This Rough Magic - by Nancy Henry & Bruce Campbell (Hardcover)

About the Book

This Rough Magic: At Home on the Columbia Slough is a story of a magical, much-maligned 19 mile waterway in the industrial heart of Portland, Oregon.

Book Synopsis

Moving to a log house bordering the Columbia Slough, a couple discovers a vest-pocket Valhalla within the city, a place where nature's rough magic captivates them. The rich floodplain that once nourished Chinookan peoples is gone, its wetlands channelized by 20^th century landowners to form today's nineteen mile slough.

As the authors walk, kayak, and bike an industrialized landscape, they celebrate a wealth of wildlife holding fast against the heavy-metal bedlam of development.

With evocative language and self-deprecating humor, Henry and Campbell tell an intensely personal story and highlight creative efforts to rewild the slough's denaturalized habitats. Amanda Marisa Williams' vivid pen and ink illustrations illuminate each chapter.

Review Quotes

This Rough Magic captures the beauty, complexity, and challenges of life on Portland's Columbia Slough as it winds its way through history and our urban landscape. It is a story of degradation and rejuvenation told by a couple with a keen eye for their furred and feathered co-inhabitants, often relegated to the shadows and margins, but slowly emerging as the slough itself emerges from a century of neglect. Henry and Campbell tell a meditative story that captures the rough magic of this intensively manipulated landscape that still manages to remain wild in the city.

BOB SALLINGER, Urban Conservation Director, Willamette Riverkeeper

While thousands trek in the Gorge and Forest Park, an undiscovered forest and wetland thrives in Portland, hidden behind warehouses and highways. Take a journey with Campbell and Henry into this rough and magical place, where fifteen years ago, the couple decamped to a log cabin among the beavers and egrets. Theirs is a lush tale of learning about, advocating for, and explaining the mysteries of Portland's most hidden natural landscape, the wet and wild Columbia Slough.

LAURA O. FOSTER, author of Portland Stair Walks

This reads like a long, warm, engaging letter from home-in this case a home set between the city of Portland and the backwaters of the Columbia River, at the collision point of a hundred years of industrial mayhem and a damaged but resilient natural world. Gracefully written and sharply observed, this book moves beyond suburban naturalism to a place of hope, a vision of where we might start to find our way back to some kind of balance.

KEVIN CANTY, award winning author of Into the Great Wide Open and Nine Below Zero

This is a lovely and lyrical book-it gets to the heart of how and why we love the wild in our urban spaces. There is awe and wonder and surprise-at the soil and mud and leaves and trees and animals and insects-and also plenty of caution and hurt. It is ambitious and delicious and may well tempt you to seek your own urban wild land home for similar miracles.

SUSAN BARTHEL, Columbia Slough Program Coordinator (ret.), City of Portland

Written with gorgeous prose and filled with personal experiences detailing the good, the bad, and the ugly, This Rough Magic gives a true accounting of the issues confronting people and wildlife in an urban watershed. Written by a couple who live beside the Columbia Slough in Portland, OR, the authors detail their journey of discovery, joy and heartbreak honoring the plants and animals, as well as the conflicts and successes in the ongoing quest for balance between the natural and human-centered worlds.

LAURA GUDERYAHN, Ecologist, Portland Parks and Recreation

Poetic, thoughtful and at times even profound, This Rough Magic - with illustrations by Amanda Marisa Williams - is a must read for anyone with the slightest interest in Pacific Northwest natural history and good, solid writing.

DAN WEBSTER, Books Editor (ret.), Spokane Spokesman-Review