What's In Your Paddling Library?

There are times when a book on paddling comes in handy. You might be planning a trip, searching for inspiration, or have a layover day on your trip when you just want to relax with a good read. With those moments in mind, we recommend that you stock your personal library with the following selections, at a minimum.

Canoeing Wild Rivers, 30th Anniversary Edition

This seminal book on wilderness paddling by Cliff Jacobson is the canoer’s bible. It covers everything from how to pick a river and how to pack for your paddle to how to pick a crew that won’t disappoint you when you’re running downstream in a rainstorm.

Travels in Alaska

John Muir headed to Glacier Bay, Alaska, in 1879 to further his education on glaciers and their effects on landscapes. The trip, by canoe with the help of Tlingit guides, helped Muir refine his thoughts on how the Yosemite Valley was carved by ice. This, his accounts of the journey, is a wonderful read that reveals insights on Muir, of course, but also on Glacier Bay and its icefields.

The Romance of the Colorado River

How better to get to know Major John Wesley Powell’s trips down the Green and Colorado rivers than by reading a first-hand account? Frederick S. Dellenbaugh accompanied Powell on his second expedition, in 1871. This book includes not only provides accounts of that expedition, but correspondence between Powell and Dellenbaugh and many photos and sketches from the journey.

The Emerald Mile: The Epic Story Of The Fastest Ride In History Through The Heart Of The Grand Canyon

In 1983 the Glen Canyon Dam was poised to fail, but high waters through the Grand Canyon led three veteran boatmen to attempt a speed-run down the Colorado River under a full moon. This is the story of the men and women who live and work in the Grand Canyon. Kevin Fedarko provides the historical context needed to understand the story as well, from early Spanish explorations to John Wesley Powell’s 1869 epic survey. Even seasoned readers will learn something new.

Elwha, A River Reborn

The dismantling of dams along the Elwha River in, and just outside, Olympic National Park has been described as the largest dam removal project in U.S. history. Trying to follow the story from afar is difficult, at best, which makes Elwha, A River Reborn, a good book to read.

Run, River, Run

Ann Zwinger wrote this book back in 1975, but the stories told through her naturalist’s eyes while following and floating the Green River from its headwaters high in the Wind River Range of Wyoming down to its confluence with the Colorado River in Canyonlands National Park remains a classic today. As Edward Abbey wrote in endorsing the book so many years ago, “Run, River, Run should serve as a standard reference work on this part of the American West for many years to come.”

The Survival of the Bark Canoe

John McPhee is one of the 20th century’s great storytellers, and paddlers shouldn’t overlook the stories he writes about Henri Vaillancourt’s talents for making birch-bark canoes. But this book goes beyond knitting together overlapping layers of bark with lacings of spruce or white pine roots and pitch, taking us on a 150-mile canoe trip through the Maine woods.

Down the River

Edward Abbey was an inveterate river rat. And in Down the River he regales us with stories of his river trips…as well as essays on topics as diverse as the MX missile—“The functional drive-force behind the MX project is not so much military defense as intellectual inertia – the natural institutional tendency to continue along familiar grooves. The nuclear arms race has been in progress for thirty-five years; why stop now?”—and how the transformation of the natural landscape by humans is a threat to “the very idea of freedom.”

In the Heart of the Sea

Weaving together narratives from more than a century ago, Nathaniel Philbrick tells the backstory of Moby- Dick, a story that spins out from a real case of a sperm whale attacking an early 19th century whaleship.