When poet and longtime fly-fishing guide Chris Dombrowski encountered the Montana wilderness as a 19-year-old, it was love at first sight. The River You Touch: Making a Life on Moving Water is both his passionate ode to the beauty of the western land that for him "became my True North," and an intimate memoir of the joys and challenges of pursuing his artistic vocation amid the demands of a growing family.
Casting off in what he calls "this boat made of words," Dombrowski, currently assistant director of the Creative Writing program at the University of Montana, looks back through 16 years on the birth of his son, Luca, and his daughters, Molly and Lily Mae. With each new addition to the family, the stress on Dombrowski and his wife, Mary, ratchets up, as the income from his guiding, writing instruction, and part-time job as development director at a homeless shelter, combined with her kindergarten teaching, barely stretches to cover each month's bills, sending him out into the woods to hunt for game to help feed the family and complicating his efforts to work at his writing craft.
But for all his admirable candor about his family's persistent economic insecurity, Dombrowski doesn't drown in self-pity. Frequently, and gratefully, he raises his eyes to his breathtaking surroundings. In lush and keenly observant descriptions of his outings on the Big Blackfoot River, he describes how "yellow mayflies clung briefly to the moving water, then poured into the sky like snow falling in reverse," or how a rainbow trout "feeding on mayfly duns at last light in November glows like the underside of a polished spoon." His prose evokes the spirit of Norman Maclean's A River Runs Through It, a book he says fired his imagination when a friendly high school teacher in his native Michigan handed it to him. For all the allure of this ravishing environment, however, he recognizes the perils that lurk beneath, revealed in the loss of one of his close friends in an avalanche.
Dombrowski (Body of Water: A Sage, a Seeker, and the World's Most Alluring Fish) is a natural storyteller and he also shares some entertaining tales of his encounters with his friend, the late novelist, poet and outdoorsman, Jim Harrison. Harrison's writing and his robust embrace of a life in nature serve as both a touchstone for Dombrowski's pursuits and a cautionary tale for the young father when it comes to striking the proper balance between career and family. These are just some of the doors Dombrowski opens into his life and work. Pass through any of them and it's not likely you'll emerge unchanged. --Harvey Freedenberg, freelance reviewer
Shelf Talker: Fly-fishing guide and poet Chris Dombrowski reflects with lyrical observations on more than 25 years of life on Montana's wild rivers.