Temple Stream: A Rural Odyssey

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 304 pages
• Published by: Dial Press Trade Paperback May 30, 2006
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0385336551
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0385336550
• Book Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.7 inches
• Weighs: 8 ounces

From Publishers Weekly
Roorbach (Big Bend) takes readers on a journey in and around Temple Stream, which flows by his 1874 home near Farmington, Maine, about forty miles northwest of Augusta. He records a series of forays along his stream, observing subtle environmental clues: the mix of trees, the types of garbage, the attitudes of local beavers, the varieties of birds and wildflowers. Sometimes his wife or their newborn baby accompanies him, sometimes neighbors, but more often just his two dogs. His essays on his perambulations sometimes include a dramatic incident—encounters with mountain man Earl or with the aptly named Ms. Bollocks—but usually there's just a single golden thought: for example, seeing caddis fly nets, he remembers calling them "wind socks" as a boy and then recalls a feeling he had, forty years back, of being "late for dinner, all alone in his canoe, drifting homeward." Some themes thread through these essays: the progress of home improvements, his wife's pregnancy, his messages-in-a-bottle miraculously returned, his charting of Temple Stream back to its mysterious source. Roorbach's obvious delight in unusual phrasing—"streamside omphaloskepsis," "callipygian cowgirl"—should please literate stream walkers who enjoy a good browse in their dictionaries after a day's wander in the woods.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist
As streams go, it may seem unremarkable, the usual combination of rocks and mud, fast-moving rills and tranquil lagoons; but Temple Stream, tucked in a remote corner of western Maine, has inspired poets to rhapsodic heights and hidden recluses needing to lay low. For novelist and nature writer Roorbach, Temple Stream is the view from his cabin's front door, the muse for his own poetic ideal, and the touchstone of his environment. So central is it to his way of living that, with canoe in tow and dogs underfoot, Roorbach sets out to trace the stream to its headwater and chronicle the life, human and not, that depends on it as much as he does. Along with the industrious beaver, he encounters an irascible logger, and an intent, spindly heron stands companion to an intelligent spinster. With a voice as pure and true as the stream itself, Roorbach limns a lyrical yet precise portrait of the life teeming along one deceptively simple yet richly essential part of the natural world. Carol Haggas
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Reader Reviews
Often the journey is more important than the destination, and that's the sort of journey author Bill Roorbach traveled in writing this delightful book. In 1992 Roorbach and his wife bought an old house on the banks of the Temple Stream in rural Maine. Their occupancy of the house was frequently interrupted by career needs, but they always returned to their stream-side home with joy and relief. The Temple Stream rises from a well-hidden artesian spring (sorry, that COULD be seen as a spoiler) on Day Mountain in Avon, my town, and gathers influence on its trip through Temple to join the Sandy River in Farmington, and from there to the Kennebec River, Merrymeeting Bay, and the Gulf of Maine. In the 19th century the stream drove dozens of mills -- sawmills, gristmills, fulling mills. Products of the mills were consumed locally or shipped downstream, bringing wealth back upstream. All that industry washed away when the railroad came, providing a means for raw ingredients to be transported to central mills. Roorbach refers to this change as "the true down-trickle of economics" (p. 14). Fascinated by the natural history of the region, Roorbach formed the intention of traveling the full length of the Temple, by canoe and on foot. He began this project in the summer of 1999 and completed it at the winter solstice in late 2000. Temple Stream: A Rural Odyssey is the story of that quest, interspersed with his personal history, the history of the local settlements, and a Pandora's box of the rich environment around the stream. Roorbach observes the beavers and describes their impact on the stream; consults a field botanist for more detailed understanding of the flora of the region; calls on his lifelong interest in bird-watching; and grows in appreciation of our watery planet through a chance encounter with an elderly hydrologist, found barefoot in a flood pipe with her long skirt rucked up. Local characters and customs are whimsically described, some of them "composites;" I won't meet the Thoreau-quoting giant Earl Pomeroy or the mad house-sitter Mrs. Bollocks on my errands in town but their ways are familiar. All these characters, all the small renewals of nature, even the birth of Roorbach's daughter are presented in a gentle and contemplative style and loosely marked off by solstice and equinox. There are no real denouements here, but if you've ever lost yourself for a while in a stream and wondered where it's going, this book may bring you some of the pleasure it brought me. If you have any interest in memoirs of rural life, I recommend this book to you. Linda Bulger, 2008 Comments (21) | | (Report this)