Buzz Holmstrom was born to a poor logging family in the rain-soaked forests of southern coastal Oregon. When Buzz was eight, the family gave up logging and bought a small farm in McKinley, a few miles outside of Coquille, Oregon. Before they reached their teens, Buzz and his older brother Carl joined in the hard work of running the farm. Every spare moment, however, was spent playing in the creeks, riding logs, learning to run small boats, absorbing the eccentricities of moving water. Their father died just a few years later, and frolicking in the water took a back seat to subsistence. The farm soon proved more than the family could manage. The rest of the family moved into Coquille. Buzz finished high school, working all the while in the local gas station.

Another five years passed before Buzz's penchant for whitewater abruptly blossomed. Working alone in the basement each evening, he built a small open boat such as one might row down the placid Coquille River. But that was not his plan-he had read Zane Grey's tales of shooting the rapids of the Rogue, just a few miles south of Coquille. It sounded like fun. Late one rainy night in the fall of 1934, Buzz hooked his new boat up to his decrepit sedan, drove to Grants Pass, and launched. A day later, Holmstrom sat alone on a rock in the middle of the Rogue, his upside-down boat swept out of sight down river, his gear scattered, with dusk coming on fast. Not a great start. Floundering ashore and scrambling downstream, he found his boat and righted it. By a stroke of luck he found a lodge nearby. The owners gave him clothes, food, and oars and sent him on his way. Two days later he rowed into the surf at Gold Beach.

The river had spanked him hard for his impertinence, but it had also sunk a hook deep into his psyche. He ran the Rogue again the following year, in a new, bigger boat he had crafted. The following year, 1936, he built yet another whitewater boat for a solo run of the Salmon River of Idaho. This time his only problem seemed to be how much he enjoyed stopping to talk to the local miners and boatmen along the way. He had fallen in love with not only the river, but the culture it attracted.

Back in Coquille he chose not to boast of his adventures, but rather keep them quiet and, in his spare time, built yet another boat, this time for the Green and Colorado. Launching in Green River, Wyoming, in October of 1937, he set out for what might be the greatest two months of his life. At a few rapids he lined or dragged his boat around on the shore. At most rapids, however, he scouted a route and ran it. On October 25th, he ran the last rapid on the Colorado and wrote:

Camp on R at lower end Rapid... with the last bad one above me--the Bad Rapid--Lava Cliff-- that I have been looking for, nearly a thousand miles--I had thought--once past there--my reward will begin--but now--everything ahead seems kind of empty & I find I have already had my reward--in the doing of the thing--the stars & cliffs & canyons--the roar of the rapids--the moon--the uncertainty--worry--the relief when thru each one- the campfires at nite- the real respect & friendship of the rivermen I met & others... This may be my last camp where the roar of a real rapid is echoed from the cliffs around & I can look at the stars & moon only thru a narrow slit in the earth--The river & Canons have been kind to me--I think my greatest danger is ahead--that I might get swellheaded over this thing--I am going to try to keep my mouth shut about it--go back to work in the old way & have it only for a memory for myself--I have done no one any good & caused a few people great worry & suffering I know--I think this river is not treacherous as has been said--Every rapid speaks plainly just what it is & what it will do to a person & a boat in its currents waves boil whirlpools & rocks--if only one will read & listen carefully--It demands respect--& will punish those who do not treat it properly--some places it says--go here safely if you do it just this way--& in others it says--do not go here at all with the type of boat you have--but many people will not believe what it says--Some people have said "I conquered the Colorado River--I don't say so--It has never been conquered--& never will I think--anyone who it allows to go thru its canyons & see its wonders should feel thankful & privileged...

He returned to Coquille, but failed to avoid the publicity he dreaded. In February he was featured as the lead story in the Saturday Evening Post. The adulation and attention he received made him miserable, yet there was some money to be made by allowing it, and that was not to be sneezed at in those post-depression years. In fact, he went so far as to join forces with another Oregonian, Amos Burg of Portland, to run the Green and Colorado again and make a film of the voyage--in hopes of earning some income to help support his family.

The trip was a success; the movie, however, was not, and Holmstrom returned to the gas station. In 1939 he had yet another interesting river trip--this time as a paid boatman for an eccentric widow from England who wanted him to take her by small boat up the Columbia and Snake (up Hells Canyon!), then portage to the Yellowstone and run down to the Missouri and Mississippi, then up the Ohio and Allegheny, across the Erie Canal and down the Hudson to New York. It took four months, but they made it. Holmstrom headed west, and spent the next year working in the copper mines near Salt Lake City, then as a driller for the Bureau of Reclamation's dam projects. The following year, 1941 he spent back in Coquille working at a sawmill.

He enlisted in the navy shortly after Pearl Harbor and served as a carpenter on the PT boats in the South Pacific, then in Europe. He returned home to Coquille in October 1945. He soon returned to government work, first for the Bureau of Reclamation in California, then as a boat builder and boatman for the Coast and Geodetic Survey on the Grande Ronde River in northeast Oregon. On May 18th, shortly after his 37th birthday, Buzz Holmstrom was found along the banks of the Grande Ronde, dead from a bullet to the temple. What brought about his death may never be fully understood. You'd better buy the book.