A Temporary Refuge Format: 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 Spencer’s 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.

im Lichatowich is the author of the award-winning book, Salmon without Rivers: A History of the Pacific Salmon Crisis. He has worked on Pacific salmon issues as a researcher, manager, and scientific advisor for more than forty years. He has served many years on the Independent Scientific Advisory Board for the Columbia River salmon restoration program, the State of Oregon’s Independent Multidisciplinary Science Team, and on other independent scientific review panels in British Columbia and California. He lives in Columbia City, Oregon.

Cathy Eliot is an illustrator and embroidery designer living in England.