In 2013, I showed up at the Freshwater Mollusk Conservation Society meeting and told everyone I was writing a mussel book. To my astonishment, they believed me, and they declared their enthusiasm for the project. These busy people generously shared their time, research, photographs, opinions, and passion for freshwater and mussels. I have been lucky enough to talk with Dan Spooner, Andrea Fritts, John Joseph Jenkinson, Jim Williams, Jeff Garner, Mike Davis, Jay Levine, Bernard Sietman, Emy Monroe, David Berg, Byron Hamstead, Steve Ahlstedt, and others to whom I am extremely grateful.
Special thanks to Jim Stoeckel, Adam Kaeser, Pete Hazelton, Chris Eads, Michael Hart, and Reuben Smit, who welcomed me in the lab and out in the field; to Robert Bringolf, Teresa Newton, Colin Shea, Paul Johnson, and Wendell Haag, who spoke warmly and at length with me about their lives and work. Thanks to Mike Gangloff for taking me up the wild river and, once again, allowing himself to be thoroughly questioned for the benefit of mussels. My deep gratitude and respect go to all intrepid scientists who study mussels and rivers. Their work is vital, and the insights found here are thanks to them, but any inaccuracies are mine.
I am grateful to many other groups and organizations who work together toward healthy rivers, including The Nature Conservancy, Change the Course, Water-Culture Institute, Southern Environmental Law Center, Friends of Chewacla Creek, Save Our Saugahatchee, Spring Creek Watershed Partnership, Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint Stakeholders, Alabama Clean Water Partnership, and, thankfully, more groups than I can mention. Thank you to Sandra Postal and David Groenfeldt for their kind and stimulating conversations about our relationships with water. Thanks to James Sprayberry and Gil Rogers, who took their time to give me essential information, and Mary Lou Smith for her stories.
At the 2014 Bread Loaf Orion Environmental Writers’ Conference, my writing life improved thanks to Stephen Van Holde, Julianne Warren, Stephen Danna, Jacob Grace, Eliot Schrefer, Alison Hawthorne Deming, Rick Bass, and many others. I am especially grateful to Alan Weisman for his mentorship and helping me translate the project from my head into a proposal. Thank you to Antonia Malchik and Jeanine Pfeiffer for long-distance encouragement; and Jamie Zigarelli for coaxing each chapter into completion and then thoughtfully reading an entire draft.
Many thanks to Alexa Dilworth and Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies for recognizing my mussel fascination with the 2015 Documentary Essay Award and for being first to put some pieces of this book into print.
I have been incredibly lucky to work with Island Press. Thank you to Rebecca Bright for seeing the possibilities, often even better than I could. Her editorial savvy guided my manuscript into an actual book, and she has been wonderful. Thanks also to copyeditor Julie Van Pelt for her acuity in polishing these words, and thanks to Trudy Nicholson for adding dimension to the book with her lovely illustrations.
My family and friends have seen me through these improbable book-writing years in a thousand ways. Thank you to Luke and Becky Gascho for supporting us with hard work and kind words. Thank you to James and Alta Landis for showing me wonder and a love of words, for their unflagging encouragement, and for many hours with our kids while I was writing. Thanks to Becca Landis Mclarty for her courage and excellence in creative expression and for our close friendship; and to Justus Mclarty, for cheering.
An extra-special thanks to Sam and Stella, for putting up with my distraction and for exuberantly getting their feet wet. They are my heart and my joy.
I am uniquely and always grateful to Andrew for being willing to join me in this book. He has, with insights and good humor, steadily inspired me, from that first creek trip to the final writing hours. These pages would be empty without him. Thanks for being my best friend and wading through it all with me.