Hibernation reads, 2025
When we can't fish and make stories, we read stories. Sometimes those are fly-fishing stories, and sometimes they're not. Here are three that rolled across the bedside table, from the Grand Canyon to the Mariana Trench to the Carhartteratti of Jackson Hole's Persephone Bakery.
A Walk in the Park, by Kevin Fedarko
The Grand Canyon may simultaneously be America's most-known national park and its greatest mystery. A deeply complex geography, unforgiving climate, and distance from relative services mean that while millions visit the main South Rim spots every year, the Canyon's deepest secrets remain concealed, except to a few.
In this epic adventure story, Fedarko and his boon companion / photographer Pete McBride attempt to walk the complete canyon, a move very few have completed, and none with the relative laissez faire attitude Fedarko and McBride have at the onset.
After debilitating setbacks, pie-eating-contest quantities of humility, and the allyship of a unique community of canyon nuts, Fedarko and McBride find their stride and, in the process, create a beautiful chronicle of the canyon's secrets, and the people who've grown and changed with them over centuries.
I've never been to the Grand Canyon, but having just completed this, and Fedarko's earlier chronicle about running the canyon in dories, I feel a strong ache to spend time there, and a concern that these secrets and mysteries may not endure.
Billionaire Wilderness, by Justin Farrell
Teton County, Wyoming, home of Jackson Hole, is also America's largest concentration of billionaires per capita, and the greatest inequality in the nation.
Yale professor, social scientist, and Wyoming native Justin Farrell went in depth with its denizens—at both ends of the socioeconomic spectrum—over a five-year research period to understand what makes the ultra-wealthy tick, and how their motivations to recreate at the doorstep of some of America's most storied wildernesses are changing culture.
Farrell unpacks how pet projects of the superrich, chiefly conservation easements through foundations, scratch their itch for philanthropy and a sense of environmental protection while ignoring the class-based realities of the "everyday folks"—like fly-fishing guides—they emulate in their speech and dress, to cloak their vast wealth.
While Farrell cites research that money and power can make a person more self-absorbed, less generous, and less empathetic to suffering, his conversations with the rich and famous reveal a deeply deluded group who see themselves as beneficent protectors and friends of the common folk, with major league "how do you do, fellow kids" vibes, cloaked in Wranglers and western shirts as they remain clients, aloof and disconnected.
What's not to love? This is a rare portrait into the mindsets and attitudes of ultra-high-net-wealth individuals, with a bulletproof research methodology and enormous implications for how we see the future of the republic unfolding. Just last week a Wall Street Journal article explored the relationship between the ultra-wealthy's spending and the overall economy, detailing how the richest 10% of Americans drive almost 50% of spending in the economy, a spending level that's increased while the rest of the country has cut back due to inflation.
I'd strongly recommend this book for anyone working in philanthropy, who relies on big-money donor class, or guides wealthy clients (on the water, or off). It's a little dense at times, but peppered with enough dialogue and conversation to keep it lively.
Eloquence of the Sardine, by Bill François
Well, not only does Bill François have a lovely sense of fashion, and some pretty solid home waters, he's also got a collection of essays going deep on the unique biologies and behavioral habits of ocean-dwelling creatures.
Subtitled "Extraordinary encounters beneath the sea," the book has a lovely way of combining day-dreamy wonderings and musings about the sea with hard facts about the astonishing ways fish and their co-habitants go about their business.
From a history of ancient Swedish eels entwined with a scouting mission underneath Paris, to a harrowing view at how ocean-dwellers are strip-mined and sanitized for your plate, these thirteen essays will grab your heart and offer dozens of lovely bits of marine trivia.
Special thanks to Robert from this year's Winter term, who saw mention of Bill Francois and passed along this gem. Thanks, Robert!
That's it!
- What's on your bedside table right now?
- Got anything new and notable coming up you're looking forward to?
- Any old favorites?
Let me know in the comments: be a book recommendation hero like Robert!
