Notes from the San Juans: Thought of Fishing-And Home

Meyers's claim that he, a longtime easterner, was prompted to move to southwestern Colorado by his longing for his father, who deserted the family in New Jersey, turns out to be a Maguffin in this collection of 15 original pieces. The real compulsion is fly fishing for trout. Meyers (Lime Creek Odyssey) has a reporter's ear but a cleric's hand with issues of everyday life in the San Juans. One one hand is Damn Trout, one of the truest and funniest pieces about the outdoors to be written in the modern era. Other pieces seem stuck in a gyre of sentimentality that verges on the maudlin in Moving Downriver. The hard outline of life in Colorado's San Juan mountain range seems to oppose Meyers's flaccid style, but in the end these loose notes and sketches of the locals glow like bare rocks in evening light. (Oct.)