Own this book!

There are some books that you can check out once from your local public library, enjoy them and return them. They're good books, and I go back and read some of them again and again. They're like old friends. There are other books you just have to own. These are the ones that become a part of your family, and like family they become a part of you.

Every outdoor person needs to own a copy of A Sand County Almanac, by Aldo Leopold. Same with Journal of a Trapper, by Osborne Russell and Undaunted Courage, by Stephen Ambrose. Here's another one for you - Blue Lines: A Fishing Life, by Tom Reed.

We've never done a book review before on this blog, and I'm a little surprised at that. But if we were going to review a book, I'm sure glad we started with this one. It's a dandy. Tom Reed gets it. He always has. If you've read either of his two earlier books, Great Wyoming Bear Stories or Give Me Mountains for My Horses, you know what I mean. Tom Reed knows Wyoming, it's people and its spirit. He understands the magic of wildlife and wild places.

But in Blue Lines, he really gets it. His writing is clean and crisp and straight from the heart of a man in love with the West, and to borrow from Norman Maclean, "haunted by waters". Those thin blue lines on a map, some with names - Squaw Creek, Cottonwood Creek, Pilgrim Creek - and some without, these are the lifelines of a fly fisherman in the arid west. They are the arteries and veins of the landscape beneath our feet. They are forever intertwined with our lives.

Reed gets this. And even if you get this, you'll get it more when you read ths book. I'm no great book critic, but as the son of a woman who knew good books and a man who loved wild places, I heartily recomend this book. If you don't buy another book this year, buy this one.

Walt Gasson, Executive Director
Wyoming Wildlife Federation