In Search of Hemingway's Meadow: A Return to the Big Two-Hearted River

Hemingway’s The Big Two Hearted River is more than a story. It is the most literate camping manual ever written. Hemingway describes the trip and his equipment so meticulously that author Jeff Day could use it as a packing list. Filling his canvas pack with a blanket roll, tin pans, a canvas bucket, a bamboo rod, catgut leaders, and a silk line—he headed off in search of the Two-Hearted River.

But this is more than a story of fishing and coffee and beans cooked over a campfire.

It is the story of Hemingway’s youth, of his first love, of World War I, of Paris--as seen from a trout stream in Michigan.

It is the story of the enormous pines that once filled the meadow where Hemingway camped. It is the story of the Indians who shared the meadow with him. It is the story of Seney, Michigan, where Hemingway’s trip started—a town once so rough that it was said that if you boarded a train to Hell, it would take you to Seney.

It is the story of the writing of a classic.

Day is a fly fisherman and has worked variously as a reporter, writer, editor, canoe guide, rod-and-tackle salesman, videographer, furniture maker, and clockmaker. In short, he cannot keep a job.

Day and his wife, Eunice, live in a 250-year-old Pennsylvania farmhouse.

Parts of this book appeared previously in Fly Rod and Reel magazine, where it was the winner of the Robert Traver Fly-Fishing Writing Award.