What are you reading?

[Boatman53]

Me too.
Jim

 

[MyKneesHurt]

@sweeper I'm roughly an hour and a half due north of you, I'll take it off your hands if you want. I just today ran into a topical canvas-restoring headscratcher.
-Knees

 

[Robin]

Trap Lines North by Stephen W. Meader

I loved having my maps out following along with where everything was going on.

Do you know there is a website/forum called “Trap Lines North” (https://traplinesnorth.proboards.com/)
Although it doesn’t get much activity these days, it’s got a lot of great information and pictures about the book and familys.
I help moderate it, keep out those pesky Middle East trappers selling timeshares.
I have been to Nakina a few times, always looking for things from the book.

 

[ppine]

"Paid to live in the woods."
I went to forestry school at the U of Washington in the early 70s. It was the best school of its kind in the world then. We were required to spend a quarter in the woods We played horse shoes at night with the best professors around. We had our own College of Forest Resources.

The most gun ho forester I ever met lived in a hooch with me and 2 other guys. Dave was an ex Marine from Castle Rock, WA. He went to work with a timber company out on the Olympic Peninsula near Forks, WA which gets 100 inches of rain and grows some huge forests. He told the story at our 48 year reunion at Pack Forest near Mt Rainier in 2022. "One day after 3 years of working in the field, the rain was going down the back of my neck. I looked out at the Olympic Range in the fog and decided to do something else." He got an MBA and built a very successful real estate development company.

Now the University has a Dept of Environmental Sciences and Forest Management. They now longer have an undergrad degree in forestry. I grew up at the right time. born in 1950.

 

[Odyssey]

Re-reading a short story collection titled Garden In The Wind by Gabrielle Roy. English translation by Allan Brown.
The first story is A Tramp At The Door. There's an excellent short movie version if you can find it.

Allan Kroeker - Tramp At The Door - Directed by Allan Kroeker

This is "Tramp At The Door - Directed by Allan Kroeker" by APA on Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people who love them.

vimeopro.com

 

[MyKneesHurt]

I just spent a really pleasant hour talking to @sweeper at his place, after driving down to pick up some books he had offered up. He showed me around his workshop, pointed out some cool projects he'd got going, and we talked everything from butternut trees to Swift Prospectors. A heckuva nice guy to spend some time with. Thank you sweeper!

If I hadn't had a dog stuck in the house all day two hours away, I'm sure we could have talked another hour!

 

[UCanoe_2]

Mina Benson Hubbard, A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador. New York: McClure (1908).

This classic of canoe literature has probably received mention previously in this thread. Leonidas Hubbard, Jr. became lost and died in 1903 while exploring a route across Labrador. In 1905 his wife set out to successfully complete the expedition.

Mrs. Hubbard shows great admiration for the teamwork and wilderness skills of her native guides. She marvels at the beauty and complexity of the sub-arctic environment. From time to time she shows the reader brief glimpses of her grief at the loss of her husband. She writes with an elegant style, and shows a perspective much different from similar travel accounts by male authors.

Read it online with a free account from archive.org:
https://archive.org/details/cu31924028906069/mode/1up

 

[D J Hayes]

I just finished up Adam Shoalts most recent book "Where the Falcon Flies" and really enjoyed it. He is an explorer in residence at the Royal Canadian Geographical Society who spies a peregrine falcon near his home on the north shore of Lake Erie and decides to do an epic 3400 km journey North to the Arctic Circle on the migration path of the peregrine. He paddles along Lake Erie, down the Niagara, portage around the Falls, then down Ontario and onward. It's a fantastic armchair adventure but, if I were to attempt that same journey, can't imagine I would make it more than a few hundred paddle strokes. Quite a read!

 

[D J Hayes]

Mina Benson Hubbard, A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador. New York: McClure (1908).

This classic of canoe literature has probably received mention previously in this thread. Leonidas Hubbard, Jr. became lost and died in 1903 while exploring a route across Labrador. In 1905 his wife set out to successfully complete the expedition.

Mrs. Hubbard shows great admiration for the teamwork and wilderness skills of her native guides. She marvels at the beauty and complexity of the sub-arctic environment. From time to time she shows the reader brief glimpses of her grief at the loss of her husband. She writes with an elegant style, and shows a perspective much different from similar travel accounts by male authors.

Read it online with a free account from archive.org:
https://archive.org/details/cu31924028906069/mode/1up

Have you had an opportunity to read "Great Heart" about the ill-fated expedition? https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/great...yP0aAsEuEALw_wcB#idiq=3175504&edition=2312140

 

[UCanoe_2]

Thanks for the tip!

Mr. Hubbard's journal is an appendix to his wife's book. I couldn't read the whole thing. I stopped when he was in the early stages of starvation due to lack of fat and carbs in his diet.

 

[MyKneesHurt]

Found an interesting book in the boxes @sweeper gave me called How to Read Water, by Tristan Gooley. I picked it up to flip through with low expectations, thinking - I can already run rivers - but it's a far more interesting and in-depth book. It looks at how water behaves in all aspects, from droplets on a table top to ocean currents, from sublimating dew to using puddles for tracking animals. A pleasant surprise.

 

[Alan Gage]

In the Wake

In the Wake

Disillusioned with the boundaries of wilderness parks, two paddlers in one canoe sought wilderness that was wild by nature, not by law. In 1991, they loaded a canoe with food for three months and paddled away from the end of the road toward the most remote spot on the continent. After 80...

books.google.com

80 day unsupported trip in the barrens by husband and wife.
Just started on it. So far, so good.
I came across a thread on MYCCR many years ago from the author talking a little about the trip. At the time he mentioned he'd been working on and off for around 20 years to write a book about it. Looks like he finally got it finished.

Alan

 

[Tsuga8]

Just finishing up 'The Gales of November' by Bacon about the Edmund Fitzgerald. Great read with a lot of backstory about the economics, history and science that lead up to the loss of The Mighty Fitz, as well as in-depth portraits of those lost and what the lives of Great Lakes sailors were like.

I also tore through 'Indian Creek Chronicles' by Fromm about a college kid who unwittingly lands himself a job living alone in a tent in the Bitterroot Range of Idaho for 7 months of winter. I suspect many here with resonate with the tension between wanting to be ensconced in wildness and missing the company of friends and family back in civilization.

 

[Gamma1214]

I suspect many here with resonate with the tension between wanting to be ensconced in wildness and missing the company of friends and family back in civilization.

I might feel differently a few months in but, right now, it sounds like my dream job.

 

[PaddlingPitt]

I might feel differently a few months in but, right now, it sounds like my dream job.

I agree completely. I never tire of living in isolated wilderness. In January of 1999, Kathleen and I flew to a one-room cabin 100 km (62 miles) north of the Arctic Circle. Three hundred km (200 miles) from the nearest road. Forty km (25 miles) from the nearest community of 90 people mostly native, We stayed until breakup in June. I literally cried when we paddled away down the Anderson River to the Arctic coast, four weeks away. That time in the cabin, at the north end of Colville Lake remains the best 141 days of my life.

In another post, Erica mentioned my book “Beyond The End of the Road: A Winter of Contentment North of the Arctic Circle” Disappointing sales so far. Apparently this experience enjoyed by Kathleen and me is not broadly interesting. Perhaps I have not done enough marketing, or don’t know the right people. Sigh. Please buy my book, or at least check it out of the library. Tell me that you liked it. Even if you didn’t. Or, even if you didn’t read it, you can still tell me that you liked it. I hunger for affirmation.

 

[Erica]

I might feel differently a few months in but, right now, it sounds like my dream job.

Me too.

 

[Erica]

I agree completely. I never tire of living in isolated wilderness. In January of 1999, Kathleen and I flew to a one-room cabin 100 km (62 miles) north of the Arctic Circle. Three hundred km (200 miles) from the nearest road. Forty km (25 miles) from the nearest community of 90 people mostly native, We stayed until breakup in June. I literally cried when we paddled away down the Anderson River to the Arctic coast, four weeks away. That time in the cabin, at the north end of Colville Lake remains the best 141 days of my life.

In another post, Erica mentioned my book “Beyond The End of the Road: A Winter of Contentment North of the Arctic Circle” Disappointing sales so far. Apparently this experience enjoyed by Kathleen and me is not broadly interesting. Perhaps I have not done enough marketing, or don’t know the right people. Sigh. Please buy my book, or at least check it out of the library. Tell me that you liked it. Even if you didn’t. Or, even if you didn’t read it, you can still tell me that you liked it. I hunger for affirmation.

I’ve read all four of his books. I particularly like the communication and coordination exhibited by these two intrepid paddlers. I’m also partial to the botany, the walking they did, working out the challenges they faced, their appreciation for the far north.

These books are not thrillers. They are long, extended trip reports of multi-week journeys. Well worth reading.

Here’s how to find them. There is even one available in kindle.

Michael Pitt books

 

[Pseudonym]

@Erica and @PaddlingPitt, which of @PaddlingPitt’s books would you recommend starting with?

 

[PaddlingPitt]

Don’t have any suggestions which book you should read first, but people on CTN perhaps don’t need to buy my books. I have presented the major portion of all three as postings here. A major benefit of doing so is that I was able to include pretty much unlimited colour images, which was not possible with hard copies. Our book “Three Seasons In The Wind” is a melding of our diaries written on our 950 km (600 miles), 37-day trip down northern Canada’s Thelon River. As co-author, Kathleen insisted that we include nothing other than what was contained in our diaries. We did not share our diaries until after we returned home. As such, the book represents our “real time” presentation of feelings, frustrations, joy, dangers and experiences on our first solo wilderness canoeing trip.

You can find the posting here: https://www.canoetripping.net/threads/thelon-river-northwest-territories-nunavut-1993.104383/

There is more in the book itself, but this TR gives a good summary. Please feel free to say that you liked it!

We have guests coming soon, so I will report on my other two books posted on CTN later today.

 

[Goodtimescharlie]

In another post, Erica mentioned my book “Beyond The End of the Road: A Winter of Contentment North of the Arctic Circle” Disappointing sales so far. Apparently this experience enjoyed by Kathleen and me is not broadly interesting. Perhaps I have not done enough marketing, or don’t know the right people. Sigh. Please buy my book, or at least check it out of the library.

Funny timing, I literally just picked up a copy of this book at a thrift store in Sister, Oregon yesterday! I’m saving it to read on a little trip to Mexico in January, so won’t be able to report back for a while, but it looks like a great read.