Review
Review of In the Land of the Red Goat
Bob Henderson’s weathered paw is extended as he steps into the studio, his grip firm, manner direct, but he’s a bit apprehensive. He is too far from his natural habitat. There is too much traffic, too much concrete.
Bob Henderson has run a five-ton snow machine up the Stikine River as the ice melted around him. He has babied a fully-loaded truck with no brakes down a ten-mile hill. He has learned to fly and crash-land planes. But promoting a book in the Big Smoke is something else.
In Vancouver to talk about In the Land of the Red Goat, Henderson is too far removed from his fishing lodge at Tatlatui Lake, his home near Smithers and the vast Spatsizi plateau that gave rise to the name of his memoir. Spatsizi is a Tahltan word meaning Land of the Red Goat, a description that arose because goats in the area take dust baths by rolling on red iron slopes. Henderson…has been active as a guide and pilot throughout northern B.C. for four decades, having joined forces with Love Bros. & Lee, an outfitting company based in the Skeena River watershed and Kispiox Valley, as a young man.