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THE STREAM by Robert Murphy

THE STREAM

By

Pub Date: March 1st, 1971
Publisher: Farrar, Straus & Giroux

The despoliation and approaching destruction of a two-thousand acre tract in the Pocono Mountains -- but this time every incursion is seen as a personal, sudden deprivation for each of ten men who owned the land. While the lives of small and large animals, the fish in the pure stream were being lived out with little interference, disaster was ushered in by a plane and its load of pesticide. The rest follows quickly -- the ""needless"" road, a broken dam and a poisonous mine-overflow because of irresponsible practices, an oil pipeline, a new development, and sewage. ""Their little enclave, . . . was a fading symbol of the past, put together by men who took delight in nature..."" and degraded by ""people who cared for nothing but the dollar or themselves."" But at the close one of the men is set to join a militant conservation organization (""the more militant the better"") Some of the prose is elderly and stiff-gaited but it may serve to point the mild-mannered huntsman straight to the Sierra Club.