: “What does a meaningful, mindful, sustainable inhabitance on this small planet look like in the anthropocene?”
He answers this fundamental question of our time initially by listening lovingly to rivers and the land they pulse through in his adopted home of Montana. Transplants from the post-industrial Midwest, he and his partner, Mary, assemble a life based precariously on her income as a schoolteacher, his as a poet and fly-fishing guide. Before long, their first child arrives, followed soon after by two more, all “free beings in whom flourishes an essential kind of knowing […], whose capacity for wonder may be the beacon by which we see ourselves through this dark epoch.” And around the young family circles a community of friends—river-rafting guides and conservationists, climbers and wildlife biologists—who seek to cultivate a way of living in place that moves beyond the mythologized West of appropriation and extraction.
Moving seamlessly from the quotidian—diapers, the mortgage, a threadbare bank account—to the metaphysical—time, memory, how to live a life of integrity—Dombrowski illuminates the experience of fatherhood with intimacy and grace. Spending time in wild places with their children, he learns that their youthful sense of wonder at the beauty and connectivity of the more-than-human world is not naivete to be shed, but rather wisdom most of us lose along the way—wisdom that is essential for the possibility of transformation.
The River You Touch Audiobook read by Jeffrey Foucault is available everywhere you listen to audiobooks.
Chris Dombrowski
Chris Dombrowski is the author of By Cold Water (Wayne State University Press, 2009), a finalist for Foreword Magazine's Poetry Book of the Year, and two chapbooks, Fragments with Dusk in Them and September Miniatures with Blood and Mars. His poems have appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies, including Beloit Poetry Journal, Crazyhorse, Gulf Coast, Making Poems, Michigan Quarterly Review, and Poetry. He currently teaches at Interlochen Center for the Arts, and, with his family, divides his time between Michigan and Montana.
Related to The River You Touch
Related audiobooks
The Quarry Fox: And Other Critters of the Wild Catskills Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Whale: In Search of the Giants of the Sea Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Halcyon Journey: In Search of the Belted Kingfisher Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Nature of Desert Nature: Meditations on the Nature of Deserts Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOn the Water: A Fishing Memoir Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDiary of a Young Naturalist Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Waterlog: A Swimmers Journey Through Britain Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDesert Soliloquy: A Perfectly Sane Misanthrope Hides in the Desert Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Curve of Time: The Classic Memoir Of A Woman And Her Children Who Explored The Coastal Waters Of The Pacific Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Future of Life Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWild Heart: The Politics Of Place Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsVirga & Bone: Essays from Dry Places Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tracing Time: Seasons of Rock Art on the Colorado Plateau Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Land of Little Rain Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Badluck Way: A Year on the Ragged Edge of the West Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5All the Wild That Remains: Edward Abbey, Wallace Stegner, and the American West Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Inner Coast: Essays Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Crossing Open Ground Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5People of the Sturgeon: Wisconsin's Love Affair with an Ancient Fish Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Only Kayak: A Journey Into The Heart Of Alaska Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWild at Heart: America's Turbulent Relationship with Nature, from Exploitation to Redemption Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Field Notes: The Grace Note of the Canyon Wren Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dream Drawings: Configurations of a Timeless Kind Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Appalachian Trail: A Biography Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Forest: A Fable of America in the 1830s Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Singing Wilderness Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Outermost House: A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America's National Parks Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Read Nature: An Expert's Guide to Discovering the Outdoors You've Never Noticed Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Arctic Traverse: A Thousand-Mile Summer of Trekking the Brooks Range Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Personal Memoirs For You
The Woman in Me Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Counting the Cost Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Sure, I'll Join Your Cult: A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Making It So: A Memoir Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Glass Castle: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Becoming Free Indeed: My Story of Disentangling Faith from Fear Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I'm Glad My Mom Died Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5On Writing: A Memoir Of The Craft Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing: A Memoir Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Roxane Gay & Everand Originals: My Year of Psychedelics: Lessons on Better Living Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How Y'all Doing?: Misadventures and Mischief from a Life Well Lived Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Night: New translation by Marion Wiesel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Finding Me: A Memoir Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5All My Knotted-Up Life: A Memoir Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Good Girls Don't Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Summer of Fall: Gravity is a bitch, but I'm still standing Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Year of Magical Thinking Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wishful Drinking Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Enough Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bad Mormon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beyond Belief: My Secret Life Inside Scientology and My Harrowing Escape Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Writing into the Wound: Understanding trauma, truth, and language Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pageboy: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5You Could Make This Place Beautiful: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Stolen Life: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Love, Lucy Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Sociopath: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5People, Places, Things: My Human Landmarks Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related categories
Reviews for The River You Touch
1 rating0 reviews