River of the Angry Moon: Seasons on the Bella Coola

Rating:
Summary: The seasons of the Bella Coola
Review: In a book that carries the reader from deeply moving and poetic insights of BC's coastal natural phenomena, to alarming and occasionaly scathing analyses of resource management practices, Hume relates an incredibly intimate knowledge of the ecology and people of a very rich landscape. It may have been tempting for Hume to slip into a ranting diatribe of the regretable past policies which have scarred this beautiful place, but instead he describes to the reader the natural wonders of the Bella Coola valley along with the legends of the First Nations people that have inhabited the area. Hume's knowledge is vast and he can easily hold your interest on whatever subject takes his fancy. Highly recomended.

Rating:
Summary: Loved it, hated it!
Review: It is so hard not to simultaneously both love and dislike this book. Love, because the natural history is beautifully limned and Hume has gift for apt phrasings that take you right out on the edge of this beautiful river (which, I should say proudly, I once lived beside). Former local doctor and naturalist, Harvey Thommasen has contributed his peerless knowledge and stream-wisdom about the Bella Coola's fauna and flora all the way through. The chronological following of the Aboriginal yearly cycle adds to the feel Hume creates.

But, and it is a big and, for me, distracting "but", there is a lot of preachiness even egotistical meanness in the way that Hume looks at those of less finer sensibilities who actually - sin of sins! - keep their catch. Only so much of this holier-than-thou proselytization and one loses the lyricism!

Hume's accounts of his own flyfishing prowess, catching a big salmon almost every cast and of course, because he is so ecologically enlightened, letting it go rather than frying it up like you or I might do, gets really tiresome. Not very far beneath the surface respect for the Nuxalk Indians whose lore gives the book its structure, runs a vein of intolerance for the tribe and for others who do not share his quasi-religous awe for steelhead etc.

So? By all means buy it but unless you are yourself one of those saintly fly-casters be prepared to grit your teeth more than a few times!