Kayaking Alone: Nine Hundred Miles from Idaho's Mountains to the Pacific Ocean

by Mike Barenti

Overview

The Columbia and its tributaries are rivers of conflict. Amid pitched battles over the economy, the environment, and the breaching of dams on the lower Snake River, the salmon that have always quickened these rivers are disappearing. On a warm day in late May, Mike Barenti entered the heart of this conflict when he slid a white-water kayak into the headwaters of central Idaho’s Salmon River and started paddling toward the Pacific Ocean. This account of his two-month, nine-hundred-mile solo journey into the world of the Columbia Basin plunges us into the adventure of navigating these troubled waterways.

Kayaking Alone is a narrative of man and nature, one-on-one, but also of man and nature writ large. In the stories of the river guides and rangers, biologists and ranchers, American Indians and dam workers he meets along the way, the rich and complicated life of the river emerges in a striking, often painfully clear panorama. Through his journey, the ecology, history, and politics of Pacific salmon unfold in fascinating detail, and with this firsthand knowledge and experience the reader gains a new and personal sense of the nature that unites and divides us.

 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780803213821
Publisher:	Nebraska
Publication date:	03/01/2008
Series:	Outdoor Lives
Pages:	244
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Mike Barenti is a writer and journalist who has worked as a reporter for the Yakima Herald-Republic and the Idaho Falls Post Register and has taught English and creative writing at various colleges. He has published work in such journals as River Teeth and Ascent.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 – Sunbeam

Chapter 2 – Where the Marlboro Man Might Settle

Chapter 3 – Henry Clay Merritt, on His 158th Birthday

Chapter 4 – Into the Wilderness

Chapter 5 – Watching Fish in Riggins

Chapter 6 – Dragonflies and the Plant Migration

Chapter 7 – Into the Breach

Chapter 8 – Locking Through with Smolt

Chapter 9 – River of Empire

Chapter 10 – The Swallowing Monster and the Pictograph Island

Chapter 11 – Watching Fish at Bonneville Dam

Chapter 12 – Used up by the Wind

Chapter 13 – Looking Back at Cape Disappointment

Editorial Reviews

"Part travelogue, part history lesson, part ecological meditation, Kayaking Alone is the product of a tough but revealing trip."—Idaho Arts Quarterly

Idaho Arts Quarterly

“This book flows from cover to cover like the rivers traveled within its pages, and the story is never the same for long. Barenti takes readers on a ride deep into the personality of the West, shedding light on the culture of the region every time he eddies out.”—Sam Weiss, Paddling Life

Paddling Life - Sam Weiss

“A fresh look at a river system critical to our history and our future. . . . This is a good book about paddling, and an even better book about the salmon, science and politics up the Columbia.”—The Spokesman-Review

Journal of the American Water Resources Association

“Kayaking Alone provides much more than a chronicle of one man’s quest to find adventure on a great river system…Barenti weaves conversations with the people he meets, farmers, ranchers, river guides, fisheries biologists, native peoples and dam workers, into a narrative revealing the complex interaction among the economy, the environment and the lives of the inhabitants of the lower Snake and Columbia River.”—Stan Miller, OutthereMonthly.com

— Stan Miller

OutthereMonthly.com

“This book flows from cover to cover like the rivers traveled within its pages, and the story is never the same for long. Barenti takes readers on a ride deep into the personality of the West, shedding light on the culture of the region every time he eddies out.”—Sam Weiss, Paddling Life

— Sam Weiss

Paddling Life

“A fresh look at a river system critical to our history and our future. . . . This is a good book about paddling, and an even better book about the salmon, science and politics up the Columbia.”—The Spokesman-Review

— Rich Landers

The Spokesman-Review

"Mike Barenti's book is a good addition to Columbia River literature. Kayaking Alone is a travelogue, a wilderness adventure, an environmental history, and the story of the hopes and fears of the people whose lives are anchored in the river's changing currents. But most of all it's a personal quest to understand this wonderful gift we call the Columbia River."

-Jim Lichatowich, fisheries biologist and author of Salmon Without Rivers

Jim Lichatowich

"Mike Barenti's Kayaking Alone carried me like a river, but this is no passive traveler's tale. Barenti's knowledge of the Northwest makes this journey as intellectually engaging and rewarding as it is physically adventurous. In taking you down the river, this beautiful book takes you deep into narratives of humanity and nature-and reminds you that they flow as one story."

-Jonathan Johnson, author of Hannah and the Mountain

Jonathan Johnson

"Mike Barenti's heartfelt chronicle of the culture and politics of salmon rivers is both a splendid adventure yarn and a provocative inquiry into the American conscience."

-Paul Schullery, author of Searching for Yellowstone

Paul Schullery

"Kayaking Alone turns out to be a meditation on salmon, on western rivers, and on American relations to the natural world. The prose is direct and provoking, and the book's pace moves as smartly as any healthy current—delivering us from landmark to new vista to conclusions with steady force."—Jeffrey McCarthy, Western American Literature

Western American Literature - Jeffrey McCarthy

“Kayaking Alone provides much more than a chronicle of one man’s quest to find adventure on a great river system…Barenti weaves conversations with the people he meets, farmers, ranchers, river guides, fisheries biologists, native peoples and dam workers, into a narrative revealing the complex interaction among the economy, the environment and the lives of the inhabitants of the lower Snake and Columbia River.”—Stan Miller, OutthereMonthly.com

OutthereMonthly.com - Stan Miller

 “This book is a good combination of paddling, river history, and the plight of the salmon on the river of the same name.”—Cascade Currents

Cascade Currents

“A fresh look at a river system critical to our history and our future. . . . This is a good book about paddling, and an even better book about the salmon, science and politics up the Columbia.”—The Spokesman-Review

The Spokesman-Review - Rich Landers