Downriver
Into the Future of Water in the West
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Narrated by:
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Allyson Ryan
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By:
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Heather Hansman
About this listen
The Green River, the most significant tributary of the Colorado River, runs 730 miles from the glaciers of Wyoming to the desert canyons of Utah. Over its course, it meanders through ranches, cities, national parks, endangered fish habitats, and some of the most significant natural gas fields in the country, as it provides water for 33 million people. Stopped up by dams, slaked off by irrigation, and dried up by cities, the Green is crucial, overused, and at risk, now more than ever.
Fights over the river's water, and what's going to happen to it in the future, are longstanding, intractable, and only getting worse as the West gets hotter and drier, and more people depend on the river with each passing year. As a former raft guide and an environmental reporter, Heather Hansman knew these fights were happening, but she felt driven to see them from a different perspective - from the river itself. So she set out on a journey, in a one-person inflatable pack raft, to paddle the river from source to confluence and see what the experience might teach her.
Mixing lyrical accounts of quiet paddling through breathtaking beauty with nights spent camping solo and lively discussions with farmers, city officials, and other people met along the way, Downriver is the story of that journey, a foray into the present - and future - of water in the West.
©2019 Heather Hansman (P)2019 HighBridge CompanyListeners also enjoyed...
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Story
Egan leads us on an unconventional, freewheeling tour: from America's oldest continuously inhabited community, the Ancoma Pueblo in New Mexico, to the high kitsch of Lake Havasu City, Arizona, where London Bridge has been painstakingly rebuilt stone by stone; from the fragile beauty of Idaho's Bitterroot Range to the gross excess of Las Vegas, a city built as though in defiance of its arid environment.
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Narrator mispronounces everything
- By Catherine on 01-27-22
By: Timothy Egan
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On the Grid
- A Plot of Land, An Average Neighborhood, and the Systems that Make Our World Work
- By: Scott Huler
- Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot
- Length: 8 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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In our daily lives, we're surrounded by wires, pipes, utility poles, cell phone towers, and myriad other infrastructure that facilitates almost everything we do. Even though these systems are essential, when was the last time you gave them much thought? In On the Grid, Scott Huler sets out to understand all of the systems that shape our society - from transportation, water, and garbage to the Internet coming through our cable lines.
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Amazing!
- By Skippy the Okie on 01-27-16
By: Scott Huler
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All Fishermen Are Liars
- By: John Gierach
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 6 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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In All Fishermen Are Liars, Gierach travels around North America seeking out quintessential fishing experiences, whether it's at a busy stream or a secluded lake hidden amid snow-capped mountains. He talks about the art of fly-tying and the quest for the perfect steelhead fly ("The Nuclear Option"), about fishing in the Presidential Pools previously fished by the elder George Bush, and the importance of traveling with like-minded companions when caught in a soaking rain.
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One Of My Favorite Authors!!!
- By Travis on 03-31-18
By: John Gierach
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The Great Wall of China and the Salton Sea
- Monuments, Missteps, and the Audacity of Ambition
- By: Russell Rathbun
- Narrated by: Larry Herron
- Length: 5 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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We've been building and making things ever since we stumbled out of paradise. Some of those things are incredible continuations of God's creation, while others are nothing but ambitious catastrophes. We continue making, says Russell Rathbun, but we've lost ourselves in the process.
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Excellent narrator
- By Tammy on 03-17-18
By: Russell Rathbun
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The Boom
- How Fracking Ignited the American Energy Revolution and Changed the World
- By: Russell Gold
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 11 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Russell Gold, a brilliant and dogged investigative reporter at The Wall Street Journal, has spent more than a decade reporting on one of the biggest stories of our time: the spectacular, world-changing rise of "fracking". Recognized as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and a recipient of the Gerald Loeb Award for his work, Gold has traveled along the pipelines and into the hubs of this country’s energy infrastructure; he has visited frack sites from Texas to North Dakota; and he has conducted thousands of interviews with engineers and wildcatters, CEOs and roughnecks, environmentalists and politicians.
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Somehow the author manages to stay balanced
- By Emily C on 05-28-14
By: Russell Gold
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The Source
- How Rivers Made America and America Remade Its Rivers
- By: Martin Doyle
- Narrated by: Keith Sellon-Wright
- Length: 10 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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In this fresh and powerful work of environmental history, Martin Doyle explores how rivers have often been the source of arguments at the heart of the American experiment - over federalism, taxation, regulation, conservation, and development. Doyle tells the epic story of America and its rivers, from the US Constitution's roots in interstate river navigation, the origins of the Army Corps of Engineers, the discovery of gold in 1848, and the construction of the Hoover Dam and the TVA during the New Deal, to the failure of the levees in Hurricane Katrina.
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Great historical read without compare.
- By Thomas P Dore on 04-10-18
By: Martin Doyle
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The End of Ice
- Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Disruption
- By: Dahr Jamail
- Narrated by: Tom Parks
- Length: 7 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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After nearly a decade overseas as a war reporter, the acclaimed journalist Dahr Jamail returned to America to renew his passion for mountaineering, only to find that the slopes he had once climbed have been irrevocably changed by climate disruption. In response, Jamail embarks on a journey to the geographical front lines of this crisis - from Alaska to Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, via the Amazon rainforest - in order to discover the consequences to nature and to humans of the loss of ice.
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Dealing with the Ultimate Climate Change Question
- By red_dog on 02-03-19
By: Dahr Jamail
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The Great Quake
- How the Biggest Earthquake in North America Changed Our Understanding of the Planet
- By: Henry Fountain
- Narrated by: Robert Fass
- Length: 9 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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A riveting narrative about the biggest earthquake in North American recorded history - the 1964 Alaska earthquake that demolished the city of Valdez and swept away the island village of Chenega - and the geologist who hunted for clues to explain how and why it took place.
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Fascinating to hear the full story
- By Debby A Davis on 08-18-17
By: Henry Fountain
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In Search of the Canary Tree
- The Story of a Scientist, a Cypress, and a Changing World
- By: Lauren E. Oakes
- Narrated by: Ellen Archer
- Length: 8 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Several years ago, ecologist Lauren E. Oakes set out from California for Alaska's old-growth forests to hunt for a dying tree: the yellow-cedar. With climate change as the culprit, the death of this species meant loss for many Alaskans. Oakes and her research team wanted to chronicle how plants and people could cope with their rapidly changing world. Amidst the standing dead, she discovered the resiliency of forgotten forests, flourishing again in the wake of destruction, and a diverse community of people who persevered to create new relationships with the emerging environment.
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Moving and inspiring
- By Catherine A Gould on 05-26-19
By: Lauren E. Oakes
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The Longest Road
- Overland in Search of America, from Key West to the Arctic Ocean
- By: Philip Caputo
- Narrated by: Pete Larkin
- Length: 11 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Philip Caputo, who had just turned 70, his wife, and their two English setters took off in a truck hauling an Airstream camper from Key West, Florida, en route via back roads and state routes to Deadhorse, Alaska. The journey took four months and covered 17,000 miles, during which Caputo interviewed more than 80 Americans from all walks of life to get a picture of what their lives and the life of the nation are really about in the 21st century.
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Very Disappointing
- By Amazon Customer on 03-25-18
By: Philip Caputo
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Amazon Woman
- Facing Fears, Chasing Dreams, and My Quest to Kayak the Largest River from Source to Sea
- By: Darcy Gaechter
- Narrated by: Laura Jennings
- Length: 8 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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This 148-day journey began on Darcy Gaechter’s 35th birthday. She sold her successful outdoor adventure business, upsetting her partner and boyfriend of 12 years and getting them both fired in the process. The emotional waters that would fester and erupt on the ensuing journey were often more challenging to navigate than the mighty river itself. With blistering lips and irradiated fingernails, Darcy would tackle raging Class Five whitewater for 25 days straight, barely surviving a dynamite-filled canyon being prepared for a new hydroelectric plant.
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More than just an adventure book...
- By Scott Shepherd on 04-19-20
By: Darcy Gaechter
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The Gulf
- The Making of an American Sea
- By: Jack E. Davis
- Narrated by: Tom Perkins
- Length: 20 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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When painter Winslow Homer first sailed into the Gulf of Mexico, he was struck by its "special kind of providence." Indeed, the Gulf presented itself as America's sea - bound by geography, culture, and tradition to the national experience - and yet, there has never been a comprehensive history of the Gulf until now. And so, in this rich and original work that explores the Gulf through our human connection with the sea, environmental historian Jack E. Davis finally places this exceptional region into the American mythos in a sweeping history that extends from the Pleistocene age to the 21st century.
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Decolonize gulf history
- By Jesse Carr on 05-02-18
By: Jack E. Davis
What listeners say about Downriver
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Amazon Customer
- 11-21-20
Fact based and Introspective
A personal journey down the river of focus brings the author into contact with nearly all impacted populations of the western water rights and limitations. Blended with an introspective questions of the authors self discovery are facts and interviews with those who use, enjoy, control, and maintain the Green River on its initial descent from the high Rocky mountains to the confluence of the Colorado. This book offers a first person view from the surface of the river itself in a way many manuscripts on the topic never will.
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- John Richins
- 04-27-20
Well-balanced look at some of the water issues in
Well-balanced look at some of the complicated water issues in the western U.S. The author brings a human element to the topic with adding her own story of floating the Green to the discussion.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 08-26-19
10/10 would reccomend !
Loved this story following heather down the green river and getting a glimpse of her internal processing of such a complex issue. Learned a lot about water in the west along the way.
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