Confluence: Navigating the Personal & Political on Rivers of the New West

If you are wondering why the west is so important to our future, think about what didn't go right in America's East: pollution; water quality; native population restoration; waste; and the elimination of natural lands. Podmore's book demonstrates why conservation of lands is our only hope to preserve the pristine wildness of a rapidly populating Western America.

A quick read for anyone who has experience boating the San Juan, Colorado, or Rio Grande systems, and an introduction to understanding the threats in these spaces. There is less personal reflection that perhaps what I thought from the description. Really enjoyed the book, and will share with friends.

Confluence: Navigating the Personal & Political on Rivers of the New West is a collection of six essays by Zac Podmore that brilliantly connect the rivers he traverses to his own life and the political and social issues that plague us today.In “Home Sometime Tomorrow” he describes the conflict of values over a uranium mill near the Ute Mountain Ute Reservation, the constant conflict of jobs vs. environment. Cancer is far more common than it should be, but as one cancer survivor on the side of the mill and its jobs put it in a public meeting, “You can learn a lot from cancer, she says. We shouldn’t be afraid of cancer, she says. Cancer can be a good thing.” This is essay is the most personal as Podmore talks about the his mother’s death from cancer, one that you cannot help but believe is the result of the poisoned river waters.“The Delta” describes the economics of water, how if it is not used, it is “wasted.” We dam the Colorado at the border, blocking any water from flowing into Mexico, being wasted, but in 2014 there was a release, a “pulse flow” that allowed water through and he and friends attempted to paddle that flow, the Colorado to the sea. He considers Bastaille’s idea of excess and waste and water economies.“The Confluence” is about his paddling trip down the Lttle Colorado to the Colorado and how difficulty and inaccessibility make places bulwarks against the globalized world culture. In “The Rio” he talks about immigration and paddling the river talking to lawyers, journalists and activists and considers Charles Bowden and Edward Abbey, in particular Abbey’s racist anti-immigrant stance that has had an unfortunate influence on some parts of the environmental movement. “The Dam” celebrates the removal of a dam in the Olympic Peninsula, restoring a river and salmon population. “Feathers” is a short consideration of life, death, and what matters and his encounters with birds who make him think of his mother and his father’s idea that a heron is her visiting them. It is a lovely reminder that we are not the center of the universe.I absolutely loved Confluence from start to finish. It is a short book and covers a lot of ground – I guess I should say it covers a lot of water. The writing is beautiful. I love the way he brings in philosophers from Bataille to Arendt to Thoreau and many others. He summarizes them well and evaluates their relevance to the issues brought forward by the river he travels. He describes the places he travels with the kind of specificity and immediacy that makes you see and feel it your head. The sense of time and place is wonderful.I encourage everyone to read it. He talks about important issues without becoming polemic. He can understand and empathize with people he disagrees with. This is a rare skill in today’s polarized world. He has no desire to polarize but rather bring people together in a sort of confluence.I received an e-galley of Confluence from the publisher through Edelweiss.

Zak Podmore has been riding rivers since his mother attached his car seat to a raft when he was a toddler. When she was diagnosed with cancer, he left a graduate program in philosophy to be with his family in Southern Colorado. And when she died in 2014, it’s not surprising that he sought solace first on the Colorado River from Wyoming to Mexico and later on the Elwha in Washington state. Like Langston Hughes, he’s known rivers.Confluence is not linear by any means. Nor is it a solitary journey. We begin in southeast Utah, the home of the last U.S. uranium mill and the adjacent small reservation of the Ute Mountain Ute, whose people fear that poorly stored waste water will seem into the aquifer from which they drink. The white operators of the mine have no fear of radiation, insisting both that the waste is secure and that uranium dust won’t hurt anyone. The managers are descendants of Mormon pioneers who settled in the area in the late 1800s. As a newcomer to the area, Podmore identifies with the concerns of the Ute Mountain Utes, but unlike them, he knows he can move on. He reports the story of a tribal protest as a journalist.The Colorado Plateau is honeycombed with desert canyons of red rock, and as any reader of Edward Abbey knows, they are magnets for tourists who seek out its national parks. Podmore is a hiker, but unlike Abbey he is no misanthrope, which means he has compassion for the migrants streaming through Mexico out of the Yucatan to the U.S. border. Still, he is intrepid enough to venture off the beaten trails, which he often does.The portion of Confluence that takes us to the Olympic Peninsula of the Pacific Northwest is linked to Podmore’s interest in the removal of two hydroelectric dams on the Elwha River. Built in the early 20th century, the dams destroyed the livelihood of the Lower Elwha Klallum people who depended upon the salmon in the river’s waters. Most of their population has moved on, but as the capacities of the dams to create electricity diminished, they were removed, and a daunting trip to their former site gives hope that the salmon are returning.It is his ability to see the broader social and historical aspects of environmental concerns that mark Podmore as a twenty-first century environmental sage. And with the writer Terry Tempest Williams, he shares the loss of his mother to cancer probably related to radiation.Throughout Confluence, evidence of Podmore’s interest in philosophy surfaces. Not only does he consult Henry David Thoreau, John Muir and Vine Deloria, Jr. but Immanuel Kant, Martin Heidegger and Hannah Arendt. He’s fond of poets like Carolyn Forche and Rainier Maria Rilke. He even muses about artificial intelligence and robots. It’s a lot to pack into 149 pages, but Podmore manages ably.

I just read this book and was blown away. Stellar job. I'll be honest. I got it because I gave Torrey House some money in a kickstarter. I didn't pay much attention to the campaign, I must have been in a generous mood. This book arrived and I ignored it, thinking "yeah another nature book..." I'm always reading and the other week I realized I didn't have a "next book". Figured what the hell and saw this one on my shelf.Read it in 2 days, one of the best things I've read this year. By far. Topical, fun, current, but mostly it has the language. The thing reads almost like a poem, the author thought deeply about how every sentence should be worded. Feels like this book has blood and tears embedded in those pages.Looking forward to the next.