We are matter and long to be received by an Earth that conceived us which accepts and reconstitutes us its children each of us without exception every one. The journey is long and then we start homeward fathomless as to what home might make of us. from The River You TouchWhen Chris Dombrowski burst onto the literary scene with Body of Water the book was acclaimed as amp8220a classicamp8221 Jim Harrison and its author compared with John McPhee. Dombrowski begins the highly anticipated The River You Touchamp160with a question as timely as it is profound amp8220What does a meaningful mindful sustainable inhabitance on this small planet look like in the anthropoceneamp8221He answers this fundamental question of our time initially by listening lovingly to rivers and the land they pulse through in his adopted home of Montana. Transplants from the postindustrial Midwest he and his partner Mary assemble a life based precariously on her income as a schoolteacher his as a poet and flyfishing guide. Before long their first child arrives followed soon after by two more all amp8220free beings in whom flourishes an essential kind of knowing amp8230 whose capacity for wonder may be the beacon by which we see ourselves through this dark epoch.amp8221 And around the young family circles a community of friendsamp8212riverrafting guides and conservationists climbers and wildlife biologistsamp8212who seek to cultivate a way of living in place that moves beyond the mythologized West of appropriation and extraction.Moving seamlessly from the quotidianamp8212diapers the mortgage a threadbare bank accountamp8212to the metaphysicalamp8212time memory how to live a life of integrityamp8212Dombrowski illuminates the experience of fatherhood with intimacy and grace. Spending time in wild places with their children he learns that their youthful sense of wonder at the beauty and connectivity of the morethanhuman world is not naivete to be shed but rather wisdom most of us lose along the wayamp821