Growing up in the river town of Morton, Darby Nelson developed a deep taproot of affection that anchored his contagious curiosity about the land and people of the Minnesota River Valley. Now, with an ecologist's lens and a lifelong appreciation for wild and scenic places, Darby sets out with his wife, Geri, to paddle the river all the way from its source near the Minnesota-South Dakota border to its confluence with the Mississippi in the Twin Cities.For Love of a River: The Minnesota addresses topics as diverse as geology, early and modern agriculture, citizen advocacy, water-quality challenges and solutions, river-based recreation, dams and dam removal, prairie pothole lakes, the river's rich diversity of plant and animal life, and the Dakota-US War. Never before has a book undertaken such a holistic exploration of the state's namesake river and its basin. |