The Confluence

Seven lifelong friends head north each June to a remote cabin at the confluence of the Dead Diamond and Swift Diamond Rivers. What started as a single fishing trip has evolved over twenty-plus years into an annual retreat to the mystical environs of the Dartmouth College Grant, far from the workaday world and vibrant with brotherhood, creativity and reflection.

Fishing is only a part of their story. In a collection of intertwined essays from seven unique voices, the authors reveal how their friendships have grown deeper as their lives flow into middle age, with laughs, tears and insight into the intersection between humanity and the natural world. The reader comes along to experience wilderness wonders, stinky outhouses, original watercolors, floods, a wine tasting, a dramatic search and rescue…and fly-fishing for native brook trout.

DAVID VAN WIE, PHIL ODENCE, NORM RICHTER, BOB CHAMBERLIN, ED BALDRIGE, DAVE KLINGES & BILL CONWAY- The Boys of the Grant - are writers and renaissance fishermen. As college classmates, they pursued a variety of professions and interests that inform their essays and enrich their friendships.