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<\/a>Dr. Sarah de Leeuw<\/a>, a faculty member in the Northern Medical Program<\/a> and Geography<\/a> at UNBC, takes readers on a journey along the Skeena River<\/a>, guiding us to access points along its course in her poetry in \u00a0Skeena<\/i><\/a> (Caitlin Press<\/a>, 2015). Along the journey, people, places, animals, plants, and soil weave through the river\u2019s currents, around the roots of its trees, and into its riparian forests.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nWe meet \u201cEphemeral ephemeroptera<\/i>\u201d and their \u201cSticky transparent\/wings wet with our waters<\/i>\u201d. We feel \u201cInvertebrates nuzzling my bowels<\/i>\u201d. We experience the \u201cTaste of grizzly shit shot through with tannin\/leached through peat<\/i>\u201d. And we smell the \u201cstench of elk urine\/sliding into me<\/i>\u201d. There\u2019s the blinding pain of a mother moose\u2019s \u201csnapped leg<\/i>\u201d as its calf runs away alone, intermixed with the softness of \u201cMy surface silky with eagle down\/thistle fluff.<\/i>\u201d<\/p>\n
There is death, and there is new life: \u201cOur babies will grow\/into men \u00a0 <\/span>fat with the fish\u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span>you lover\/you mother\/you will feed them.<\/i>\u201d<\/p>\n Along the way we hear the stories of the river and by the river. Some of the stories are very old: \u201c(A) story of three\/young men felled by frogs\u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span>a story of <\/i>Pelemqwae\u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span>the giant beaver who shot arrows\/and felled a chief<\/i>\u201d. Others \u2013 the account of Ali Howard swimming the full length of the river in 2009 \u2013 are very new.<\/p>\n Early in the book \u2013 early along the course of the Skeena \u2013 the river asks us: \u201cWho chose to name people? \u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span>Who chose?\u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span>The people?<\/i>\u201d<\/p>\n And then the names along its length flow through the pages in eddies, ripples, and torrents: Wet\u2019sinkwha, Edziza, Kispiox, Gitanmaax, \u201cslow-and-full-of-water-with-lily-roots-thick-as-a-young-doe\u2019s-knee-knuckle<\/i>\u201d.<\/p>\n Who, indeed, chose the names? Was it the river all along? In her prologue de Leeuw tells us that she has \u201cwritten the river\u2019s voice.\u201d She has made the Skeena\u2019s voice accessible and it flows into its listeners with each reading \u2013 leaving us filled with its sensations, stories, and sounds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I\u2019ve spent a lot of time around rivers over the course of my decades \u2013 fly angling, research, hiking, contemplating. Rivers and streams are, in many ways, the circulatory system of our continents, and they ooze life of all sorts within their flow and along their banks. That riparian life has the tendency to make … <\/p>\n