August 2025

"The Danger of civilization, of course, is that you will piss your life away on nonsense"

 – Jim Harrison (The Beast God Forgot to Invent)

I went upriver toward the reservoir, where I knew the tailwater would be cold enough to catch and release fish in late July. I pulled into a grassy turnout in the pines at the top of a long hill, where the land rises from the water at a forty-five degree angle. The trail there reaches down in switchbacks, and touches the river below a more nearly vertical facing of sheer rock, as it widens and then breaks around an island. I jointed my fly rod, set my keys on the rear tire, and stepped into the trees.

I wanted to see if a hole I’d fished from a drift boat ten years ago, on the far side of the island and across a broad, lesser channel of sun-baked stones, was still there. Specifically, I wanted to know if a large Brown trout I’d hooked and lost twice was still there. This sort of thing is improbable, but then, so much of what happens is improbable until it happens, at which point it becomes fact.

Rivers, even rivers corralled by rail lines and paved roads, breathe and move. Speed up the film and a river whips back and forth across its valley floor in the course of geologic time like an overcharged hose. Even a few winters will substantially rearrange, if not the bones of the river, then its features: trees erode and fall in, floods toss massive rocks around like great, numberless dice, and the physics of erosion and deposition alter channel, depth, cut bank, braid, snag. There are few pleasures above visiting a known river in spring.

I went to the river too because living in America means absorbing an endless broadcast of technicolor neuroses, like a B-grade drive-in horror movie projected onto a paper screen in the rain. Going outside is the only specific remedy available. To hear a river and smell it, and if you elect to keep the occasional fish, to taste it as well, may put you in relationship to the world again. 

Last year I taped two small pieces of paper above my desk. On one I’d written in block letters, REFUSE, and the other, SIMPLIFY. Each of these things, like the Golden Rule, is easy to say and hard to accomplish.

I recently looked back through ten years of journals and letters and found, predictably, that my obsessions didn't change. Love, death, weather, family, fishing, God, booze, landscape, books, music, history, memory, America, time, all make serial appearances. But what struck home like a harpoon was the litany of complaint, bordering on despair, about digital life, as the culture vanished into parody, like a long joke with no punch line. And through all those years, I stayed in harness. We all did, as our politics darkened and decoupled, and the kids got all fucked up. We kept working for the Corporations, full time. We pay to play, and go on paying. Posting a letter like this to the socials feels like trying to communicate by passenger pigeon, if you strangled the pigeon, and just threw it in the direction you wanted it to go.

I crossed the bed of freestone chalky with dried mud at low water, to the main channel, and walked downstream. The rocks in the reaches are round and slick, furred over with biofilm, treacherous. The vaunted elegance of the flyfisher as seen in films and photos doesn't generally describe the existential comedy of private moments. After a few near falls I found a driftwood staff in the piled wrack, and picked my way like a heron.

The hole I remembered was there, and gone. Not as deep as it had been, and where once the main current had diverted hard to one side, creating a wide circular pool with a strong return, the river now bore straight down, so that it took a moment to be sure it was the same place. I stood in the shade and fished a dry fly from the head of the flume, piling line on the topwater and then lifting the rod tip high to shiver the fly against the current like a hatching insect at the end of the drift. I switched to a heavy streamer, and then a series of ever-smaller nymphs, and caught nothing. 

After a while I sat down on a deadfall, lay the stick at my feet in the shallows, and watched a cloud of minnows negotiate the soft hydraulic that pulled on my boots, as they fed on whatever I'd kicked up. I listened to the buzzing high summer day, the water sliding by, the sounds of birds that don't know that we name them. I was treasuring up a fund of daylight and silence to get through the fall, and this world we've made.

There are places we remember, and things we used to do. Like the river I imagine they change and breathe, in fact and in memory. I think we can go back there and find them. That's what I'm going to try to do.

MIDWEST – Later this month I'll play a few shows back home in the Midwest, starting at Milk and Honey Ciders in St. Joseph, MN (backed by and sharing the bill) with Erik Koskinen and his band, then solo at the Cafe Carpe, (SOLD OUT) my sweet old home bar, in Fort Atkinson, WI (8/20). Then up at Gibson Music Hall in Appleton, WI  (8/21) on my way north to perform at the Porcupine Mountain Music Festival in Ontonogan, MI. (8/22; again with Erik Koskinen and his band).

EUROPE – In late August we'll start a full-band European tour for The Universal Fire with a return appearance at the Tønder Festival in Denmark (8/27-30) alongside a full slate of great artists. From there we'll head down into Germany and points south with shows at Music Star in Norderstedt, DE  (8/31), The Singers and Players Theater in Oldenburg, DE (9/1), De Amer in Amen, NL (9/2), Thiemeloods in Nijmegan, NL (9/3), and LantarenVenster in Rotterdam, NL (9/4), SPOT (at De Oosterport, the Binnenzaal) in Groningen (9/6), and finally at Cobblestone in Oldenzaal (9/7)  Erik Koskinen opens the tour and joins the band on lead guitar.

GRAND MARAIS – Stateside in September I'll play the North House Folk School's annual Unplugged concert in Grand Marais, MN., on a special bill trading songs with my wife, Kris Delmhorst (9/19). You haven't experienced real terror or humility until you've backed your wife up on lead guitar. Look for some ringers in the band up there. Grand Marais claims to have the World's Best Donuts, which is a bold statement, fully borne out by experience. I'm going there every day.

NEW ENGLAND – In October I'll make two short trio tours of New England, the first a run of shows that starts at the Oxbow in Portland, ME (10/2), before heading down to Passim in Cambridge, MA (10/3), back out to the valley for a show at the Iron Horse (10/4) and north again to Jimmy's Jazz and Blues Club in Portsmouth, NH (10/5). Later in the month we'll get back to our favorite barn in Galway, NY, the much-storied Cockn' Bull (10/16), and then over to The Spire Center in Plymouth, MA (10/17) and the beautiful Groton Hill Music Center (10/18). Our friends in the bluegrass outfit Old Hat Stringband open 10/2-5, and 17.

WEST – Dates are being announced for an Oct/Nov trio tour of the Northwest, Montana, and California (10/22–11/9). Visit the TOUR page for more details as shows continue to be announced, but for now look for us at the Tractor Tavern in Seattle (10/22), The Belfry in Sisters (10/23), The Shedd in Eugene, OR (10/24) Rockford Grange Hall in Hood River, OR (10/25, put on by the folks at the Red Barn), Mississippi Studios in Portland, OR (10/26), and the New Prospect Theatre in Bellingham, WA (10/28). Then, like Led Zeppelin, we're going to California, and real excited to get back to Tales from the Tavern in Santa Ynez, CA (11/5), Little Saint in Healdsburg, CA (11/6), Heringer Estates in Clarksburg, CA (11/7), and the Ivy Room in Albany, CA (11/9). Look for further dates and details to fill in as we go along. Knowledge is power, unless you are President.

MIDWEST – In the first half of December, per custom, I'll be on tour in upper Midwest with the band, and visiting my family for early Christmas, with some truly special shows in the offing. More about those later. Keep an eye on the TOUR page for details.

ANTIDOTES – Gaza: World Central Kitchen,  Sudan: Sudanese American Physicians Association, Music: Night, Nils Frahm, Philosophy: Holism and Evolution, Jan Smuts, Letters: The Honest Broker, Ted Gioia (Substack), Economics: Yanis Varoufakis, Artificial Intelligence: John Searle, Jaron Lanier, Noam Chomsky, Memoir: Between Them, Richard Ford, Poems: Times Alone, Antonio Machado (translated by Robert Bly)

We'll see you out there somewhere, I guess. If you know anyone, meanwhile, who might like this letter, please forward it to them with my compliments, and tell them it's free and they'll get their money's worth.