I made friends with a lot of those who could have criticized me in print and who didn't, who praised me instead.

Rivers run through our history and folklore, and link us as a people.... We are a nation rich in rivers.

I started out thinking of America as highways and state lines. As I got to know it better, I began to think of it as rivers.

Most of those old settlers told it like it was, rough and rocky. They named their towns Rimrock, Rough Rock, Round Rock, and Wide Ruins, Skull Valley, Bitter Springs, Wolf Hole, Tombstone. It's a tough country. The names of Arizona towns tell you all you need to know.

We always take credit for the good and attribute the bad to fortune.

For a while there, I was a stringer. The expression comes from the old habit of stringing together the column inches that you had written. They'd measure it and pay you 10 cents an inch for your printed copy.

Often I have been exhausted on trout streams, uncomfortable, wet, cold, briar scarred, sunburned, mosquito bitten, but never, with a fly rod in my hand have I been less than in a place that was less than beautiful.