‘Love and water’: Riverhorse Nakadate shares love for the outdoors in new book

The sounds of laughter and a faint smell of beer filled the Montana Troutfitters shop well past closing time last Wednesday. Community members gathered to meet Riverhorse Nakadate, a Patagonia fly-fishing ambassador and author of “Water Lines: A Life on Marshes, Rivers, Seas, and in the Rain.”

The main street fly shop was the 12th stop on the “Water Lines” book tour. There, Nakadate spoke about his life spent on the water, answered questions from the audience and read sections from his new book. 

“I’ve never done a drug in my life,” Nakadate said. “Never tried anything, no cigarette, nothing. But I am so high with joy to be at these events with everybody.”

Nakadate attributes his love of water to his childhood. He grew up in government housing along a portion of the Colorado River in Austin, Texas, where he spent endless hours swimming and fishing with his Snoopy fishing rod. 

“I guess it started from the beginning,” he said. “I mean, you couldn’t get me out of the water.”

Nakadate’s love for books also started at a young age when his mother married a literature teacher. “The first two books he gave me were ‘Jonathan Livingston Seagull’ and a book about the fish of the sea, and we’d sit there each night and just go through pages of it,” he said.

By the time he was in high school, Nakadate was published in poetry books. He went on to work as a writer for Surfing Magazine in California and spent 10 years traveling the world and writing surf stories. 

“Eventually I just couldn’t stand it anymore,” he said. “I wanted to write stories about the environment and celebrate the beauty of wilderness.”

Nakadate then began working with Patagonia as a fly-fishing ambassador, writing stories and producing films about his travels. “Patagonia was always the top of the world to me,” he said.

During this time, Nakadate wrote stories, hoping they would one day become a book. “I think books are cosmic portals into other lifetimes and worlds,” he said. “They mean everything to me, especially in this digital world.” 

Nakadate’s book, “Water Lines,” was published in June 2026 and features 32 essays written in the solitude of the natural world. “I use time and wilderness and nature to make sense of what this world is and my place in it.

“It’s a really busy, crazy world, and there’s tough stuff going on,” he said. “I choose to go to the opposite, just head out for heartbreaking beauty, and that’s just the place I’m happiest.”

Nakadate said that, while he enjoys being alone in nature, it’s not his end goal. “I think that love is really the reason we’re here,” he said. “That’s one thing that really matters, so I feel like being out there in those places gives me the chance to be the kind of person that could have a beautiful, loving relationship with friends and family and a partner.”

Nakadate’s love for the environment is evident in his stories. “There’s something in my writing — maybe it’s the Cherokee part of my bloodline — like I think there’s something magical in there that just makes you love and respect the Earth and want to be in it,” he said.

Nakadate said he is most proud of his work on the film “A Northern Light,” which follows his journey through the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness of northeastern Minnesota, the most visited wilderness area in the U.S. The park has been under legal battles for over a decade due to proposed sulfide-ore mining on the edge of the wilderness. 

“Some of those special places, you just have to fight for them forever,” he said.

Nakadate’s next book is already in the works and will be in the same vein as his first, but will follow 10 to 12 adventures. Some of these adventures will relate to old literature heroes or books that he’s read so that he can explore the terrain himself, thinking about how it has changed and the value it holds now, he said.

“I will admit that looking at the adventures, I’m a little concerned because they just seem extra out there and extra precarious to me, so I’m like, ‘Wow, can I really? Am I gonna make it through this?’ And I think, ‘Well, I’ll just do it,’” he said. “I seem to have nine lives, so I’ll just keep rolling.”

Nakadate said he wants people to find hope in his writing. “I’m always looking for people, kindred souls and deeper souls, people who read between and beyond the lines,” he said. “I dream that people who pick up the book just get filled with hope and never look back.”

In the end, he said, “love and water are all that really matter.”

To purchase “Water Lines,” visit https://riverhorse.life/#book.