Homelands: Kayaking the Inside Passage [Paperback]

Byron Ricks (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 1999

"For five months in the spring and summer of 1996, Maren and I traveled the Inside Passage...It was a long and beautiful journey, a season of bright sun and dark cloud, above-average rainfall, and broad shoulders...It was a time before home ownership, before children, an open window and all we had to do was leap through. And we did...The very name, Inside Passage, seemed to carry an intimacy, a knowing. It would be a personal voyage. As much as anything, it would be a journey home."

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In an era of testosterone-charged adventure tales, Byron Ricks's Homelands: Kayaking the Inside Passage is a wonderfully introspective adventure-travel memoir. In 1996 Ricks and his wife, Maren van Nostrand, came close to making an offer on their first house, but instead decided to undertake an adventure of a different kind together--kayaking from Alaska's Glacier Bay down the coast of Western Canada to southern Puget Sound, near their Seattle home. They had no set schedule to keep and for five months lived by nautical charts and the rhythms of the tides, wind, and weather. Their plan was to paddle from the glaciers to the city, exploring a coast in flux and the ways of native peoples such as the Tlinglit, Tsimshian, and Haida--whose ancestors paddled the passage for centuries. The driving question of Homelands is this: how does the act of making a very long journey home, in this case by paddle--at an average velocity of a mere three knots--affect one's concept of home? This ocean-size question is fed by smaller tributaries: Do overcoming peril and danger make the rewards of coming home greater? How do native inhabitants encountered along the way relate to their homeland? What do you do when you're camped in a bear's back yard? And what are the issues facing a husband and wife setting out across vast expanses of open water to confront--in the most literal sense--what lies beyond?

A journalist with a background in history and anthropology, Ricks is gifted with both a keen eye and a poetic ear. The tale is written in diary form, and its voice originates in the pace of the kayak: tranquil, steady, respectful. An easygoing and astute companion, Ricks is clearly an old soul--with questions well worth asking and some lovely observations to share. --Kimberly Brown

From Publishers Weekly

In a book that is sometimes invigorating and sometimes maddeningly attenuated, Ricks recounts the five-month journey from Alaska's Glacier Bay to Washington's Puget Sound that he and his wife made by sea kayak. Ricks is obviously as well studied in the geology and the ecology of the terrain as he is blithely realistic about his ability to impose his plans upon it, bandying terms like "bathymetry" and "isostatic rebound" as freely as "ibuprofen." But while Ricks, an outdoors writer who lives in the Northwest, occasionally shows descriptive power worthy of John McPhee, the book's diary-entry structure limits his creativity, prevents inventive shifts in scene and leaves the narrative leaden in spots. Through his talks with people along the route, Ricks comes to an understanding of the term "homeland" not as something static but as a word that "speaks to the kind of relationship a people have with their place." With this interpretation, Ricks tries to find a connection to his own country even as he spends his voyage's last day paddling through a scum of oily water and past an island prison with high walls and razor wire. The book truly conveys the experiences of a long journey through remarkable terrain. Readers will share some of Ricks's elation over natural beauty and hard-won insight. But they will also be frustrated by a narrative that is as unnecessarily arduous as the journey it recounts was inevitably so. (July)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial (July 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0380809184
• ISBN-13: 978-0380809189
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #997,267 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #65 in Books > Sports & Outdoors > Nature Travel > Adventure > Kayaking

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Paddling journey of the mind and soul at water level., February 8, 2000

By 

Mike Kirby (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Homelands: Kayaking the Inside Passage (Paperback)

I have sailed and paddled the Inside Passage from time to time over the last 24 years. I am an avid reader of true outdoor adventures. I usually judge a book by its ability to hold my interest and ultimately to motivate me to leave the comforts of home and to take a stoll down "the road less traveled." I have been eyeing my kayak and checking my gear since finishing Homelands. When the ski season is over, I'm packing my kayak and heading north. My only regret is that I do not have the luxury of duplicating the entire trip.

The author provides an engaging and captivating description of this courageous undertaking in a journal format. This format serves the book and pace of the adventure well. The poetic language used to describe characters, places and events is excellent and conjures memories that parallel my own experiences along the British Columbia coast. The author has done an excellent job of capturing the flow, feeling and character of this region. This is not a Fodor's on kayaking the Inside Passage but rather an adventure of the soul and mind, at water level, along one of the most rustic, beautiful and inhospitable coastlines in America.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Insightfully written piece about a beautiful region, October 6, 1999

By 

James B. Quarles (Free Union, Virginia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Homelands: Kayaking the Inside Passage (Paperback)

Having sailed the Inside Passage a number of times, including the summer of 1996 when I encountered Byron and Maren while aboard "Cecilie" and then reading "Homelands: Kayaking the Inside Passage" this summer past, as I sailed it again, I now see the Passage differently than I did before. Byron's insights opened my eyes wider, while at the same time, made me envious of his and Maren's vision. The book is so beautifully written, it left me inspired to look more closely at my surroundings (not only in the Passage)and think more clearly about who and what has been there before me. Out of hundreds of books read, this ranks in my top ten on any subject and "Homelands" covers many.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars It wasn't what I expected, March 11, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Homelands: Kayaking the Inside Passage (Paperback)

Byron and Maren sound like wonderful people, and I admire thier spirit of adventure and commitment and respect of the land. I think I expected a lot more action in the story. I would have liked this more had they included pictures of the landscape, themselves, some of the people they had met, and a larger map. I understand their desire to protect the places they stopped, but, being an east coaster who "day kayaks" for four or five hours at a time, I wanted a bigger and better glimpse of such a worthy adventure.