A SCHOLARLY BOOK REPOSITORY
In August 1998 Kim Trevathan summoned his beloved 45-pound German shepherd mix, Jasper, and paddled a canoe down the Tennessee River, an adventure chronicled in Paddling the Tennessee River: A Voyage on Easy Water. Twenty years later, in Against the Current: Paddling Upstream on the Tennessee River, he invites readers on a voyage of light-hearted rumination about time, memory, and change as he paddles the same river in the same boat—but this time going upstream, starting out in early spring instead of late summer. In sparkling prose, Trevathan describes the life of the river before and after the dams, the sometimes daunting condition of its environment, its banks’ host of evolving communities—and also the joys and follies of having a new puppy, 65-pound Maggie, for a shipmate.
Trevathan discusses the Tennessee River’s varied contributions to the cultures that hug its waterway (Kentuckians refer to it as a lake, but Tennesseans call it a river), and the writer’s intimate style proves a perfect lens for the passageway from Kentucky to Tennessee to Alabama and back to Tennessee. In choice observations and chance encounters along the route, Trevathan uncovers meaningful differences among the Tennessee Valley’s people—and not a few differences in himself, now an older, wiser adventurer.
Whether he is struggling to calm his land-loving companion, confronting his body’s newfound aches and pains, craving a hard-to-find cheeseburger, or scouting for a safe place to camp for the night, Trevathan perseveres in his quest to reacquaint himself with the river and to discover new things about it. And, owing to his masterful sense of detail, cadence, and narrative craft, Trevathan keeps the reader at the heart of the journey. The Tennessee River is a remarkable landmark, and this text exhibits its past and present qualities with a perspective only Trevathan can provide.
The Green River, the most significant tributary of the Colorado River, runs 730 miles from the glaciers of Wyoming to the desert canyons of Utah. Over its course, it meanders through ranches, cities, national parks, endangered fish habitats, and some of the most significant natural gas fields in the country, as it provides water for 33 million people. Stopped up by dams, slaked off by irrigation, and dried up by cities, the Green is crucial, overused, and at-risk, now more than ever.
Fights over the river’s water, and what’s going to happen to it in the future, are longstanding, intractable, and only getting worse as the West gets hotter and drier and more people depend on the river with each passing year. As a former raft guide and an environmental reporter, Heather Hansman knew these fights were happening, but she felt driven to see them from a different perspective—from the river itself. So she set out on a journey, in a one-person inflatable pack raft, to paddle the river from source to confluence and see what the experience might teach her. Mixing lyrical accounts of quiet paddling through breathtaking beauty with nights spent camping solo and lively discussions with farmers, city officials, and other people met along the way, Downriver is the story of that journey, a foray into the present—and future—of water in the West.
Drawing from his vast practical experience and extensive study of museum specimens, John D. Heath offers a comprehensive overview of the evolution and construction of Greenland kayaks supplemented with an illustrated series of rolling and sculling techniques. E. Arima examines kayaks of the eastern Canadian Arctic, covering woodworking tools, construction techniques, and the treatment of skins for the kayak cover.
Core chapters on Greenland and eastern Canada are accompanied by essential articles by Greg Stamer on the use of the Greenland paddle and two studies of kayaks in European museums by Harvey Golden and Hugh Collings. A valuable excerpt from John Brand's Little Kayak Book series makes this British publication available to American readers for the first time.
Lavishly illustrated with drawings and historic photographs, Eastern Arctic Kayaks is a landmark study in the history of watercraft--an essential resource for recreational kayakers and maritime historians and for anyone interested in northern Native material culture.
The year Emerick turned 38, the suicide of a stranger compelled her to uproot her life and strike out for Alaska, taking a chance on love and home. She learned how to travel in a small yellow kayak along the rugged coast, contending with gales, high seas, and bears. She pondered the different meanings of home from the perspectives of people who were born along Alaska’s coast, the first peoples who had been there for generations, newcomers who chose this place for themselves, and the many who would eventually, inevitably leave. When she married a man from another island, convinced that love would stick, she soon learned that marriage is just as difficult to navigate as the ocean.
Divided into sections detailing the main kayaking strokes, with each stroke serving as metaphor for the lives we all pass through and the tools needed to stay afloat, this eloquent memoir speaks to the human need for connection—connection to place and to our fellow travelers casting their bubbles of light in the depths.
When Henry Hudson explored the Delaware River in 1609, he dubbed it “one of the finest, best, and pleasantest rivers in the world.” Today, those same qualities make the Delaware one of the most popular rivers for recreational use in the United States. Although in places a near-wilderness, the Delaware is easily accessible to millions of residents. On any summer day there may be thousands of people rushing down its exciting rapids or lazing through its serene eddies.
A Paddler’s Guide to the Delaware River is an indispensable resource for anyone who wants to experience the Delaware River in a kayak, canoe, raft, or tube—or, for that matter, an automobile or an armchair. Reading the book is like travelling down the river with an experienced guide. It charts the non-tidal Delaware 200 miles from Hancock, New York, to Trenton, New Jersey, describing access points, rapids, natural features, villages, historical sites, campgrounds, outfitters, and restaurants. The Delaware comes alive as the author introduces some of the people, places, events, and controversies that have marked the river from earliest times to the present day.
Completely revised, the third edition offers:
- An overview of the river including watershed, history, place names, paddlecraft, safety, and fishing.
- The River Guide: ten sections that can each be paddled in one day (about 20 miles), with a mile-by-mile account of rapids, access, natural features, historic sites, and other features.
- All new maps, with names for virtually every rapid, eddy, and other river feature, plus detailed diagrams for routes through even the most severe rapids.
- Features in the River Guide highlight the people, events, natural history, and communities that define the river experience, such as Tom Quick, the infamous “avenger of the Delaware”; the mysterious migration of eels, the battle over Tocks Island Dam; and many others.
- Appendices of Important Contacts, Outfitters and Campgrounds, River Trip Checklists, and more.
Whether you are a novice out for an afternoon float, a seasoned adventurer on an overnight expedition, or a resident fascinated by the lore of the Delaware Valley, this book is an invaluable guide.
Over the course of the five-week voyage, Trevathan rediscovered the people and places that made history on the Tennessee’s banks. He crossed the path of the explorer Meriwether Lewis along the Natchez Trace, noted the sites of Ulysses S. Grant’s Civil War battles, and passed Hiwassee Island, the spot where a teenaged runaway named Sam Houston lived with Cherokee Chief Jolly.
Trevathan also came to know the modern river’s dwellers, including a towboat pilot, two couples who traded in their landlocked homes for life on the river, a campground owner, and a meteorologist for NASA. He placed his life in the hands of U.S. Army Corps of Engineers lock operators as he and Jasper navigated the river’s nine dams.
Paddling the Tennessee River is a powerful travel narrative that captures the river’s wild, turbulent, and defiant past and confronts what it has become—an overused and overdeveloped series of lakes. But first and foremost, the book is the story of a man and his dog, riding low enough to smell the water and to discover the promise of a slow river running through the southern heartland.
The Author: Kim Trevathan, who earned his M.F.A. in creative writing at the University of Alabama, works as a new media writer and producer and writes a column for the Maryville Daily Times. His essays and short stories have been published in The Distillery, New Millennium Writings, The Texas Review, New Delta Review, and Under the Sun. He lives in Rockford, Tennessee.
A fully revised and updated edition of Gary Nichols’ widely used guide to river running in Utah. Major changes have occurred on Big and Little Cottonwood Creeks, which have many new drops with dangerous hydraulics. This edition accounts for these and other alterations in the state’s waterways over the past fifteen years. Also, several of the original river access points are now on private land. Alternative access points are presented and users are alerted to the necessity of requesting permission. All this and much more will once again make A River Runners’ Guide to Utah and Adjacent Areas the one source for vital and reliable information on more than ninety river trips for beginner and expert alike. It includes:
-Over 90 river trips with descriptions and maps
-Location of access and take-out points
-Instructions for all skill levels
-Ratings of all waterways by levels of difficulty
-Identification of danger areas and obstacles
Two generations have passed since the publication of Wilma Dykeman’s landmark environmental history, The French Broad. In Through the Mountains: The French Broad River and Time, John Ross updates that seminal book with groundbreaking new research. More than the story of a single river, Through the Mountains covers the entire watershed from its headwaters in North Carolina’s Blue Ridge and the Great Smoky Mountains to its mouth in Knoxville, Tennessee.
The French Broad watershed has faced new perils and seen new discoveries since 1955, when The French Broad was published. Geologists have learned that the Great Smoky Mountains are not among the world’s oldest as previously thought; climatologists and archaeologists have traced the dramatic effects of global warming and cooling on the flora, fauna, and human habitation in the watershed; and historians have deepened our understanding of enslaved peoples once thought not to be a part of the watershed’s history. Even further, this book documents how the French Broad and its tributaries were abused by industrialists, and how citizens fought to mitigate the pollution.
Through the Mountains also takes readers to notable historic places: the hidden mound just inside the gate of Biltmore where Native Americans celebrated the solstices; the once-secret radio telescope site above Rosman where NASA eavesdropped on Russian satellites; and the tiny hamlet of Gatlinburg where Phi Beta Phi opened its school for mountain women in 1912.
Wilma Dykeman once asked what the river had meant to the people who lived along it. In the close of Through the Mountains, Ross reframes that question: For 14,000 years the French Broad and its tributaries have nurtured human habitation. What must we start doing now to ensure it will continue to nourish future generations? Answering this question requires a knowledge of the French Broad’s history, an understanding of its contemporary importance, and a concern for the watershed’s sustainable future. Through the Mountains fulfills these three criteria, and, in many ways, presents the larger story of America’s freshwater habitats through the incredible history of the French Broad.
A real-life adventure and journey of discovery on the greatest of the Great Lakes
Over two years, Greg Breining set out to circle Lake Superior by kayak. Paddling more than one thousand miles, he camped on the lake’s islands and shorelines, visited its places of rare beauty and solitude, experienced its wildly varied moods, and explored remote historic sites and isolated communities. The result is Wild Shore, a tale of outdoor adventure, colorful characters, memorable stories, and personal discovery.
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