People who flyfish know that a favorite river bend, a secluded spot
in moving waters, can feel like home-a place you know intimately
and intuitively. In prose that reads like the flowing current of a
river, scholar and essayist George Handley blends nature writing,
local history, theology, environmental history, and personal memoir
in his new book Home Waters: A Year of Recompenses on the Provo
River. Handley's meditations on the local Provo River watershed
present the argument that a sense of place requires more than a
strong sense of history and belonging, it requires awareness and
commitment. Handley traces a history of settlement along the Provo
that has profoundly transformed the landscape and yet neglected its
Native American and environmental legacies. As a descendent of one
of the first pioneers to irrigate the area, and as a witness to the
loss of orchards, open space, and an eroded environmental ethic,
Handley weaves his own personal and family history into the
landscape to argue for sustainable belonging. In avoiding the
exclusionist and environmentally harmful attitudes that come with
the territorial claims to a homeland, the flyfishing term, "home
waters," is offered as an alternative, a kind of belonging that is
informed by deference to others, to the mysteries of deep time, and
to a fragile dependence on water. While it has sometimes been
mistakenly assumed that the Mormon faith is inimical to good
environmental stewardship, Handley explores the faith's openness to
science, its recognition of the holiness of the creation, and its
call for an ethical engagement with nature. A metaphysical approach
to the physical world is offered as an antidote to the suicidal
impulses of modern society and our persistent ambivalence about the
facts of our biology and earthly condition. Home Waters contributes
a perspective from within the Mormon religious experience to the
tradition of such Western writers as Wallace Stegner, Terry Tempest
Williams, Steven Trimble, and Amy Irvine. Winner of the Mormon
Letters Award for Memoir.
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