Customer Reviews

Reading the River: A Voyage Down the Yukon

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Having once been an Alaskan traveler myself, I found myself slightly skeptical before plucking this tattered book off the shelf. Everything I'd read of modern Alaska seemed wrong, off-key, and too liberal or too commercialized. But after skimming through a few pages, I was hooked. Never before have I found such wonderful, accurate descriptions of the land, its people, and the emotional tracks it leaves on a person. Somehow, I assumed I was alone in my journeys and my memoirs of Alaska, and unable to share them with people. Here is a man who has weaved together a beautiful adventure, honest and simple. I felt as though I was reading a diary of my own excursions in the North. Reading the River is definitely one of the best books I have ever read. I recommend it to anyone who has ever wondered what draws people away from the city, for those living in the city who craves the wild, and to every dreamer, explorer, and 'old-timer'.

A well written book; good primer for anyone planning a Yukon River trip, or anyone who just likes good adventure reading. Ride down the river with author in his canoe-with-motor and see Alaska through the eyes of a now-grown hippie returning to Alaska to find the self he left behind years before.

Hildebrand takes you from Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, across into Alaska, to the Arctic Circle at Fort Yukon, and through nearly the whole state of Alaska as he canoes down the Yukon River. Along the way you meet ordinary people with legendary stories of the intense lonliness of winter, of bear attacks, of battles with the US and Alaskan state governments, and of survival. You also get a glimpse into John's recently failed marraige, his life in Fairbanks, and his abandoned homestead near Denali National Park. Even for those who don't own SUVs or long to take on a thousand-mile canoe trip, this book is an intellectual adventure well worth the price of admission.

This book is the story of a motorized canoe trip down most of the Yukon River in the late 1980's. The author had spent some years in Alaska years before and built a cabin in the bush with his then wife. 10 years later, he returned to the North, recently divorced and went from Whitehorse in the Yukon Territory Canada, west across Alaska to the mouth of the Yukon River in the Bering Sea.

This book is not a mile-by-mile description of landscape and campsites. Rather it mostly concerns the current inhabitants of the area and the history of the area. It is well-written and does not contain any "world's greatest" claims. (You know, the claims in many travel books that a certain place is the prettiest, biggest, greenest, or ugliest place in the world.) Such honesty is refreshing.

Having spent one summer on the upper Yukon in Canada and parts of other years, I can tell you this book catches the ambience of the area perfectly - from the Indians (now called "first nations" in Canada in PC talk) to the miners to the malcontents trying to get away from it all. I found it wonderfully evocative and representative of the people who live up there. If you've ever read Robert Service's "Spell of the Yukon" you will understand when I say this work is a book-length treatment of the same subject - the strange lure of the North.

I'll close with a couple of excerpts from Service that will give you a sense of the place and the book.

"No, There's the land, Have you seen it?
It's the cussedest land that I know,
From the big, dizzy mountains that screen it
To the deep, deathlike valleys below.
Some say God was tired when he made it -
Some say it's a fine land to shun.
Maybe, but there's some as would trade it
For no land on earth, and I'm one.
It grips you like some kinds of sinning,
It twists you from foe to a friend,
It seems it's been since the beginning,
It seems it will be to the end.

There's a land where the mountains are nameless,
And the rivers all run God knows where.
There are lives that are erring and aimless,
And deaths that just hang by a hair.
There are hardships that nobody reckons,
There are valleys unpeopled and still.
There's a land, oh it beckons and beckons.
And I want to go back and I will"

Read this if you've ever felt the urge to go North and you'll get a feel for it.

A complete surprise. Much more than a travelogue or river guide. Excellent prose from a gifted writer. One of the best books I've read in years.

I loved this book and enjoyed every page. I've been reading a lot of Alaskan/Northern frontier books and this is definitely one to put at the top of the list. The different people John met on his trip were fascinating. It's told in such a flowing and easy style, that you don't want to put it down. By the end, I envied not being able to take a trip like this myself.

One of the better books I have read over the summer.

A well written account of a remarkable trip. This comes under the heading of journeys I'd love to take but may not have the guts to actually do. Fascinating observations of the huge forgotten swaths of country up at the top of the American continent and the few characters who inhabit it. The river provides an ideal vehicle for the journey and the story....taking us from one remote fishing camp to the next as Hildebrand rides and paddles downhill toward the Bering Sea.

I bought this book to get information for a trip down the Yukon of my own. I found that this book is primarily the story of the authors inner journey and his trip down the Yukon River in the early 80's. I enjoyed the book as intertainment reading.