The 13 personal essays in Water over Stones: Oregon Watershed Stories explore the author's experiences in dozens of Oregon watersheds. Using the genre of the personal essay, the author, a fifth-generation Oregonian and amateur ecologist, writes about her life and family relationships in stories that are saturated with the waters in which they have lived, logged, fished, and died. These stories are no defense of her family's past. but neither are they a condemnation. Rather, these personal essays are an inside look at the conflicts that arise in the author and in her family relationships when she discovers a protective love of her watersheds, marries an environmental scientist and then tries to negotiate her family's values with environmental values attached to her home waters. This negotiation dives deep into personal waters that flow from childhood anger to religious ecstasy. The author's negotiation of these waters demonstrates the personal essay's unique use as a tool for exploring issues that underlie the science of watershed; specifically: people and their relationships to each other and to their waters. These essays are drawn from the author's experiences in watersheds as wild as Lawson Creek in the Kalmiopsis Wilderness, where her family was lost, and as tame as Ash Creek in the Willamette Valley, where she now lives. / Graduation date: 2005