Fieldnotes from Stillwater

About this Story

For eight years, wildlife biologist Dr. Ingrid Fenwick has walked the same small river in western Washington, counting coho salmon in the rain. Fieldnotes from Stillwater is the record of one working season on a tributary of the Snoqualmie — a watershed threaded through with hatcheries and hobby farms, tribal co-managers and county engineers, an old culvert that stops fish at mile seven, and a family that has said no to her for four years running. Written in the tradition of Annie Dillard and Barry Lopez, these eleven linked essays move from March snowmelt to the first spring after a dam comes down on a neighbouring creek. Part natural history, part political geography, part meditation on what it means to keep count in a depleted world, this is a book about paying very close attention to one small place for a very long time — and about the stubborn, unsentimental hope that grows out of the counting.

Chapters

1. 1 The First Count
2. 2 A Watershed Is An Argument
3. 3 Otters And Their Accountants
4. 4 The Culvert At Mile Seven
5. 5 A Landowner Who Said No
6. 6 The Small Politics Of Salmon
7. 7 Spawning In A Bad Year
8. 8 The Volunteers
9. 9 What The Data Wants
10. 10 The Dam That Came Down
11. 11 Next Season

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