Nature

Back at the marina dock, Frederickson says the biggest change he’s seen on the James is not only the river’s improved health but also a stronger desire for keeping it healthy among everyone from individual citizens to the large corporations with which he works. “Most people have an awareness that we can’t just take our environment for granted,” he says. “I think we are at a stage where most people want to do the right thing.”

Nobody has a better sense of what that means than the Riverkeeper. Eyeing the windswept river, Frederickson admits that it’s a rare day—whether cold, windy, raining, whether the sun is blasting down from a midsummer sky, whether he’s soaked, sweaty, sunburned—when he doesn’t love being out on the water. “I tell people I’ve got the prettiest office in the world,” he says. “Don’t mess it up.”