Poet/author/mensch Jerry Martien has edited A Watershed Runs Through You: Essays, Talks, and Reflections on Salmon, Restoration, and Community, a gorgeously appointed print collection of Freeman House’s writings on ecology and bioregionalism, just out from Empty Bowl Press.

Longtime Arthur readers may remember many of the essays featured herein from when they were presented as part of Freeman’s weekly “Sunday Lecture” series that we published on the Arthur website back in 2010-2011.

Amongst other things in his long and varied life, Freeman edited Innerspace, a mid-1960s independent press magazine for the nascent psychedelic community…

… and, as “Boo-Hoo” leader of the Neo-American Church, Freeman presided over the marriage of Abbie and Anita Hoffman at Central Park…

…and Freeman was a member of both New York City’s Group Image and the San Francisco Diggers, before moving to Humboldt County, where he labored across four decades to restore the Mattole River watershed. Freeman’s award-winning 2000 book Totem Salmon: Life Lessons From Another Species was blurbed by poet Gary Snyder thus: “A grave and personal book, both personal and cosmic.”

I loved and admired this man, who died in 2018, and am so grateful to Jerry and Empty Bowl Press for bringing A Watershed Runs Through You to the public. And so is “Fup” author Jim Dodge, who has saluted the book like so:

“Endless bows of gratitude to Jerry Martien for his savvy salvage of Freeman House’s scattered essays and talks. Freeman’s essays, along with his longer works, are absolutely fundamental to understanding bioregionalism, living-in-place, living-by-life, or just drawing breath in these unsettled times where humans must deal with the damages wrought by everything from dammed rivers to internal combustion. Freeman offers insights into clearing the wreckage as well as a constant sense of delight in dealing with the natural world; we neglect his heart-root wisdom at our own peril.”