Lewis Creek Lost and Found. . - Reviews - book review

American Forests, Wntr, 2002 by Carl Reidel

by Kevin Dann

$19.95. University Press of New England, 2001.

This is a story of the river that borders our farm in Vermont, which author Kevin Dann calls "a middling river, anonymous and unseen to all but a few fisherman, canoeists, and neighbors who live along or not far from its banks." The story of Lewis Creek is told through the lives of people whose explorations in the watershed reveal the inextricable links between human and natural communities.

Botanist Cyrus Pringle (1838-1911) began his collection of more than 50,000 plants in the watershed. Minister John Perry's (1825-1872) paleontological studies led to reconciliation between his faith in God and Darwin's theory of evolution. Quaker farmer Rowland Robinson's historical fiction (1833-1900) chronicles the folkways of native Americans and emigrants who inhabited land along Lewis Creek.

But this is not conventional biography. It is a fascinating illustration of how we can "find" the watersheds in which we live in ways that transform them for us from mere natural landscapes to unique human places. By telling the story of this "middling river" through the three men's lives, Dann reveals how to discover a watershed's ecological and cultural sense of place."

When my son was 8, we hiked to the top of a small mountain overlooking Lewis Creek and "The Hollow" where we live. "I wish we had a view of the landscape like this from our house," I remarked. Jon quickly responded: "But Dad, we are the landscape." This book confirms the wisdom of that response.