This is the story of Stephen's cabin in the Catskill Mountains…

And the 700-year flood.

And fracking.

And trout – big and small.

And a lovely outhouse – worthy of its own chapter.

Supporting characters include frogs, salamanders, toads, warblers, yellow-bellied sapsuckers, a neighbor named Tim, black bears, hemlocks, ferns, mayflies, Luna moths, glow-worms, thunderstorms, and maple syrup.

Ticks, knotweed, and natural gas landmen play the villains.

Climate activist Bill McKibben said this about “A Cast in the Woods”:

“New York State's ban on fracking was one of the great triumphs of modern environmentalism, and behind it lay a thousand individual stories of resistance. None has been better told than this one, by a worthy Catskills heir to the literary tradition of John Burroughs and a man who has earned his fishing.”

Ever since he saw his older brother lose an enormous summer flounder off a dock at the New Jersey Shore when he was 12 years old, Stephen Sautner has been trying to catch fish. Any fish. In 2007, he edited Upriver and Downstream, an anthology of fishing stories from the "Outdoors" column of The New York Times, and has been an active contributor to the column since 1994. His stories have also appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Fly Rod & Reel, Wildlife Conservation, and Underwater Naturalist. Along with Sautner’s 15 years of contributing to the NY Times, he is also the director of communications for the Wildlife Conservation Society at the Bronx Zoo, where he publicizes the Society’s conservation programs. He lives in Scotch Plains, NJ.

Nick Lyons is the editor of Hemingway on Fishing, The Best Fishing Stories Ever Told, The Quotable Fisherman, and The Little Red Book of Dad's Wisdom. He has written over twenty books, mainly on fishing, in addition to hundreds of articles on the subject, which have appeared in such magazines as Harper’s, Outside, Field & Stream, Outdoor Life, and Fly Fisherman. He splits his time between New York City and Woodstock, New York.