How Dams Fall. Will Falk

      

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      Praise for How Dams Fall

      “If the Colorado River were to take on human manifestation, it would have written this book. How Dams Fall is beautiful, lyrical, honest, loving, and angry. It is a necessary book. Read it. Absorb it. Then go to a river—any river—and listen to what the river needs. Help the dams to fall and the rivers to live.”

      –Derrick Jensen, author of A Language Older Than Words

      “Will Falk’s book on the Colorado River is heartfelt, poetic, enthralling, and also a desperate plea for help (for the river, not the author). Like Thoreau, Leopold, and Kingsolver, Falk has learned to listen to Nature’s myriad voices, translating the ensuing wisdom into words that should inspire readers to rethink their relationship with the planet that gives us life.”

      –David R. Boyd author of nine books including The Rights of Nature

      “Falk’s lyrical prose is aptly applied in this monograph about a doomed cause in doomed world. Channeling Edward Abby’s sensitivity and eloquence, Falk explores the lessons of the living Colorado River, its place in the minds of America—resource or ecosystem. The limited view must break to the other. It is a matter of respect, stewardship. Survival. The rightness of the idea is obvious to those who have been there, to those who have seen the river, felt it, been with it. It is an experience that can only be approximated by lyrical prose, love letters to water, regret and frustration. Falk’s book has all of that. A personal essay of triumph and defeat and the dream of falling dams.”

      –Johnny Worthen, author of What Immortal Hand

      “An intriguing account of a lawyer’s quest to forge a relationship with his new client—the Colorado River. Falk’s empathic engagement with the fullness of the Colorado River as a being, is an intriguing example of how a new breed of wild lawyers are learning to become better advocates for Earth. Reading How Dams Fall is like slipping a beautiful river-smooth stone into your pocket—a reminder of the flowing majesty of the once and future Colorado.”

      –Cormac Cullinan, author of Wild Law: A Manifesto for Earth Justice, Executive Committee Member of the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature, and Director of the Wild Law Institute

      “Will Falk agreed to act as a guardian to the Colorado River in federal court. Taking his responsibilities seriously, he made a 4,000 mile journey to listen to the river. How Dams Fall is his report back. It’s a piercing elegy of terrible grief, a catalog of continental exploitation and extraction. Along the way, Falk follows his own despair, refusing the cheap relief of false hope. In its place, Falk gives us something rare and true: his love for the river, an unwavering covenant that we all must enter if we are to save this planet. Let How Dams Fall help carry us forward until the day when all dams fall and the waters are free again.”

      –Lierre Keith, author of Deep Green Resistance

      “How Dams Fall takes us to places where “human self-importance disintegrates,” where the living world speaks to those willing to listen. With the dancing eloquence of a poet and fierce heart of a warrior, Will Falk will make you fall in love, break your heart, and sew it together again. You will not be the same after reading this.”

      –Max Wilbert, author of Bright Green Lies

      “Will Falk wrote an epistle for the music of the Colorado River; some songs are hard; some are lamentations and war cries while others are lullabies. Willing conduit, deliberate advocate, and champion of the human spirit, Falk is in full possession of his mighty heart and uses it the way philosopher-poets do, by beginning where nothing is. Language, that house of being, is where beginning is most fecund when it concentrates itself. Because in that fertile reception of voice, through the alchemy of a man asking for a river to speak to him…she does, and there is nothing holier than that. And when she tells you she needs help, you get down on your knees and offer your knuckles and your coliseum heart and hope it will matter.”

      –Dominique Christina, 2012 Women of the World Slam Champion author of This Is Woman’s Work: Calling Forth Your Inner Council of Wise, Brave, Crazy, Rebellious, Loving, Luminous Selves

      “How Dams Fall is an act of witness, of attempted reparation through words, an attempt perhaps doomed to fail, just as the lawsuit undertaken in the river’s defense did. So, why write? “Water is one of life’s original vernaculars,” Falk reminds us, a language that is ignored by humans as the Colorado river is enslaved, invaded for commercial gain, grievously wounded by dams, reservoirs, clearcutting, climate change, and pollution. An entire eco-system of plant and piscine species hangs in the balance. Falk seeks to recover the river’s “ancient dialect,” to embrace with empathy her many poignant stories, her lessons of strength, healing, and stern warning. Through lyrical prose that is far away from the language of the courts, the author explores the history and biodiversity of the river, connecting them to the native cultures flourishing and perishing alongside. At the heart of the book is a plea to humanity to listen to the river, to feel her pain, and learn, for that is how dams can fall.”

      –Dr. Akhila Ramnarayan, author of Krishna Bharatam

      How Dams Fall

      On Representing the Colorado River of the First-ever

       American Lawsuit Seeking Rights for a Major Ecosystem

      by

      Will Falk

       Little Bound Books Essay Series

      Little Bound Books

      Small Books. Big Impact | www.littleboundbooks.com

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      The author has tried to recreate events, locales, and conversations from his memories of them. In order to maintain their anonymity, in some instances, he has changed the names of individuals and places, he may have changed some identifying characteristics, and details such as physical properties, occupations and places of residence.

      Published in 2019 • Little Bound Books Imprint of Homebound Publications Front Cover Image: by © Jason Thompson Cover and Interior Designed • Leslie M. Browning First Edition Trade Paperback: 978-1-947003-46-0

      Little Bound Books is committed to ecological stewardship. We greatly value the natural environment and invest in environmental conservation.

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      Dedication

      For the Colorado River, and all of us who live because of her.