A story of America’s Rivers> After traveling 300 of them, author knows his waterways

AMERICA BY RIVERS, by Tim Palmer, Island Press, Washington, D.C., 272 pages, hardcover, $16.95.

Tim Palmer knows his rivers.

Intimately.

For the past 25 years he has traveled more than 300 of America’s most noteworthy waterways by canoe, raft and kayak. His new book, “America by Rivers,” is the culmination of those years of travel.

For many, to travel just one of America’s great rivers by canoe or raft is a lifetime dream. To travel more than 300 is an unimaginable luxury, even for those who cherish river travel.

But Palmer’s new work deals with more than rivers as recreational centerpieces. His objective with this book is clear and straightforward — to provide a compendium of America’s rivers as they exist today. Palmer writes, “Rivers are important, essential, vital to America as we know it and to life on earth.”

Not surprisingly, this work is a bit heavy reading at times, bordering on academic in places. It is not light, but it is fascinating.

From the glaciated rivers of the Northeast, west to the desert dry lands and north to the wild rivers of Alaska, Palmer shares his discoveries of waters that are rich in aquatic energy, abundant in life. He details the origins of the rivers, notes where humans have influenced their course and ecology, and offers explanations as to what the fate of some rivers might have been without human intervention.

Palmer’s travels reveal that many of America’s rivers suffer from pollution and are unable to support native plants and wildlife. Development along our waterways has manipulated flow and has taken its toll. He writes that our rivers are an early warning system to humans — “They are the canary in the coal mine; dead fish indicate that trouble for people is not far behind.”

Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of Palmer’s craft of this book is that he manages to build a case for environmental conservation — not preservation, mind you — factually, not fanatically or in an opinionated fashion. He notes the ecological impact of human intervention, primarily hydropower dams, on many rivers.

The Susquehanna in Pennsylvania, for example, “was once among the great anadromous fisheries of the nation. Millions of shad were netted near the mouth of the river, single hauls of a net sometimes took days to empty. But hydropower dams as early as 1840 terminated the spawning runs.”

As with many other rivers in this country, one way to rectify the influence of human intervention has been to lift fish over the runs, or to build ladders at the dams.

This new release features appendices of the largest rivers — a table of long, undammed sections of rivers in the United States and a list of the rivers the author has rafted or canoed. The latter list includes Maine’s Allagash, Union, Machias, the East and West branches of the Penobscot, and the Penobscot itself. The book includes a bibliography Palmer used for gathering data while writing “America.”

The waterways featured in this work are key to sustaining life forms of all kinds. They are indicators of human activity, past and present. Our nation is one body, our rivers are many circulation systems within that body. Even though they may seem separate, divided by differences in geology, topography and origin, they unite us as people and sustain the life which sustains us.

Palmer’s book is far from a guidebook for those planning float trips down some of America’s best water routes. It’s more of an abstract of factual information on the rivers themselves — their geological and historical underpinnings, a summary of the life they host and the effects humans have had on them. His underlying goal is to heighten our awareness of how our activities, both recreational and essential, past and present, affect the rivers around which we live.