The Doing of the Thing: The Brief Brilliant Whitewater Career of Buzz Holmstrom

by Vince Welch, Cort Conley, Brad Dimock

Book Overview

A story about rivers and wooden boats, about heroes, humility, unbearable beauty, solitude, and death. Holmstrom's is the tale of a man's lone struggle in a difficult and changing world.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1892327376
• ISBN13: 9781892327376
• Release Date: August 1998
• Publisher: Fretwater Press
• Length: 290 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Answers to an old story....

I remember years ago when I was a kid a story my father told me about an amazing river rafter and boat builder. My Dad grew up in Coquille and went to school with Buzz's younger brother. His story always ended with how Buzz had been on a rafting trip in eastern Oregon and went off and committed suicide. I could never understand how someone who had done the amazing things he did could end his life on that note. I thought about that story many times over the years and always wished I knew more. This book is incredibly well researched and documented. Even though many questions were answered, many more were raised. Such was the enigma that was Buzz Holmstrom.

A "must read" for all Grand Canyon lovers

True adventure is not limited to distant lands and times long ago. Here in the good ol' U.S. of A., just a few short years ago, a common man blew his fanfare in the form of beautiful wooden boats made without plans by hand in his basement, and in his solo running of whitewater rivers in those boats. If you have ever slept under the stars, you will understand a bit of Buzz and why he did what he did. You may even want to do it yourself. Buzz would like that.

An in-depth look at the man who became a hero.

Buzz Holmstrom is, in the mythos of Grand Canyon boatmen, a singular icon. For years, xerox copies of the journal he kept on his 1937 solo run through Grand Canyon have circulated among river runners, avidly read and treasured. Now, with "The Doing of the Thing," we have a thorough and exhaustively researched picture of his life. Buzz is, for many of us, our hero. Now we can know him as a man. The subtlties and nuances of a private life made public by the magnitude of his accomplishments reveal a man of sensitive nature and indominable courage.

Painstakingly researched, beautifully written, captivating

Years ago (1970) on my first trip to the inner canyons of the Colorado River I heard stories of Bert Loper, Norm Nevills, the Kolb Brothers and "Buzz" Holmstrom, all early pioneers running the whitewater of the Colorado river. A one line entry in the "Powell Centennial, Grand Canyon River Guide," mentioned Holmstrom as,"... the first to run the canyon alone, built boat and rowed from Green River, Wyoming, to Hoover Dam in 1937." Welch, Conley, and Dimock have done a beautiful job of bringing to light a story that should have been told long ago.If you like outdoor adventure then, "The Doing of The Thing," should be a perfect read.

Indispensable for river and western history buffs.

Holmstrom's an example of Calling, or the Daimon in Hillman's sense. The authors provide the details of his life, limned on the canvas of the lost West, but there's a mystery in the strength of the hold the River had on him, as it has on some of the rest of us. Watching Holmstrom shape himself, even as he learned to shape wood for his boats, to make his voyages, gives a sense of destiny, which I think is one of the book's gifts. We live the era of gray, massed human lives; the book is a portrait of an actual human life: humble, shy, self-sculpted. doubt-racked, humorous, and finally dauntless. Reading of his early life, reading of his active life on the rivers, there is still the mystery of why this one from that town and those parents went to a peculiar and noble destiny. Welch, Dimock, Conley: boatmen, historians. They have the historical imagination and the river knowledge to vivify place and time, to judge in context, with expertise. Experts writing with precision and certainty (and where exacted by Holmstrom's death, with puzzlement and sorrow) about one of their Ancestors, one of their spiritual Fathers. Using Holmstrom's voice too; nobody could reveal him as he did himself. As with some greater and few lesser writers, these imbue their book at once with a picture of an odd, engaging spirit; a more spacious time; a lost West. Holmstrom lived in paradise; he lived in Neverland; he never left it. An achronic life, in a good book.