On the Spine of Time: A Flyfisher's Journey Among Mountain People, Streams & Trout / Edition 1

by Harry Middleton

Overview

This powerful story of one angler's adventures in the Great Smoky Mountains is a descent into wildness, a meditation on the landscape bathed in greenness and truth, and the discovery of a people living — on the spine of time.

From the solace of mountain streams to the frenetic bustle of Gatlinburg, one of Tennessee's great tourist towns, this memorable journey summons readers to confront the joys and sorrows of life through a new understanding of our place in nature and its process.

Harry Middleton had to endure hardships to find the queen mother of all trout streams in the heart of the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. He had to live through treacherous mountain roads, the cloud of airborne industrial toxins that shrouds the range for most of the year, an occasional blast of lightning, and, worst of all, a helping of rancid potato salad at a roadside diner. Like Norman MacLean in "A River Runs Through It," Middleton makes fly-fishing a religion with its own vision of nirvana, and if it takes an occasional descent into the nether regions to attain it, the author isn't afraid to supply the grisly details. This graceful, funny memoir belongs in every angler's library.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780871088925
Publisher:	TURNER PUB CO
Publication date:	03/01/1997
Series:	The Pruett Series
Edition description:	Pruett Pub Co Ed.
Pages:	224
Sales rank:	55,532
Product dimensions:	5.97(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Harry Middleton was a writer and author of five books on fishing and the outdoor lifestyle.  He wrote intensely descriptive prose using a wide- ranging vocabulary to create sparkling stories about wild places and remote trout streams.  He was a critically acclaimed author whose books include The Earth is Enough: Growing Up in a World of Flyfishing, Trout, and Old Men (1989), On the Spine of Time: a Flyfisher’s Journey among Mountain People, Streams, & Trout (1991), The Bright Country: a Fisherman’s Return to Trout, Wild Water and Himself (1993) and Rivers of Memory (1993).  He is the recipient of the Friends of American Writers Award, the Outdoor Writers Association of American Best Book Award, and the Southeastern Outdoor Press Best Book Award.
 
Harry was born in 1949 and grew up in the south graduating from Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, Louisiana with an English degree.  He earned a master’s degree in Western history from Louisiana State University in 1973.  He wrote the Outdoor South column for Southern Living magazine from 1984 to 1991.  He passed away unexpectedly in 1993 at the age of 43. He is survived by his widow, and two sons.
 

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"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 tot he extraordinary country it chronicles."  —-Paul Schullery, author of Mountain Time and Searching for Yellowstone.

"Middleton writes with humor and compassion" —-Publishers Weekly

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." —-Page Stegner

Editorial Reviews

"Middleton writes with humor and compassion" —Publishers Weekly

"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.

From the Publisher