Full name: Voyage of a Summer Sun: Canoeing the Columbia River

Author: Robin Cody Year: 1995 Rank: Rating: Original Rating: Pop Rating: Genres/categories: Travel, Non Fiction Purchase/reserch links: LibraryThing Goodreads Amazon ISBNs: 9781570610837 9780870716614 1570610835 0870716611

On the morning of June 18, 1990, high up in the Canadian Rockies, Robin Cody pushed his sixteen-foot, forty-seven-pound Kevlar canoe through tall grass and mud to launch it on peaceful Columbia Lake, the nominal source of the river that heaves more water into the Pacific Ocean than any other in North or South America: the Columbia. For the next eighty-two days, Cody would steer his canoe around massive dams, through killer rapids, and across reservoirs the size of small states, plunging 2,750 feet in 1,200 miles and passing right through his hometown of Portland, Oregon, before reaching the open sea. Undertaken with no particular goal in mind, with no great point to prove, the solo voyage would churn up myth, memory, and unexpected truths about the magnificent natural phenomenon that dominates the landscape, economy, and spirit of the Pacific Northwest. To the tent-dwelling canoeist, animals play an often funny, sometimes scary, role - bear, moose, coyote, beaver, deer, osprey, heron, loon. But, as Cody soon realizes, "nature, in real time, is not a dependable entertainment." Untethered thought takes over, and human contact, human language, is craved. Cody's cravings are met by a host of colorful riverfolk: Virginia Wyena, the grandmother of seventeen who pronounces for him the unspellable Wanapum name for the Columbia; Wayne Houlbrook, a would-be adventure guide and actual companion through daunting Redgrave Canyon; Mary Yadernuk, a seventy-three-year-old trapper of the old school; Ben Seibold, a "wood butcher" on hand for the raising of Grand Coulee Dam during the Great Depression; Lucille Worsham, who counts the fish swimming by her station down in the bowels of Bonneville Dam; even a couple of anonymous gossiping teenagers in a hardware store. A consummate listener, Cody learns that few are satisfied with the contortions the modern Columbia has been made to undergo for the sake of hydraulic and nuclear power, and that the environment is indeed in grave cris Similar books: The Ultimate Kauai Guidebook: Kauai Revealed by Andrew Doughty Around the World in 60 Seconds by Nuseir Yassin The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd 1,000 Places to See Before You Die by Patricia Schultz Sky Burial by Xinran The Wild Places by Robert Macfarlane Unfathomable City by Rebecca Solnit Hillerman Country by Tony Hillerman Guests of the Sheik by Elizabeth Warnock Fernea The Old Patagonian Express by Paul Theroux The Lost Amazon by Wade Davis Journey through Britain by John Hillaby In Asia by Tiziano Terzani Full Circle by Michael Palin The World At Large by Adam E. Mehaffey Hunting Mister Heartbreak by Jonathan Raban Narrow Dog to Wigan Pier by Terry Darlington Hidden Mickeys by Steven Barrett Lonely Planet Italy by Damien Simonis The Best Women's Travel Writing: 2011 by Lavinia Spalding