Many Rivers to Cross: Of Good Running Water, Native Trout, and the Remains of Wilderness

To the author, the sight of a young woman swimming nude in a river was depressing; water warm enough for skinny-dipping was not good trout water. A writer for the Boston Globe and avid fly fisherman, Montgomery traveled to the West seeking pristine streams and native cutthroat trout. His journeys took him from Arizona to Montana, up the Missouri, down the Columbia, across the Colorado and the Rio Grande, into the Great Basin. He fished Rosebud Creek, near the Little Bighorn; he followed the trail of Lewis and Clark, observing that they had ignored fish in their reports. Montgomery found the last best place in the Oregon desert--a brooklet one foot wide and less than that deep, where he caught the rare trout. This engaging narrative is not just for those who fish but any reader interested in wilderness. Illustrations. (Mar.)