Overview

Dickerson’s lovingly crafted narratives take us to waters from sockeye spawning streams of Alaska’s Lake Clark and Katmai National Parks, to Rocky Mountain rivers in the national parks and forests of Montana and Wyoming, to the little brook trout creeks in his home waters of Maine. Along the way we will fall in love with arctic streams, glacial rivers flowing green with flour, alpine brooks tumbling out of melting snow, and little estuaries where lobsters and brook trout swim within a few yards of each other; with wide deep lakes, little mountain tarns with crystal clear water, and tannin-laden beaver ponds the color of tea. The narratives are creative, personal, and compelling, yet informed by science and history as well as close observation and the eye of a naturalist. The characters in the stories are fascinating, from fly fishing guides to fisheries biologists to wranglers to Dickerson himself who often explores the rivers with a fly rod in hand, but whose writing transcends any sort of fishing narrative. But the most important characters are the rivers themselves whose stories Dickerson tells, and whose music he helps us to hear.

Advance Praise for The Voices of Rivers

For the earnest fly fisherman, life on earth is measured by encounter, not only with the cutthroat or the brookie, but with the big story being written beneath all things. Matthew T. Dickerson stewards the whole of the world through his insistence on direct experience with the primal domain and, The Voices of Riversis water-marked with the cultivated sensibilities of a devoted guide. I would fish with him any day of the week.

 ―James Scott Smith, author of Water, Rocks and Trees

Matthew Dickerson combines a boyish delight in fishing with a very adult understanding of the plight of our native fisheries from Maine to Alaska.  And the perspicacity of his prose is a great source of delight to us all, fishers and non-fishers alike.  Whether pursuing brook trout or Dolly Varden, Dickerson knows both the thrill of the cast and the agony of horribly compromised habitat.  We are all the more gleeful and sadly wiser for his efforts.

 ―Paul J. Willis, author of Deer at Twilight: Poems from the North Cascades

If Izaak Walton’s Compleat Angler deserves credit for inspiring the rich literature of fly-fishing, Matthew Dickerson’s The Voices of Rivers immediately merits a place at the current end of that enticing shelf. In addition to Dickerson’s vivid accounts of fishing for trout (mostly) in the rivers of Colorado, Montana, Alaska, and Maine, his new book also conveys an thoughtful and informative perspective on trout ecology and conservation and the importance of public lands for the health of our earth. His highly engaging voice ties this all together with its narrative energy, excitement, and humor. Dickerson’s approach to fishing is in most cases catch-and-release. But this book is definitely a keeper.

―John Elder, author of Frog Run and Reading the Mountains of Home