By Norman Maclean, University of Chicago Press, October, 2001, 0226500721

I read this nine years ago. I enjoyed the scenic descriptions and the characters.

[k798] Many of us probably would be better fishermen if we did not spend so much time watching and waiting for the world to become perfect.

[k1193] I sat there and forgot and forgot, until what remained was the river that went by and I who watched. On the river the heat mirages danced with each other and then they danced through each other and then they joined hands and danced around each other. Eventually the watcher joined the river, and there was only one of us. I believe it was the river.

[k1219] It was here, while waiting for my brother, that I started this story, although, of course, at the time I did not know that stories of life are often more like rivers than books.

[k1518] “Help,” he said, “is giving part of yourself to somebody who comes to accept it willingly and needs it badly.

[k1843] A river, though, has so many things to say that it is hard to know what it says to each of us.

[k1877] “It is those we live with and love and should know who elude us.”

[k1875] Then he asked, “After you have finished your true stories sometime, why don’t you make up a story and the people to go with it? “Only then will you understand what happened and why. “It is those we live with and love and should know who elude us.” Now nearly all those I loved and did not understand when I was young are dead, but I still reach out to them.

[k1973] Slowly we became silent, and silence itself is an enemy to friendship;

[k1980] It was getting hot and I was half-sick when I came back to camp at the end of the day. I would dig into my duffel bag and get clean underwear and clean white socks and a bar of soap and go to the creek. Afterwards, I would sit on the bank until I was dry. Then I would feel better. It was a rule I had learned my first year working in the Forest Service–when exhausted and feeling sorry for yourself, at least change socks.