Wednesday, August 1, 2001
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Wednesday, August 1, 2001 |
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Song of the Flint: New guide tells river's story BOOK REVIEW: "The Flint River, a Recreational Guidebook to the Flint River and Environs," by Fred Brown and Sherri M.L. Smith, 2001, CI Publishing, Atlanta, GA
By SALLIE
SATTERTHWAITE
"The Flint River, a Recreational Guidebook to the Flint River and Environs" is not a book for everyone. People caught up in the mystique of rivers will love it. So will environmentalists. Outdoors persons, hikers, rafters, bikers, canoeists. Historians, especially students of Georgia or Indian history. Wildflower aficionados, botanists in general, rock hounds, and birders. Tourists. Kids. Teachers. Admirers of Jimmy Carter. Critics of the Corps of Engineers. Did we mention fishermen? Sometimes in an effort to be something for everybody, a book of this scope is nothing to anyone. Co-authors Fred Brown and Sherri M.L. Smith of Peachtree City avoid this pitfall by focusing on the needs of their target readership, albeit a wide and varied group. Brown and Smith celebrate the Flint for its amazing diversity and its regional value, but most of all, for its development from a virtual drain-pipe under Hartsfield Atlanta International Airport to a sparkling whitewater adventure and an invaluable water source. "We fell in love with the Chattahoochee" while working on 'The Riverkeeper's Guide to the Chattahoochee' several years ago, Smith says. "But when we started working on "The Flint," I couldn't believe we could change allegiance so quickly. "We enjoyed the Chattahoochee, but the entire Flint changes character so much as you go along. The Chattahoochee starts out pristine, but becomes dirty [as it flows through Atlanta] but the Flint starts out in filth, and becomes clean." This is a book to read from cover to cover, and to keep in the car for explorations south. Beginning with Brown's passionate account of his own "discovery" of the Flint, to Smith's thoughtful overview of history, through a guidebook written by guidebook masters, to "How Rivers Work," and concluding with several pages of resources and contacts it is instructional, tantalizing and altogether engaging. Perhaps the most startling inclusion is the preface, Preserving a Georgia Treasure, by former President Jimmy Carter, considered by many the savior of the Flint. Having grown up on Choctahatchee Creek, within the Chattahoochee-Flint basin, he learned early the vital connection between free-flowing rivers and every other function of the earth, from deep below its surface to its entire atmosphere. His account of the misrepresentations of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in their determination to dam the river at Sprewell Bluff is forthright and no-holds-barred. Today his 1974 veto of the project is seen as the salvation of an important watershed and a victory for river watchers everywhere. In the preface, President Carter says he believes that Sprewell Bluff changed the American attitude toward dams and "their ill-advised nature, in many cases." The Corps, he writes, is now devoting part of its time to analyzing how it can take some of these dams out. "The Flint River" presents hands-on information on boat ramps, outfitters, hiking trails, campgrounds, accommodations and fishing holes in such useful detail that you could easily traverse the river's length with no other guide. Smith's historical research, for which she says she sought at least two sources for every statement, supports and frames the guide sections beautifully. Nothing including a river basin exists apart from its surroundings and history, and Smith and Brown take their readers from raindrops on a leaf to a view of the planet from space and back, leaving no detail undocumented. Illustrations by Roel Wielinga explain what is admittedly a complex subject. Maps and sketches clarify technical discussions of stream flow, hydraulic power, the Floridan aquifer. His cartoon renderings offer bright contrast to pages of solid text, and lend appeal to younger readers. As they traveled the 350 miles of the Flint plus the Florida lake it becomes, Lake Seminole, a mythological character named Rio guided Brown and Smith. At first he seems merely a device to provide comic relief, but the old boy is remarkably three-dimensional and grows on the reader, even the mature reader. He speaks with authority after all, he was there when migrating animals forded the river and when explorer Hernando de Soto crossed it and when steamboats plied its often shoaled waters. (One wonders, however, why he allowed himself to be depicted on the book's cover as an androgynous character whose cleavage belies his masculinity.) The book is meticulously cross-referenced, although relating text to illustrations can sometimes be confusing it's hard to correlate a river with all its geopolitical boundaries and highway crossings, as well as landmarks of relative gradients. And while the mixed formats text, cartoons, graphics, sidebars cater to the interest of every reader, a case could be made for breaking up solid pages of text with photos or sketches. On nearly every page, the reader finds gems of information imbedded in the larger mine. Sidebars are an invaluable part of the book, maybe the best parts, infinitely interesting. Their small font, however, while permitting the inclusion of more anecdotes, is a challenge for older eyes. Only a determined reader, or one with a magnifying glass, will stay in the hunt. A reduction of the redundancy caused by the cross-referencing might have allowed for larger print with no loss of new material. Georgia readers who remember Brown's Guide to Georgia may assume that the guide pages of "The Flint River" are chiefly Brown's contribution. And they would be wrong. Smith says she wrote most of the text while Brown brought the technical aspects to life. "We both went out and explored the region," Smith says, adding that they walked, waded or boated every foot of the river, some of them twice. The project took two years, the last six months of which Smith spent as much as 18 hours a day writing. "Fred was more into the design and concept," Smith says of Brown. He wrote the "How Rivers Work" section a book within the book working closely with Wielinga, the illustrator. Besides the technical illustrations, bringing Rio to life to the satisfaction of all was a special challenge, since each had a somewhat different image of the river spokesman. Brown says Rio may still be considered a work in progress. Smith and Brown see Rio as an enduring spokesperson for rivers. Plans are already underway to develop a musical play that will take him into schools throughout the region. A series of posters depicting the 14 distinct river watersheds of Georgia is also in the works. Verdict: "The Flint River, A Recreational Guidebook to the Flint River and Environs" is well worth its $24.95 price tag. It is available at The Fayette Book Shop in Fayetteville (770-461-5907) and Omega Book Center in Peachtree City (770-487-3977). |
