Living Waters

Fascinating stories based on the author's exploration of eight rivers in New York and Québec.

Fascinating stories based on the author's exploration of eight rivers in New York and Québec.

In Living Waters, Margaret Wooster canoes, portages, camps beside, and wades into eight Great Lakes watersheds across New York and Québec, returning with her pockets full of original stories from these beautiful, boggy, and prehistoric waterways. From the history of hydropower development on the Niagara River to the search for a wizard's cave in the Zoar Valley, from a portrait of an urban creek in Buffalo, to the origins and demise of New France on the St. Lawrence, Living Waters offers a fascinating, first-person exploration of the rivers that impact our world's largest freshwater ecosystem.

Margaret Wooster has worked as a watershed planner for local governments and environmental groups in Western New York, was a founding member of Buffalo Niagara Waterkeeper, and has taught Environmental Planning at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York. She is the author of Living Waters: Reading the Rivers of the Lower Great Lakes, also published by SUNY Press. She lives in Buffalo, New York.

Margaret Wooster is the author of Somewhere to Go on Sunday: A Guide to Natural Treasures in Western New York. She lives in Buffalo, New York.

"General readers and students of natural history and conservation will find Living Waters a valuable addition to their collections." — CHOICE

"…an easy-to-read tour de force of the complex issues, people, and cultures that have shaped our current ecological conditions." — Artvoice

"…simply wonderful. Everyone interested in the natural history of our region should read this." — The Buffalo News

"Living Waters explores tributaries and rivers that feed and drain to Great Lakes across New York State and down the St. Lawrence with an appreciation for their rich natural and cultural histories, and an awareness of their impact on the largest freshwater ecosystem in the world. Aldo Leopold, a guiding voice throughout, once said that the best way to nurture an environmental ethic in society is to help people see, feel, love and have faith in actual places. These river stories cultivate that intimacy." — Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Chairman, Waterkeeper Alliance

"This is a tremendously good book. People tend to overlook the magnificently aqueous nature of New York State and Living Waters does that watery topography a great deal of justice." — Bill McKibben

"This is one of the most important and entertaining chronicles ever written of Great Lakes Country. Wooster is a sharp-eyed journalist, a talented writer, and a big-hearted member of the Great Lakes community." — Dave Dempsey, author of On the Brink: The Great Lakes in the 21st Century and Great Lakes for Sale