Rivers Running Free: A Century of Women's Canoeing Adventures

Rating:
Summary: Enjoy a 37-trip canoe anthology, without the mosquitoes.
Review: How I spent my summer vacation: Unable to get away on a canoe trip this past summer, I joined in spirit the women featured in Rivers Running Free. The book is a collection of 37 first person narratives by and about women examining their relationships with the wilderness, their companions and themselves. The trips date back as far as 1905 and range all over North America, including urban adventures along the Hudson and Mississippi, and the daunting, almost heartbreaking, journeys through Labrador or down the Saskatchewan. The strikingly common threads in all these journeys are the importance of working with nature (as opposed to trying to conquer it) and the value of developing co-operative relationships with long-time friends and total strangers. There are a number of useful and enlightening maps (canoists love maps!) showing the course of each trip (with points of interest along the way) and one of North America showing where each trip occurred. The prevailing spirit that seems to drive most of the women in this book, in spite of the portages and the mosquitoes, is the realization that "We're getting too old not to be doing what we want to do."

Rating:
Summary: spirituality by paddling
Review: Many similarities, going downriver at a peaceful pace..but watch those hydralics! Water journeys lead one further than hike in woods