On the Spine of Time
A Flyfisher’s Journey Among Mountain People,
Streams & Trout
Author: Harry Middleton
Media: Paperback
Price: $18.00
ISBN: 0871088924
Pages: 200 Size: 8.8 x 6
Standing atop the Great Smoky Mountains with a creel full of joy and heartbreak, the author of The Earth Is Enough casts a Thoreau-like eye at love, flyfishing, geology, the character of mountain folk and trout. Middleton wants readers to experience his Smoky Mountain fishing trips as he does: as metaphors for transcendental faith in nature. A naturalist-romantic, he celebrates the wild mountain trout with a congregation of eccentric highlanders and fishing companions who give colorful witness in clipped Faulknerian speech. Middleton’s own style, however, is fluid–his prose occasionally as lithe as Annie Dillard’s–carrying forward his tribute while his angst about the future floats overhead like a buzzard on a high thermal.
–Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
About the Author
Harry Middleton is a critically acclaimed author whose books include The Earth is Enough, The Bright Country, and Rivers of Memory. He is the recipient of the Friends of American Writers Award, the Outdoor Writers Association of America Best Book Award, and the Southeastern Outdoor Press Best Book Award.
Reviews
A nourishing, often eloquent book by nature writer Middleton (The Earth Is Enough, 1989), which brings to bubbling life the wonderful characters and streams he encounters in the majestic Great Smoky Mountains of North Carolina. Along the way he does a little fishing. “Angling is simply the best excuse…for investing as much time as possible in the mountains,” writes Middleton.
The actual fishing lore here is minimal; the emphasis is on the odd assortment of people, the natural and local history, and the ecology and imperiled beauty of the region. Once, along the banks of the Oconaluftee River, deliriously ill from food poisoning, Middleton was rescued by Exie Sopwith, a mountain woman who claimed to cure a “cough by eating little bits of spiderwebbing rolled into tiny balls.” Though he cherishes solitude in the blue, cathedral-like Smokies, he also shares water with a fly-fishing fanatic, a Wall Street executive who attends A.A. meetings because he enjoys making contact with “other troubled human beings.” Then there’s Ambrose Noel, who wanders Hazel Creek with a prayer wheel, chanting an old Doors song; a young Cherokee who tells him, “You get education, jobs, housing. . . and we get our own trout water. Fair’s fair.”…A book to savor and to linger over.
–Kirkus Reviews
In On the Spine of Time, Harry Middleton takes the reader on an unforgettable fishing trip, full of quirky characters, magical streams, and the unique moods of ancient mountains and their hidden world. This book measures up to the extraordinary country it chronicles.
–Paul Schullery, author of Mountain Time and Searching for Yellowstone
Middleton has the novelist’s skill at drawing characters; he has that old Southern storyteller’s ear for language; above all he has a sense of humor. This is a splendid book in every respect.
–Page Stegner, author of Islands of the West
Middleton’s writings and reflections summon a deeper and more profound respect for the essential role that wilderness and mountains play on the human psyche. Populated with eccentric and engaging characters, Middleton recalls his encounters with humor and alongside his stirring depictions of the Smoky’s scenic vistas and the wild places provide the solace of mountain streams, fast watertrout hooked and trout lost. On the Spine of Time will delight and engage anyone who ever held a pole in hand while hip deep in a pleasant stream while matching wits with a wily trout.
–Reviewers Bookwatch/The Midwest Book Review, February 1998
Available at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Mountain Press
