Fitch, L. (2024). Travels Up the Creek: A biologist’s search for a paddle. Rocky Mountain Books.

Following his Streams of Consequence: Dispatches from the Conservation World, Lorne Fitch offers something new in Travels Up the Creek: A Biologist’s Search for a Paddle. Well not all new. Lorne still shares what can only be described as wisdom borne by wildness. And there is still a sharp edge whetted by science and by experience.

The author sets the tone in the preface when he says: “We should be scared, scared spitless in fact, of our current course. This could be an effective catalyst for change and adaptation instead of wishing for some technological miracle as our salvation.” When he says ‘scared spitless,’ he does not mean paralyzed by fear, he means motivated by a knowledge that to do nothing is to fail. He also acknowledges that “It’s easy to feel hopeless and it’s hard to do something about it” – but one must still do something about it.

Much of our failure to conserve a natural world capable of sustaining itself, of optimizing evolutionary opportunity, is the result of ignorance. This might be the refrain that holds the essays together. It is an ignorance pampered by affluence, ignorance unaccompanied by curiosity, ignorance with a taste for the irrational. Lorne Fitch shares a quote from Wallace Stegner who wisely pointed out, “Verifiable knowledge makes its way slowly and only under cultivation, but fable has burrs and feet and claws and wings and an indestructible sheath like a weed-seed, and can be carried almost anywhere and take rest without the benefit of soil or water.”

Much of Travels Up the Creek explores specific episodes of our failure to preserve what is most valuable. The author shares scientific insights like the relationship between measures like road density and the land-use footprint, and sediment and fish population persistence, and though the research results are exhaustive they are ‘unconscionably ignored’ by policy and practice. Lorne Fitch also shares examples of the ‘sliding baseline syndrome’ where ecosystem conditions of the distant past are thought to resemble the shared memories of a more recent past: actual changes become obscured by time and appropriate responses never come.

Possibly one of the most important messages in the book was the importance to recognize that facts have little impact on changing minds and behaviour: “Facts, evidence and the weight of science often aren’t enough. Conflicts boil down to disagreements over values and priorities, even though they often masquerade as arguments over data. … Imagery, humour and stories [must be] used as vital pieces of effective communication.” And despite the realities being discussed in these essays, there is always humour and an engaging narrative in which people might recognize their better selves; a narrative that just might encourage social change.

“Nothing happens in environmental management until people agree to behave in ways that recognize the effects of their actions. With recognition comes responsibility, and with responsibility eventually comes accountability. Then we will understand the challenge of living the good life without abusing the generosity of the Earth.”

Travels Up the Creek is a wonderful book. You will be charmed. You will be changed.