Janisse Ray was a babe in arms when a boat of her father’s construction cracked open and went down in the mighty Altamaha River. Tucked in a life preserver, she washed onto a sandbar as the craft sank from view. That first baptism began a lifelong relationship with a stunning and powerful river that almost nobody knows.
The Altamaha rises dark and mysterious in southeast Georgia. It is deep and wide bordered by swamps. Its corridor contains an extraordinary biodiversity, including many rare and endangered species, which led the Nature Conservancy to designate it as one of the world’s last great places.
The Altamaha is Ray’s river, and from childhood she dreamed of paddling its entire length to where it empties into the sea. Drifting into Darien begins with an account of finally making that journey, turning to meditations on the many ways we accept a world that contains both good and evil. With praise, biting satire, and hope, Ray contemplates transformation and attempts with every page to settle peacefully into the now.
Though commemorating a history that includes logging, Ray celebrates “a culture that sprang from the flatwoods, which required a judicious use of nature.” She looks in vain for an ivorybill woodpecker but is equally eager to see any of the imperiled species found in the river basin: spiny mussel, American oystercatcher, Radford’s mint, Alabama milkvine. The book explores both the need and the possibilities for conservation of the river and the surrounding forests and wetlands. As in her groundbreaking Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, Ray writes an account of her beloved river that is both social history and natural history, understanding the two as inseparable, particularly in the rural corner of Georgia that she knows best. Ray goes looking for wisdom and finds a river.
JANISSE RAY is the author of Pinhook: Finding Wholeness in a Fragmented Land, Wild Card Quilt: Taking a Chance on Home, the best-selling Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, and The Seed Underground: A Growing Revolution to Save Food. She is also the author of a poetry collection, A House of Branches, and coeditor of Between Two Rivers: Stories from the Red Hills to the Gulf. She lives in the Altamaha Community in Reidsville, Georgia.
Table of Contents
Preface
Book I. Total Immersion: A Week on the Altamaha River Invitation (poem) The First Day The Second Day The Third Day The Fourth Day The Fifth Day The Sixth Day The Seventh Day The Eighth Day
Book II. Elements Conversion (poem) Irwin Corbitt Tells Me How to Catch Catfish (poem) Chapter 1 Endangered Landscape Chapter 2 River Sticks Chapter 3 Stewards of the Mysteries of God Chapter 4 Seeking a Mission Chapter 5 The Malacologists Chapter 6 Under the Franklin Tree Chapter 7 Sandhills Chapter 8 Blackberry Swamp Chapter 9 Dreaming Big to Save the Red Bay Chapter 10 Center of the Known World Chapter 11 Night Fishing with the Senator Chapter 12 Black Bear Chapter 13 Tributary Chapter 14 Sancho Panza Chapter 15 Delta
Altamaha River Lands in Conservation Protect and Preserve Our River Resources Members of the Altamaha River Partnership Bibliography Gratitude Acknowledgments of Nancy Marshall, Photographer
