Customer Reviews

Rivers Running Free: A Century of Women's Canoeing Adventures (Adventura Books)

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How I spent my summer vacation: Unable to get away on a canoe trip this past summer, I joined in spirit the women featured in Rivers Running Free. The book is a collection of 37 first person narratives by and about women examining their relationships with the wilderness, their companions and themselves. The trips date back as far as 1905 and range all over North America, including urban adventures along the Hudson and Mississippi, and the daunting, almost heartbreaking, journeys through Labrador or down the Saskatchewan. The strikingly common threads in all these journeys are the importance of working with nature (as opposed to trying to conquer it) and the value of developing co-operative relationships with long-time friends and total strangers. There are a number of useful and enlightening maps (canoists love maps!) showing the course of each trip (with points of interest along the way) and one of North America showing where each trip occurred. The prevailing spirit that seems to drive most of the women in this book, in spite of the portages and the mosquitoes, is the realization that "We're getting too old not to be doing what we want to do."

I wanted to be in the boat with them !
I bought this book a few years ago in here, and have just started reviewing my favorite Amazon orders.
This book has encouraged me to connect with women in boats and push them laughing into the water - it's everywhere ( water !) and my experience living near San Francisco is that within minutes you can paddle from a loud city into a great big piece of Mother Nature.
I am always pinching myself and thinking, "why isn't everyone doing this" ? ? ?

If you need to escape, buy this book and then get a boat !

Many similarities, going downriver at a peaceful pace..but watch those hydralics! Water journeys lead one further than hike in woods