SATTERTHWAITE

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"The Flint

River, a Recreational Guidebook to the Flint River and Environs"

is not a book for everyone.

People caught

up in the mystique of rivers will love it. So will environmentalists.

Outdoors persons,

hikers, rafters, bikers, canoeists. Historians, especially students of

Georgia or Indian history.

Wildflower

aficionados, botanists in general, rock hounds, and birders. Tourists.

Kids. Teachers.

Admirers of

Jimmy Carter. Critics of the Corps of Engineers.

Did we mention

fishermen?

Sometimes in

an effort to be something for everybody, a book of this scope is nothing

to anyone. Co-authors Fred Brown and Sherri M.L. Smith of Peachtree City

avoid this pitfall by focusing on the needs of their target readership,

albeit a wide and varied group.

Brown and Smith

celebrate the Flint for its amazing diversity and its regional value,

but most of all, for its development from a virtual drain-pipe under Hartsfield

Atlanta International Airport to a sparkling whitewater adventure and

an invaluable water source.

"We fell

in love with the Chattahoochee" while working on 'The Riverkeeper's

Guide to the Chattahoochee' several years ago, Smith says. "But when

we started working on "The Flint," I couldn't believe we could

change allegiance so quickly.

"We enjoyed

the Chattahoochee, but the entire Flint changes character so much as you

go along. The Chattahoochee starts out pristine, but becomes dirty [as

it flows through Atlanta] ­ but the Flint starts out in filth, and

becomes clean."

This is a book

to read from cover to cover, and to keep in the car for explorations south.

Beginning with Brown's passionate account of his own "discovery"

of the Flint, to Smith's thoughtful overview of history, through a guidebook

written by guidebook masters, to "How Rivers Work," and concluding

with several pages of resources and contacts ­ it is instructional,

tantalizing and altogether engaging.

Perhaps the

most startling inclusion is the preface, Preserving a Georgia Treasure,

Flint. Having grown up on Choctahatchee Creek, within the Chattahoochee-Flint

basin, he learned early the vital connection between free-flowing rivers

and every other function of the earth, from deep below its surface to

its entire atmosphere.

His account

of the misrepresentations of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in their

determination to dam the river at Sprewell Bluff is forthright and no-holds-barred.

Today his 1974 veto of the project is seen as the salvation of an important

watershed and a victory for river watchers everywhere.

In the preface,

President Carter says he believes that Sprewell Bluff changed the American

attitude toward dams and "their ill-advised nature, in many cases."

The Corps, he writes, is now devoting part of its time to analyzing how

it can take some of these dams out.

"The Flint

River" presents hands-on information on boat ramps, outfitters,

hiking trails, campgrounds, accommodations and fishing holes in such useful

detail that you could easily traverse the river's length with no other

guide.

Smith's historical

research, for which she says she sought at least two sources for every

statement, supports and frames the guide sections beautifully. Nothing

­ including a river basin ­ exists apart from its surroundings

and history, and Smith and Brown take their readers from raindrops on

a leaf to a view of the planet from space and back, leaving no detail

undocumented.

Illustrations

sketches clarify technical discussions of stream flow, hydraulic power,

the Floridan aquifer. His cartoon renderings offer bright contrast to

pages of solid text, and lend appeal to younger readers.

As they traveled

the 350 miles of the Flint plus the Florida lake it becomes, Lake Seminole,

a mythological character named Rio guided Brown and Smith. At first he

seems merely a device to provide comic relief, but the old boy is remarkably

three-dimensional and grows on the reader, even the mature reader. He

speaks with authority ­ after all, he was there when migrating animals

forded the river and when explorer Hernando de Soto crossed it and when

steamboats plied its often shoaled waters.

(One wonders,

however, why he allowed himself to be depicted on the book's cover as

an androgynous character whose cleavage belies his masculinity.)

The book is

meticulously cross-referenced, although relating text to illustrations

can sometimes be confusing ­ it's hard to correlate a river with

all its geopolitical boundaries and highway crossings, as well as landmarks

of relative gradients.

And while the

mixed formats ­ text, cartoons, graphics, sidebars ­ cater to

the interest of every reader, a case could be made for breaking up solid

pages of text with photos or sketches.

On nearly every

page, the reader finds gems of information imbedded in the larger mine.

Sidebars are an invaluable part of the book, maybe the best parts, infinitely

interesting. Their small font, however, while permitting the inclusion

of more anecdotes, is a challenge for older eyes. Only a determined reader,

or one with a magnifying glass, will stay in the hunt. A reduction of

the redundancy caused by the cross-referencing might have allowed for

larger print with no loss of new material.

Georgia readers

who remember Brown's Guide to Georgia may assume that the guide pages

of "The Flint River" are chiefly Brown's contribution. And they

would be wrong. Smith says she wrote most of the text while Brown brought

the technical aspects to life. "We both went out and explored the

region," Smith says, adding that they walked, waded or boated every

foot of the river, some of them twice. The project took two years, the

last six months of which Smith spent as much as 18 hours a day writing.

"Fred

was more into the design and concept," Smith says of Brown. He wrote

the "How Rivers Work" section ­ a book within the book

­ working closely with Wielinga, the illustrator. Besides the technical

illustrations, bringing Rio to life to the satisfaction of all was a special

challenge, since each had a somewhat different image of the river spokesman.

Brown says Rio may still be considered a work in progress.

Smith and Brown

see Rio as an enduring spokesperson for rivers. Plans are already underway

to develop a musical play that will take him into schools throughout the

region. A series of posters depicting the 14 distinct river watersheds

of Georgia is also in the works.

Verdict: "The

Flint River, A Recreational Guidebook to the Flint River and Environs"

is well worth its $24.95 price tag. It is available at The Fayette Book

Shop in Fayetteville (770-461-5907) and Omega Book Center in Peachtree

City (770-487-3977).

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