When Harley Simmons, a "latter-day mountain man, river rat, and desert scoundrel," returns from the wilderness to the town of Del Cobre he finds his life in siege. His father, a legendary wilderness hunter, is dead; his wife will have nothing to do with him; his son is protected from him by the courts; and sunbelt boosters are closing in on New Mexico's last wild river, threatening to cut deep into his wilderness home. In his attempts to accommodate civilization with his own wild yearnings, Harley learns to pay dearly. Ultimately, a creature even more wild provides some clues for resolution. A Romance of the modern West, imbued with realism, horses, hounds, wolves and women, "Home is the River" transcends the Western genre to reveal life as it is on today's frontier.

Home Is The River

M.H. Salmon

Literature & Fiction

High-Lonesome Books

Herein is the remarkable story of a 200-mile wilderness journey down the Gila River of New Mexico and Arizona. Traveling partly on foot, mostly by canoe, the author was accompanied by a hound dog and a tomcat. His trip is replete with whitewater thrills, and angling for trout, bass, and catfish; ruminations on the wilderness ethic, and the antics of two companions who promote humor, exasperation, and love. But besides being a modern-day excursion into the natural world, Gila Descending is a personal odyssey as well; and little by little that story, too, is told. 
 "Gila Descending is a joy to read. M. H. Salmon and his feisty animal co-pilots have enough chutzpah to keep us laughing; enough literary audacity to delight and educate; and enough love of land, water, and wilderness to stir the most hardened conscience."--John Nichols 
". . . a delightful book. No reader could ask for a finer river to read about than the Gila, or a better companion to explore it with than M. H. Salmon. May the Government (ugh!) and God (we hope) long preserve them both."--Edward Abbey 
 "As you join the author--and his coyote hound and tomcat--on a float trip down the Gila, you will find a unique companion: a hunter with an informed environmental conscience; a fisherman with the sense to know that catfish are as good as trout; a wry observer whose prose owes more to local speech and the elegant essays of Aldo Leopold than to the high-tech fodder in the yuppie monthlies. Above all, he is a passionate and original defender of wilderness with its hair on."--Steve Bodio, "Bodio's Review," Gray's Sporting Journal

Gila Descending: A Southwestern Journey

Sports & Outdoors

Biographies

Signal to Depart

Arriving in Southwest New Mexico, itinerant bookman Jason Niles finds the town of Del Cobre almost too good to be true -- a community at ease with its modest size, rich in the heritage of an ancient culture, and uniquely in harmony with the natural world. It is an idyll that cannot last. The boomers think Del Cobre holds a different promise. And they have little sympathy for Mexican Black Hawks nesting on the edge of town, or the mysteries left behind by ancient artists. You can see it coming. And so can Jason. Inspired, and deluded, by the Ancients' lurid art, the books in which he trades, and the woman of his dreams, Jason sees an opportunity to make a difference. If he can pull it off, he can save remnants of a modern as well as a ancient culture, and even salvage something of himself.

The Catfish As Metaphor: A Fisherman's American Journey

Hunting & Fishing

This revised and expanded edition covers all the AKC sighthound breeds, plus the coldbloods, staghounds, coyote hounds, lurchers, etc. From the farm fields of the Midwest through the wind-swept North Plains to the desert Southwest, join the author on hunts for jackrabbits, coyotes, fox, and cottontails with a variety of purebred and mixed-breed hounds. Meet some of the great old houndmen of the past and the legacy and lore they left behind. Learn the technique of the trailhound/sighthound combination hunt. Gazehounds &amp; Coursing is provocative -- the author blasts the anti-hunters, insists on a strong conservation ethic, and says that some AKC breeds need an infusion of new blood to restore their working talents. Gazehounds &amp; Coursing is evocative -- the author recounts great hounds he loved well who have crossed the great divide, and game animals he wishes in retrospect had gotten away. Above all, Gazehounds &amp; Coursing is informative -- herein is the necessary methodology for choosing, raising, training, breeding, and running the lithe and graceful "longdogs."

Gazehounds & Coursing - The History, Art and Sport of Hunting With Sighthounds

Essays of Game, Fish, and the Rural Life In its relatively short history, M.H. Salmonâs weekly Country Sports has won the âBest Columnâ award from the New Mexico Press Association, the New Mexico Press Womenâs Association, and the New Mexico Associated Press (twice). It is said he inspires many readers; others just get mad. A predictable result perhaps, when a writer fly fishes for wild trout one day, sets doughballs for carp the next; blasts ORVs and defends rattlesnake roundups; takes a stand for the Mexican wolf while hitting the enviros for ignoring population growth in our own USA; joins the elite gunning doves with an Italian double, then runs with the hounds hip by jowl as they take down a wild boar by tooth, nail, and a jackknife. As a homesteader, heâll help you make a crop during drought, live off the land with goats, and he reveals that Abe Lincoln was perhaps our original American proponent of sustainable agriculture. Many believe that the old rural ways are passing. Read Country Sports to know that their revival is well underway, not so much a link to the past as a good plan for the future.

Country Sports: The Rabid Pursuits of a Redneck Environmentalist

Science & Math

Environment

One hundred thousand acres of public land, complete with a year-round trout stream, potential ski resort, and butted up against the burgeoning town of Del Cobre, New Mexico, is something the local boomers and boosters - the "money men" -- can't resist. Stuffed with dreams of growth and privatization, they will stop at nothing to "add another room onto the house"; Others are equally committed to saving these wild lands and waters from the roar of the bulldozer. Recalcitrant mountain man Harley Simmons (anti-hero of the previous Home is the River) teams with itinerant bookman and master polemicist Jason Niles (Signal to Depart) to make a desperate stand in the name of wild trout, resource sustainability, and the heritage of the hunter. Narrated by Harley's often beleaguered but always clear-eyed son, Alvin, Forty Freedoms reads as a compelling campfire tale. In the tone of a latter-day Huck Finn, his story of clashing cultures, animal rights fanatics and reluctant poachers, feral hogs, hounds and hunting lore, and the fateful doings of an unfaithful woman, finally reveals what's really happening in the modern West.

Forty Freedoms

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Books by M.H. Salmon