Customer Reviews

In the Wake of the Jomon: Stone Age Mariners and a Voyage Across the Pacific

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By Bill Marsano. "In the Wake of the Jomon" starts poorly--too much prattle. In 1996 a couple of collegians frolicking in/near/around Kennewick, Washington discovered the skull of a fellow soon to be called Kennewick Man. He was a Jomon, one of a Stone Age tribe from 9,500 to 20,000 years ago that had settled in, of all places, Japan. How came he to Washington? Turk thinks it possible he came not by the Bering Land Bridge but by boat. The Land Bridge explanation for early immigrations is, it seems, a little too simple. Fair enough--we need this background. The irksome part is the relentless blue-skying about WHY. Were the Jomon fleeing hunger or enemies? Misfortune or mayhem? Or were they (drumroll, please!) fired by man's inborn spirit of adventure?

I can put up with a certain amount of this but not too much, which is what Turk has on offer. So much so that toward the end, when he actually produces something more interesting on the subject, I almost missed it, having long since become used to skimming.

But all right--that's the worst of it, and not really so terrible, just an irritant that made me want to yell "Shut up and paddle!" every so often. When Turk gets the show on the road he begins producing a very fine book. It follows the old Kon-Tiki routine, and a good one it is: tracing the presumed route to turn speculation into plausibility. It offers many possibilities and he makes the most of them.

Turk plans to sail from northeastern Japan to St. Lawrence Island, Alaska. His is no National Geographic expedition, where suffering means only having to load your own film. He has three tiny Wind Riders (plastic trimarans) donated by the manufacturer, some Gore-Tex, some Polartec. He's got his skillful accomplice Franz and a Russian translator, hired over the internet, who proves to speak almost no English and whose experience of water is confined to bathtubs. He cracks and splits after a week.

I don't want to spoil this adventure but must give a few details beyond the murderous shear waves and the killer surf and the whirlpool so wide Turk didn't recognize what it was until he was in it. So: Only a third of the way along, safety and sanity dictate quitting and returning next year. Round Two is much the best part. Now Turk sets out with his wife, Chris, some Prijon Kodiak kayaks and, best of all, a translator who speaks more than one language. This is Mischa, an unlikely but utterly wonderful hero. He joins the expedition knowing that survival at sea is unlikely (he too has no boating experience) but that death ashore is certain: His stressful and ulcerous office job will kill him, literally, unless he escapes to what he calls "the wild nature."

Putting his ego in a shoebox, Turk lets Mischa have the stage, for it is Mischa who earns it, who won't give up; when even Turk knows it's senseless to go on, Mischa simply won't be stopped. "Labor and defend," he cries, loosely translating an old Soviet slogan while launching into nightmare. "We must paddle to Alaska by our own hands," he reminds whenever Turk feels daunted. Turk's generosity here is admirable, and so is his writing skill: He brings all this alive and into focus so that you almost watch this book as you read it. (It would make a fine movie on the order of "Dersu Uzala.")

Turk and Mischa become boon companions as they meet and master the usual obstructions: filthy weather, stiff-necked officialdom, short rations, incessant discomfort and worse. They also meet and are helped (once being pulled from the surf by a tank) by a wonderfully odd assortment of people who live in lonely privation on the miserable shores farthest-east Russia, but who somehow understand and welcome explorers in any language. This is a book you won't lend out.--Bill Marsano is an award-winning writer and editor, and a marginally competent kayaker to boot.

I was rather disappointed in this book, but then I'm not much into high adventure, either. The book is more of a journal of one man's quest to experience the realities of the Eastward quest of the early Americans during the last of the Ice Ages. While I admit the book has many exciting moments that will appeal to those who enjoy risky adventures, I don't think those of us who hoped to learn more about the Joman culture and about it's possible peopling of the Americas.

Rebeccasreads highly recommends IN THE WAKE OF THE JOMON for those armchair travellers who love to follow in the footsteps of our ancestors in modern treks.

In 1996 a 9,500-year-old skeleton, Kennewick Man, was found beside the Columbia River, galvanizing anthropologists with the possibility that prehistoric humans reached North America from Asia by crossing the ocean in small open boats.

I first got on board with Jon Turk as he paddled around this blue marble & its COLD OCEANS. Now IN THE WAKE OF THE JOMON, we follow a specific route historians say an ancient people in pre-historic Japan took in open rafts or canoes, over the course of generations around the northern Pacific Rim, up modernday Russia, over the Bering Sea, along the Alaskan archipelago & south into America.

Always filled with intimate details of the characteristics of the sea, the absurdity & frustrations of world bureaucracies, the meeting of cultures, as well as the effort to undertake the kinds of expeditions Jon Turk favors, IN THE WAKE OF THE JOMON will cast you adrift in both history & philosophy, as well as drenching you with the thrills & spills of a dangerous & beautiful journey.

For all Readers who yearn to go down to the sea & muck about in boats, in far away places.

There I was hunkered down in the Aleutian islands, weathering out yet another Bering Sea storm, when Jon Turk's book 'In the Wake of the Jomon' showed up in my mailbox. For the next twenty four hours, as the willy-wa winds howled and the sea roared, I was held hostage deep within the pages of Turk's epic and Homeric-like book.

This book is one of those rare and special gifts, that appear from time to time, which are so captivating that it is nearly impossible to put them down.
Between the pages of Turks book I could feel the Bering Sea on my face, breath of a walrus, the anxieties and joys of adventure, bone tired limbs, kamuj spirits, as Turk journey's in the ancient wake of the Jomon people and their migration from Japan to North America.

While the majority of people follow the pragmatic path, Turk follows his dreams. He is honest, Intelligent, spiritual, hard-core, truly one of the greatest adventurers of our time, he is what the Russians call a puteshetvenik (a wandering story teller, one who carries the news, links cultures, and transfers technology.)

On his quest to follow the migration of the Jomon and his own soul, Turk introduces us to reindeer herders, vodka drinking bureaucrats, a shaman and healer, Kamchatka hunters who face bears in hand-to-hand combat, pods of Killer whales and Sea lions, the authors own fears, and new revolutionary ways to view human development.

Turk tells us that the original migrants, the Jomon, might have been driven by romantic or spiritual motives or by a plain old fashion love of adventure. Like Turk, maybe the Jomon were simply eccentric maverick seekers.

This book has been carefully crafted, is intelligent and insightful, can be enjoyed by all, and is one of the wisest and thrilling, adventure stories ever written.
'In the Wake of the Jomon' made me feel like getting up off my couch and doing something wild and extraordinary, it made me feel alive.
Anxiously awaiting Jon Turk's next dispatch from the field.
Robert Torkildson
Dutch Harbor, Alaska

I gave this 3 stars mainly for the physical effort Mr Turk made at doing something really difficult in a really remote place and making sort of a record of what he did. Initially I got it because of my intense interest in Kennewick man. That was a misleading teaser, because there is almost no science in the thing. It is a man against the elements journal -- sort of. I personally spent two years in the Aleutians in 1967-69 on a USCG icebreaker that was used mostly for fishery patrol, logistics and search and rescue -- and steamed 42,000 nautical miles at an average of 12-13 kts throughout the Aleutians. I was even on foot on Attu Island with snow on the ground in June. So I am very familiar with the dangerous brutal weather, the currents and above all the immense distances and isolation. Frankly I cannot conceive of anyone doing what he did. He must be out of his mind...sort of like the grizzly guy from Malibu who walked up to barren ground grizzlies in Alaska showing off for his cameras and who eventually got himself and his poor girlfriend killed and eaten for his stupidity. In any event, this book is interesting but strange. Because he wrote it, as opposed to someone else who is a real writer who could comment on Turk's foolishness (because that's what it was), the narrative piece lacks rational perspective. Turk is clearly not a seaman and he is not a scientist -- he is a physically very tough man who wanted to make a record of himself doing something that was physically extremely difficult and he really wanted you to know about it. However "Into Thin Air" was much better if that is what you are after. And there really are some good books on Kennewick man, but this ain't one of them. (I am hoping for more with some real science in them.) Also this journal cries out for some good photographs but there are almost none. The narrative attention is uneven, emphasizing some things and skimming others for no apparent reason. For a really good explorer journal, written by a very fine writer, look at Peter Mathieson's "The Cloud Forest", which was a precurser to his later novel "At Play In The Fields of the Lord". This Jomon book should have at least had a forward written by an experienced blue water sailor and/or a USCG member with lots of Alaska experience, since what it is about is a sea kayaking voyage that no-one should undertake. No-one. Readers should be told that what Turk did is utterly devoid of good judgment. It was more like Russian roulette than a simply risky voyage. He is very lucky to have survived it.

Jon Turk's small boat crossing of the North Pacific is one of the most gripping adventure stories I've ever read. "In the Wake of the Jomon" also takes the reader back into the Stone Age to glimpse the inner urges that propelled our ancestors into the unknown. In looking backwards we find that we are looking inwards at ourselves. Finally, Jon paints a fasciniating tragic, yet oddly comic view of a modern frontier in the Russian Far East. A terrific read!

All you need to do is look at the map on the first couple of pages. Once you realize that Mr. Turk sailed/paddled this entire thing with only one or two others, you will have to read about everything he went through to do it. He lives quite the opposite life of most of us, truly accomplishing a feat that shouldn't be humanly possible. And he does it all to prove that the Jomon did it to come to America.

What a great book!
I recently read Jon Turk's In the Wake of the Jomon during a plane trip. I was captured by the excitement, rich details, and anthropological information and could not put it down. I found myself actually glad to hear the loudspeaker announce a 1.5 hr delay of my connecting flight as it allowed me more uninterrupted reading time.
If you are looking for a gripping adventure that will educate you as it excites you, read In the Wake of the Jomon.

Taking advantage of a rainy weekend, I glued myself to an armchair and kept turning the pages of Jon Turk's book until I reached the last one, when the author and his co-adventurer reach Alaska after paddling the distance with their own hands. I expected to find calluses on my own palms. It was that vivid.

Mr. Turk tells adventure stories, of course. Imagine turning your kayak through waves too high to see over, positioning it in the perfect slot to charge through the surf and roar up to the beach---and in the exact spot you expect to land, there stands a grizzly bear, arms and legs akimbo, mouth open, salivating.

What kept me turning the pages, though, was less the adventure and more the thoughts generated by the adventure. Why humans are driven to migrate. Why a little madness improves our chances to evolve. Why the storyteller deserves an honored place at the table of chieftains.

As to why a little old lady like me would want to recommend a marine adventure book, the answer is simply this: Jon Turk never fails to remind us that we are a piece of the natural landscape, a piece of a billion-year continuum of time. We are not the master of the universe, not the victim of a fickle Mother Nature, but one expression of the continuous surge of life.

Besides, what reader could fail to warm to an author who admits, with frank humility:

"Almost thirty years before, I had dragged a canoe across the Rat River Pass, a nineteenth-century trade route from the Canadian Northwest Territories to the rich gold mines and fur-trapping ground in the Yukon. Now, with a white beard and graying hair, I was dragging and paddling my kayak across another mosquito-infested tundra in another far corner of the Earth. Apparently I was ineducable."

We are frail, we are fragile, and sometimes we can be pretty stupid. But all in all, it is a wonderful thing to be human--the only part of a marvelous universe granted the power to dream. Here's to dreams!

C. Nisaragi
Tokyo

In this exciting and informative book Jon Turk provides fascinating insights into geology, wildlife, and history while keeping the reader on the edge of his seat with descriptions of harrowing experiences at sea. His journey by trimaran and kayak along the wild shores of Siberia traces the 3000-mile passage of ancient Jomon wanderers from Japan to Alaska.

In one of the least populated regions of the world the author meets people who have rarely if ever met outsiders. In several instances he watches previously unseen behavior of wildlife. He has close encounters with grizzly bears on remote beaches, and with a large pack of killer whales in the ocean. In storm-tossed Arctic waters he remains wet and cold for weeks on end while dealing with huge waves, crushing ice floes, whirlpools, and storms.

Dr. Turk, scientist as well as daring adventurer, hypothesizes about factors that led early man to travel from the comfort of the temperate zone to the unknown frozen north. He explains how and why Stone Age mariners may have reasoned that by traveling northward and eastward they would eventually travel south to find warm water and a new world.

As you read the tantalizing descriptions of the author's death-defying adventure you will feel that you are right there with him throughout his amazing and incredible journey.