How the Pacific Makes Love to the Rockies - David James Duncan

For seven decades, David James Duncan has immersed himself in the rivers of the Pacific Northwest and Northern Rockies, coming to know them as places of earthly holiness. Spawning salmon, chittering otters, water ouzels, and humans mucking about in streams have revealed themselves to be not only permutations of wild, intricate beauty, but participants in an endless unfolding of the Mystery. In the tug at the end of a fishing rod, the roar of the spring torrent, David contemplates the very nature of water, the soul, and the universe, and how a cosmology might be improvised in response to a deep experience of place. Read the essay. Discover our sixth print edition, Seasons. Photo by Ron Jude