The Earth Is Enough: Growing Up in a World of Flyfishing, Trout & Old Men
“The land was theirs, free and clear, and they had evidently made a decision decades before to keep it the way it was, to work with it rather than against it. A decision for trout and quail instead of beans. It seemed to them the world had too many beans and too few trout and wild turkeys. Their life in the mountains became a compromise, a balance of giving and taking.”
In 1956, Middleton, at 14 years of age, was placed under the care of his grandfather and his great-uncle and their Sioux neighbor on their farm in the Ozark Mountains in north Arkansas. Under their tutelage, he gets an education in fly-fishing, 19th-century farming, and simple living, and most importantly, a respect for the wild earth. It’s a pleasure to get to know the eccentric and wise characters of Middleton’s boyhood, and the place they are loyally devoted to.