Casting Homeward: An Angler and Naturalist’s Journey to America’s Legendary Rivers

In the serene latest in Ramirez’s Casting series (after Casting Forward), the naturalist reflects on fly-fishing in Alaska, the Catskills, and Yellowstone National Park, among other locales. He describes his spiritual outlook on the natural world, marveling at how trees and humans depend on the others’ exhalation to survive, and how the rainbow trout he catches and releases will one day “rejoin the river in a different form—just like me.” Discussing his technique, he recounts how, to catch sockeye salmon in Alaska’s Agulowak River, he “cast across and slightly upcurrent as the salmon [swam] by.” The narrative is largely uneventful; a chapter on Ramirez’s time on Montana’s Big Hole River recalls blackbirds chirping, the joy he felt drinking hot coffee while fishing, and the “smallish but beautifully colored rainbow trout” he caught. Instead, the book drifts along on folksy philosophizing (“Every cast is a gamble, filled with possibility, and if I walk away empty-handed, it’s on me”) and tranquil descriptions of vistas encountered (“The roots of forest trees and meadow grasses held the riparian edges together and cradled the river in their loving embrace.... A family of mergansers paddled by as wood ducks flew overhead and a bald eagle soared just downriver of our bow”). This is the next best thing to casting a line into a mountain stream. (Sept.)