The River We Carry with Us: Two Centuries of Writing from the Clark Fork Basin

The River We Carry With Us explores life in life in western Montana's Clark Fork River basin. Some of Montana's finest writers from the past and present give us landscape and history in grand sweeps and intimate recollections, taking us on a journey from the mining ruins of the upper Clark Fork, to the trout rich Big Blackfoot, to the calm waters of the Bitterroot, and finally to the cool depths of Idaho's Lake Pend Oreille.


With a foreword by William Kittredge, this collection of voices speaks to our changing yet constant relationship with the river. Historical pieces, such as the travelogue in Harper's Magazine in 1894 and the account of a float trip down the Bitterroot in 1883, are juxtaposed with the work of more than twenty of Montana's best contemporary writers, including Rick Bass, Sandra Alcosser, Richard Manning, Edwin Dobb, James Lee Burke, Annick Smith, Ian Frazier, Debra Earling, Bill Vaughn, Caroline Patterson, and David James Duncan. Beautiful landscape photographs by Mark Alan Wilson enrich the text.