A Temporary Refuge
Fourteen Seasons with Wild Summer Steelhead
A seasonal almanac, and the story of Spencer's time at the pool, accompanied by his dog Sis. Along with initial chapters about Sis and the life cycle of the wild summer steelhead, each of the eight months that wild summer steelhead use the pool constitutes a chapter. He has gleaned like a thimbleberry patch his natural history notes for the past fourteen seasons for information on the local environment, steelhead and other Pacific salmon that use the pool, vegetation, birds, mammals, insects, reptiles and amphibians, seasonal changes, and interesting events and stories. Spencer is a modern day Thoreau, and the steelhead pool is his Walden Pond.
Lee Spencer was born in Portland, Oregon, in 1950 and was raised in Minnesota. After being awarded a Master’s in Anthropology in 1978 by the University of Oregon, he worked as a field archeologist for more than twenty years, mostly in the desert west and often excavating dry rock shelters. He has cast flies for steelhead on his river of choice, the North Umpqua, for the last thirty-five years and, in 1999, with his good dog, Sis, he began volunteering with The North Umpqua Foundation at Big Bend Pool.
