Inventing Montana: Dispatches from the Madison Valley

(Hardback)

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Every summer for two decades, Ted Leeson and a maverick group of close companions have returned to an old ranch house on the benchland overlooking the Madison River. Trout and fly fishing may be at the heart of their ritual return, but their experience goes far beyond the fishing. Leeson contemplates both the human and natural landscape brilliantly: the fly-anglers passionate, ironic, and sometimes hilarious allegiances to what they do; the intriguing Madison Valley and its creatures and flowers; the trout town of Ennis; maps and their revelations; the green-card experience of living in a place in which you are not native; the nature of leisure.
Full of wit, surprise, shrewd observation, and wisdom, this book tells a story about creating a place of temporary liberty, and inhabiting a world fashioned of your best imaginings, where you might, for a time, live the potencies of a place that you have shaped and has shaped you. No lover of the very best writing about fly fishing and the natural world can afford to miss this stunning book.

Reviews

Leeson 's work belongs on a shelf next to that of Annie Dillard, Barry Lopez, and others of their stripe.
Fans of fishing and travel memoirs by Bill Tapply, Thomas McGuane, and Jim Harrison will find much to appreciate here. --John Rowen
Ted Leeson is wry, deft, modest, and engaging. Without compromising those qualities, he is also a writer who illuminates human life. --Franklin Burroughs, author of The River Home: A Return to the Carolina Low Country
A good book to have in the tackle box for quiet moments and a welcome addition to the literature of fishing and Montana alike.
Leeson s work belongs on a shelf next to that of Annie Dillard, Barry Lopez, and others of their stripe.