In CONFLUENCE: NAVIGATING THE PERSONAL & POLITICAL ON RIVERS OF THE NEW WEST, paddler and journalist Zak Podmore takes readers down Western rivers and deep into some of the most pressing environmental and social justice issues of our time, including uranium tailings on the Ute Mountain Ute lands near the San Juan River, the treatment of asylum-seekers crossing the Rio Grande, and one of the largest dam removal projects in history on Washington’s Elwha River. CONFLUENCE follows in the tradition of Thoreau or Edward Abbey — it takes us into the wild but always has one eye turned back toward the blessings and ills of civilization.