Description

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Told through the eyes of a longtime Montana fishing guide and itinerant fishing bum, A Good Life Wasted offers a unique perspective on an implausible period in the recent history of human civilization. When Dave Ames started guiding, Rocky Mountain locals rode horses and dug camas roots; now they're trading stock options on cell phones. The collision of stone and computer ages was short-lived, but the deep-rooted themes of this book remain.

A Good Life Wasted--a chronicle and celebration of the fishing-guide life--is poignant and spiritual; it's Blackfoot Indians and copper miners' daughters; it's fiddles and guitars and the fabric of space; it's about what happens to wild people when the wilderness is gone.

From the first chapter--in which Dave Ames recalls bluffing his way into a job as a fishing guide to the rich and famous (after barely managing to suppress the overwhelming urge to go postal at the federal agency where he suffered his first, and only, "real" job in a cubicle farm)--we're hooked. We gladly follow Ames as he describes the rite of tasting clouds of mating midges to better match the hatch, tells the story of a fabled Blackfoot fishing guide, and shares his further adventures as a guy with no job, no office, and no stress. A Good Life Wasted spins a fascinating, compelling web--a web that entices the deskbound salary slave to make a break for it, and head west to big sky and fast, cold water, ASAP.

About the Author

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Dave Ames, over the past fifteen years, has averaged perhaps 150 days of fly fishing each year as an outfitter and guide. He lives in Montana, spending much of his time in pursuit of trout and grayling. He has written for the Chicago Tribune, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Sports Afield, Fin and Feather, and Montana magazine. He has also authored the fly-fishing cult classic, True Love and the Woolly Bugger. He lives in Helena, Montana.

Praise For…

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"A Good Life Wasted is a vicarious pleasure for anyone who has ever wondered, even once, what it would be like not to have a 'real job'."--Missoulian

"Although Ames calls himself a fishing guide, it is his capacity as a guru that keeps his lines taut, his stories untangled. It is his ability to see the humor as well as the intent of nature that charms and beguiles. ... Because if we can't spend 20 years as a fishing guide, we can at least spend a few days in [his] competent hands, like a trout he's handled and let slip back into current."--Big Sky Journal



"[Ames] writes eleven loosely connected stories, eloquently using the medium of angling to discuss the virtues of a lifestyle old timers used to describe as 'trifling.' Moving, thought-provoking, sometimes powerful, and always entertaining, this is an important and welcome addition to the literary side of the angler's world."--Library Journal

"It's hard to say whether this is a cautionary tale or an invitation to apply for your guide's license, but Helena resident Dave Ames's engaging new book provides insight into a life both off-putting and appealing."--Montana Outdoors

"A fun read, A Good Life Wasted whets the appetite for wild rivers and reminds us that it's often the simple pleasures in life that make it worth living."--Hooked on the Outdoors