North Bank
Robin Carey
"Learning the territory is a process I don't fully understand, but one that tugs at me with a feeling like necessity," writes Robin Carey. That process, of creating home ground in a new place, is the subject of North Bank, a rich and poignant look at fly fishing, favorite rivers, and the desire for familiar landscapes.
It was a fly fishers' dream — a cabin on the lower Rogue River in southern Oregon. But for Robin Carey, this new home also meant learning a new "home river." In North Bank, Carey explores how new places gradually become familiar. His essays describe how old memories — of family, of certain fish, of other rivers — and fresh experiences — scouting river canyons, volunteering at a fish hatchery, remodeling the cabin — have combined to shape this place on the Rogue into a place he calls home.
About the author
Robin Carey has been a frequent contributor to national periodicals and journals, including Gray's Magazine. He is the author of Baja Journey (Texas A&M University Press), which received the 1990 Oregon Book Award. He lives in Missoula, Montana.
Read more about this author
Building with Bones
Home River
Two
Size
Walking Back
Places to Quit
Silver Ponies
Riverbed
Smolts
The Blue Closet
Permission
For the Nose
Back to the River
Company
Berries and Horses
"The inland cabin that we bought stands near… the north bank of a wide Rogue meander. The location could not be more convenient for my wanderings… South of us, and north of us, other coastal streams and creeks run their courses to the Pacific. There will be different smells to these rivers than I have known elsewhere, different bird-cries, and different beetles under different stones. There will be secrets at each bend, roadside secrets and trailside secrets. Gathering these will be my pastime. Learning these will be my study, as will the subtle ways that the strange turns known and then, at last, familiar."