Deep Water Passage: A Spiritual Journey at Midlife [Paperback]

Ann Linnea (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 1997

Chronicles the author's midlife spiritual journey, during which she spent sixty-five days kayaking around Lake Superior--the first woman to perform such a feat--while facing dangerous elements and reassessing her life. Reprint.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The author's grueling, 65-day journey around Lake Superior was emphatically not adventure but a spiritual quest, a search for meaning in her life. For her first 43 years, Linnea had adjusted to her surroundings and accommodated others. With a husband, two children and a comfortable middle-class existence in Duluth, she felt unfulfilled spiritually. So in mid-June 1992, she set out with a friend in seagoing kayaks to paddle the 1200-mile perimeter of Lake Superior. The weather was unseasonably cold and stormy, and the journey proved to be a severe physical challenge. Linnea became discouraged and dangerously exhausted, yet her perseverance enabled her to make a break with the past. This account is both an engrossing adventure and a story of spiritual awakening and inspiration. Linnea is coauthor of Teaching Kids to Love the Earth. Author tour.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal

Ecofeminist Linnea (Teaching Kids To Love the Earth, Pfeifer-Hamilton, 1991) recounts her 1200-mile, 65-day kayak paddle around Lake Superior. More significant than the numbers and the athletic challenge, though, is her spiritual journey of personal growth. Linnea writes, "All my life, I have sought wild places for adventure, for my livelihood, and for good counsel," and this trip indeed supplied all three. At age 43, she felt at a turning point and undertook this challenge in order to prepare for life's second half. Through high fogs, huge obscuring waves, disorienting fog, bitter cold, and 12-hour paddling days, she emerges at a place where body and mind are united. As well, the physical courage she summons eventually transforms into an emotional courage to take risks. Recommended for public library collections in women's spirituality or the increasingly popular sport of kayaking.?Kathy Ruffle, Coll. of New Caledonia Lib., Prince George, B.C.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Pocket Books (March 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671002821
• ISBN-13: 978-0671002824
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #149,035 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #11 in Books > Sports & Outdoors > Outdoor Recreation > Kayaking > Sea Kayaking
  • #64 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Professionals & Academics > Social Scientists & Psychologists

More About the Author

Ann Linnea began her writing career in Utah, authoring hiking and skiing guides as a U.S. Forest Service naturalist. Ann co-authored the award-winning Teaching Kids to Love the Earth (University of Minnesota Press, 1991). Her memoir, Deep Water Passage, a Spiritual Journey at Mid-Life, (Pocketbook, 1997) chronicles her journey as the first woman to circumnavigate Lake Superior by sea kayak. In 2002 Ann wrote A Journey through the Maxwelton Watershed, (Washington State, Water Quality Grant, 2002). In 2010 she co-authored The Circle Way: A Leader in Every Chair (Berrett-Koehler) with Christina Baldwin. Also out in 2010 is Ann's book, Keepers of the Trees--A Guide to Re-Greening North America (Skyhorse Publishing).

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A courageous and heartfelt story of personal journey., September 14, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Deep Water Passage: A Spiritual Journey at Midlife (Paperback)

Deep Water Passage is one of the most honest and compelling stories of personal journey that I've ever read. I've now read this book four times, and have given it to countless friends and family members as gifts. (I can't keep a copy in my house!) Ann Linnea's amazing courage, her passion for her children, Lake Superior, and kayaking, as well as her quest for her own spiritual awakening and life make for an incredibly heartwarming and poignant story. Great information on Lake Superior too--that most majestic of the Great Lakes! You won't be able to put this book down!

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Zen and the art of kayaking...., September 25, 2000

By 

Dianne Foster "Di" (USA) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Deep Water Passage: A Spiritual Journey at Midlife (Paperback)

Sooner or later, we all face the prospect of losing a loved one. Often the death of a friend leads one to reflect on one's own mortality. Sometimes undertaking an arduous physical challenge helps alleviate the emotional pain following loss. Often the loss of someone dear leads to enormous changes in one's life.

Ann Linnea lost a good friend to breast cancer. In a state of grief buried so deep she was not fully aware of it until she had completed a good part of her journey, she set out on an extraordinary trip kayaking around Lake Superior. She and her travel companion were subjected to incredible physical stress, and they experienced sublime beauty. By day, they paddled against the surf, in the rain and broiling sun, and through the treacherous debris of the coastline. Sometimes they paddled at night, where she saw "dark lichen-covered boulders..illuminated by a full moon."

Like Pirsig in "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" Linnea alternately describes her evolving mental and emotional state and the intricacies of kayaking a long distance. "I wore heavy-soled hiking boots, teal wind pants, yellow waterproof parka"... she says. And a moment later, "The only other time in my life that I could remember feeling connected like this to the ancient spirit of a place was in 1988 on my second three-month camping trip to the desert southwest with my children."

By the end of her book, Linnea has successfully circumnavigated Lake Superior, found the perfect place to scatter the ashes of her dead friend, and made some life-affirming decisions about her own existence.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A LUMINOUS BOOK, April 12, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Deep Water Passage: A Spiritual Journey at Midlife (Paperback)

A luminous book, filled with adventure, discovery and emotional truths. Since I live in Michigan, I'm very familiar with Lake Superior, and the images that Linnea evokes are wonderful: she made me feel the storms, the magic, and the fury that the Lake can unleash.

The emotional part of the story is a somewhat familiar one, but it is beautifully told. Any woman who has taken the track that society told her to take--at her own expense (and many, like me, who actually had a mother who told them to question it)--can relate to this story. In taking this journey Linnea found the rest of her life. We are fortunate to be able to take both journeys with her: the inward and the outward. I am filled with pride that this strong woman had the courage to take both leaps: the one that took her around the big lake, and the one that took her away from a man who had no egregious flaws, but who wasn't meeting her needs in any way except financially. Sadly, societal pressures still tell women that any "decent" man is better than being alone, and if you find one, your happiness is less important than that of your family. Of course, "decent" is open to discussion: a man who won't even adjust his university schedule to spend time with his children doesn't seem like a particulary stunning father to me. For too long a woman's happiness has been subjugated to that of her husband and children. Linnea reclaimed her joy: I'm sure her children feel and appreciate that joy.

My only gentle criticism of this book is that Linnea at times waxes a little too New Age for me, but the quest for traditions that speak to women in a way that our patriarchal choices do not is a very valid one.

This is a wonderful book to give as a gift: It's an adventure story, an introspective memoir, and a delightful travelogue. Give it in good health!