There's almost nothing better than getting in a canoe, putting your paddle in the water, and pushing out into a current that will carry you away. As someone who grew up on the Mississippi River, and who has spent much of my life canoeing, I always love a good river journey. And when I can't take one myself. I love going vicariously with someone else, like with these books.
I wrote
Pushing the River: An Epic Battle, a Lost History, a Near Death, and Other True Canoeing Stories
This book tells the incredible story of Roosevelt's expediton down the "River of Doubt" which almost killed him (and did kill a few others).
The book takes you into a time, not that long ago when there truly were blank spots on the map, when the world was still unknown, and when sometimes the only way to get out alive was to cut down a tree, carve it into a canoe, and keep paddling.
In 1912, shortly after losing his bid to spend a third term as American President to Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt with his son Kermit, a Brazilian guide and a band of camaradas set off deep into the Amazon jungle and a very uncertain fate. Although Roosevelt did eventually return from THE RIVER OF DOUBT, he and his companions faced treacherous cataracts as well as the dangerous indigenous population of the Amazon. He became severely ill on the journey, nearly dying in the jungle from a blood infection and malaria. A mere five years later Roosevelt did die of related issues.…
I was approached by Jerry Pushcar's brother when he first published this book, and I agreed to take a look, but was skeptical, being as it was self-published. But when I read it, I was blown away.
Not only is the writing beautiful and literary, but the journey is hard to believe: paddling 9,000 miles over three years, from New Orleans, up the Mississippi and St. Croix rivers, along the shore of Lake Superior, over the Grand Portage, across Canada and all the way to Nome, Alaska. If you're wondering what that was like, you'll have to read along.
After a 1,200 mile solo canoe trip from Grand Portage, Minnesota to Hudson Bay, Manitoba, Jerry Pushcar wanted to see more of North America’s untamed wilderness. Waters Beneath My Feet is the personal memoir of his response: a three-year solo odyssey from New Orleans, Louisiana to Nome, Alaska.His compelling journey began by paddling up the mighty Mississippi, battling barge traffic and wing dams all the while. The danger didn’t stop there. Between the Mississippi and his destination, Pushcar would spend more than two years in the bush, navigating tricky encounters, mammoth lakes, untamed rivers, and inhospitable winters. All were precursors…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
This book has inspired generations of paddlers, many of whom (including myself) didn't know that you could put a boat in the water at Minneapolis and paddle 2,250 miles north to Hudson Bay, where you have to watch out for polar bears.
That’s exactly what Eric Severaid and his friend Walter Port, both teenagers, did in 1930. Sevareid later went on to be a famous war correspondent, but this was his first big adventure.
In 1930 two novice paddlers—Eric Sevareid and Walter C. Port—launched a secondhand 18-foot canvas canoe into the Minnesota River at Fort Snelling for an ambitious summer-long journey from Minneapolis to Hudson Bay. Without benefit of radio, motor, or good maps, the teenagers made their way over 2,250 miles of rivers, lakes, and difficult portages. Nearly four months later, after shooting hundreds of sets of rapids and surviving exceedingly bad conditions and even worse advice, the ragged, hungry adventurers arrived in York Factory on Hudson Bay—with winter freeze-up on their heels. First published in 1935, Canoeing with the Cree is Sevareid's…
Among those many paddlers inspired by Canoeing with the Cree were Natalie Warren and Ann Raiho, who read the book in college and decided they wanted to do the trip too.
Not long after graduation, they did just that, becoming the first women to paddle Hudson Bay. I love this book because it gives you a real-time glimpse of what it takes to make such a trip, and before long, you're dreaming of your own months-long paddle into the unknown.
The remarkable eighty-five-day journey of the first two women to canoe the 2,000-mile route from Minneapolis to Hudson Bay
Unrelenting winds, carnivorous polar bears, snake nests, sweltering heat, and constant hunger. Paddling from Minneapolis to Hudson Bay, following the 2,000-mile route made famous by Eric Sevareid in his 1935 classic Canoeing with the Cree, Natalie Warren and Ann Raiho faced unexpected trials, some harrowing, some simply odd. But for the two friends-the first women to make this expedition-there was one timeless challenge: the occasional pitfalls that test character and friendship. Warren's spellbinding account retraces the women's journey from inspiration to…
Gifts from a Challenging Childhood
by
Jan Bergstrom,
Learn to understand and work with your childhood wounds. Do you feel like old wounds or trauma from your childhood keep showing up today? Do you sometimes feel overwhelmed with what to do about it and where to start? If so, this book will help you travel down a path…
I always think of the canoe as an escape, a refuge, and an adventure. But for Dick Contant, who lived out of his canoe, it was a different kind of refuge: An escape from the world that was too complicated to navigate.
I first read about his story in the New Yorker. But when he disappeared, I wanted to know the rest of his story, which McGrath fills in as best he can in this book. This is a different kind of canoe journey, but well worth the ride.
'Brilliant, clear, and humane' Elizabeth Gilbert
'Miraculous and hopeful' Emma Straub
Riverman: An American Odyssey uncovers the story of an extraordinary man and his puzzling disappearance, and paints a picture of the singular spirit of America's riverbank towns.
'The peace of mind I found, largely alone, on that white-water mecca convinced me that life was capable of exquisite pleasure and undefined meaning deep in the face of failure. The experience itself is the reward.' Dick Conant
On his forty-third birthday, Dick Conant, a golden boy who never quite grew up as those around him expected, stepped into a homemade boat…
In this collection, award-winning writer Frank Bures tells true stories as varied as the waters, weather, and rhythms of a canoe trip. From the terror of two kayakers who barely escaped the 2011 Pagami Creek Fire in the Boundary Waters to two young campers who experienced a supernatural scare in Canada’s Quetico Provincial Park in the 1970s to the author's own miraculous rescue, Bures shares his take on what happens when you push the river.
The heart of the book tells the lost history of the Paul Bunyan Canoe Derby, an annual 450-mile race on the Upper Mississippi in the 1940s and 1950s, and the dominance of racers from the Leech Lake Indian Reservation, whose designs are now part of the canoe-racing landscape.
