Clips

Falcon Press

Some people are really into canoeing. If you’re one of them, or wish you were, pick up the 20th-anniversary edition of Expedition Canoeing. Jacobson has gathered his friends together to produce a very thorough guide to canoeing northern rivers.

This hefty tome to wilderness canoeing starts with how to research a river and ends with a plea of consciousness. It’s a book that’s less about how to perfect the seamless stroke and more about how to manage a big expedition. It includes information on how to load a canoe on a plane, how to remove stains and scum from a boat, and techniques for using a belly cover as a sail.

Advice from expert canoeists and outdoor guides is splashed throughout the book, providing various perspectives on choosing a canoe and tips for your first wilderness canoe trip. This book is loaded with information, which if used correctly and with a little practice, could turn anyone into one of those people who are really into canoeing.

This review originally appeared on Outside Bozeman.

Ragged Mountain Press, 2001
Camden, Maine
284 pages

There is no need to hike naked to a visitor center after your boat is capsized and pinned to a rock midriver. Your friends don’t have to almost die from hypothermia crossing a lake because you chose to save the gear first. These things happened to Alan Kesselheim and you can learn from his mistakes by reading The Wilderness Paddler’s Handbook. It’s practical advice from a seasoned canoeist.

Kesselheim covers everything a first-time canoeist needs to know to get out into the wilds in a boat, while still entertaining and educating the experts. Personal stories are interwoven with advice on everything from choosing an expedition destination, to building a boat rack, to avoiding (and handling) backcountry emergencies. And of course, he discusses how and when to side slip, ferry and eddy turn.

The beauty of this book is that it is personal. Kesselheim is a renowned writer as well as a paddler, and his skills in both shine here. He shares stories of his family’s and friends’ trips on local rivers like the Gallatin and farther away in places such as Manitoba.

Choose one of the routes from the book, follow the planning guidelines, and by next summer you’ll be on the water, reading currents, smiling big, and appreciating all the learning Kesselheim did for you.

This review was originally published in Outside Bozeman.

Barry Lopez is a master of literary non-fiction, but even he occasionally has trouble finding the right words to describe the landscapes he so aptly writes about. Which is why he, along with managing editor, Debra Gwartney, has compiled a tome of evocative terms—and their definitions—that describe the American landscape.

“Home Ground” (Trinity University Press, $29.95), is descriptions, definitions and interpretations of landscape and water features, each written by a regional author. But, more than a simple telling of what a kiss tank, a comb ridge or desire path is, “Home Ground” looks at the culture that created the word and the poetry the feature inspires.

“How a particular culture or subculture divides and names the features of it’s homescape, and the way it perceives how one thing grades into another—when exactly a draw becomes a gulch or a tarn a lake—is in the end particular to a culture,” Lopez writes in the introduction.

If it is “landscape that keeps us from slipping off into abstract space,” as Lopez asserts, then it is “Home Ground” that roots us to our landscape and our home. When putting a canoe into the cold Missouri River at Fort Benton—days of solo time in wild country awaiting around the next bend—consider Luis Alberto Urrea’s words:

“The Missouri Breaks could have been called the Missouri Quebradas. A Quebrada is something broken. Literally, a break (from the verb quebrar). It implies the breaking up of the ground; a shattering of passes and horizons into a rougher country beyond.”

The definition is interesting, but Urrea also tells us a little something about the culture from which the word sprang. “…quebrada is the best slang some Chicanos can come up with for “getting a break” in life. “Orale, vato—dame una quebrada.”

Or perhaps you will be driving past an abandoned mine site or across acres of badlands stripped bare by grazing, and you’ll think of it as “derelict land”. Barbara Kingsolver writes concisely, “Land that has been used, ruined, and consequently abandoned by humans is peculiarly described as derelict—as if the land itself had become careless of its duties.”

Through perusing this book slowly and savoring each word (and the lovely pen and ink sketches that accompany some of them) a deeper sense of place and understanding of home is gained.

Big Sky Journal

There is nothing new about romanticizing the Old West. Even as the days of “get along little doggies” were beginning to wane, writers and artists were longing for years gone by.

Caroline Lockhart was one of those writers, who, in the early part of the last century wrote tales of the Wild West, even when what she wrote was at least partly fictionalized. In John Clayton’s thoroughly researched book “The Cowboy Girl: The Life of Caroline Lockhart” (University of Nebraska Press, $21.95), he explores the life of one of the West’s greatest proponents, journalists, novelists and storytellers.

Lockhart primarily grew up in the east, but longed for a life on horseback in the West. In order to find adventures as well as support herself, she began her journalism career as a stunt-girl reporter in the same vein as her better known contemporary, Nellie Bly.

At a time when women rarely traveled alone, and even more rarely traveled to the rough and rambunctious area west of the Missouri River, Lockhart went west seeking stories and adventures. She scaled shale cliffs in Glacier National Park and made friends with folks with names such as “Sourdough Sam”.

“Caroline Lockhart had arrived in the West,” Clayton writes of Lockhart’s journey to Glacier, “It may have been crumbling away beneath her, but she was determined to hold on.”

Eventually Lockhart settled in Cody, Wyoming where she worked as a newspaper publisher and rode her horse the four blocks to work each day. There she founded Cody’s Stampede Rodeo, still an important event today. Later she moved to the Crow Reservation where she lived out the remainder of her days.

While many women of the west have been written about by feminists and others, Clayton believes that Lockhart’s story has faded from communal memory because “many sought stories of oppression: women dragged west against their will, enslaved by their husband’s adventuring spirits. Lockhart did not fit.”

Lockhart was a woman before her time—a women seeking adventure and one who made a life she dreamed for herself.

What is it about the image of open range, gun fights and cattle drives that still moves us today? Clayton’s story of Lockhart’s long life is as much about answering this question as it is a story of a unique woman’s life.

Falcon Press

Grizzly bears have always been contentious, portrayed as man-killers and livestock-raiders; the embodiment of cruelty to some and wildness to others. It’s apropos that at a time when courts are struggling with the legality of delisting the great bear from the Federal Endangered Species list, Mike Lapinski would write his book chronicling the hard times grizzly bears have faced since Europeans arrived on this continent and the stories of men and women who fought to keep the bruin in existence.

Lapinski illustrates the lives of the men, such as Grizzly Adams and Theodore Roosevelt who started out as bear hunters and killers, but ended up respecting bears. He chronicles lesser known men and well-known researchers, all of whom have impacted the grizzlies’ survival. Men, whose “hearts and spirits burned with an unquenchable fire to preserve this great lumbering beast. Thanks to them, the flame of conservation and preservation of the grizzly glows brightly today.”

This history of bruin supporters wraps up with stories of the current work of bear biologists and advocates. Carrie Hunt peppers bears with rubber bullets and harasses them with Karelian bear dogs in an effort to adversely condition bears to stay away from human development, while Chuck Bartlebaugh educates the public on enjoying bears safely and responsibly.

In the end, Lapinski repeats a phrase from Doug Peacock—self-proclaimed anarchist and grizzly bear proponent, “Just leave the @#%$& grizzlies alone!” And he encourages us to do the same. Whether or not the bear is delisted, enjoy the woods, protect bear habitat, carry bear spray and perhaps the grizzly bear will be around in another two hundred years.