Paddling North: A Solo Adventure Along the Inside Passage

(Paperback)

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2013 Gold Winner IBPA Ben Franklin Awards

In a memoir remarkable for its quiet confidence and acute natural observation, the author of Paddling Hawaii and Paddling My Own Canoe begins with her decision, at age 60, to undertake a solo, summer-long voyage along the southeast coast of Alaska in an inflatable kayak. Paddling North is a compilation of Sutherland's first two (of over 20) such annual trips and her day-by-day travels through the Inside Passage from Ketchikan to Skagway. In 22 years she encountered over 30 bears, four wolves, and hundreds of whales. Her lifelong philosophy, "Go simple, go solo, go now," is illustrated in this reflection-filled story of kayaking adventure. Includes maps, illustrations, and the author's camp food recipes.

Reviews

A sort of guide to life, a sharing of one adventurer's philosophy and her love for what she finds in nature, in testing herself, and in deep thinking. It stretches far past I went there, I did this into an examination of life akin to the work of Thoreau, Muir, E. B. White, and others she quotes along the way. She also brings into her text her cultural knowledge of Hawaii and what she learns along the way of Alaska history and indigenous knowledge. -- Anchorage Daily News
At just 160-some pages, Paddling North can be consumed in one long sitting, but that would be the equivalent of motoring the Northwest Passage. Better to take the leisurely pace of a blow-up kayak, subject to the push and pull of Sutherland's tidal adventures, as lingering and memorable as a sunset in the far north, seen from a deserted beach on an uninhabited island. -- Adventure Journal

Author Bio

Audrey Sutherland grew up in California but lived in Hawai'i from 1952 until her death in 2015 at the age of 94. She raised her four children as a single mother, supporting her family by working as a school counselor. In 1962, she decided to explore the coast of Moloka'i by swimming it while towing an inflatable raft with supplies, a story told in Paddling My Own Canoe (Patagonia, 2018). Ever after she was an inveterate water traveler. She was also the author of Paddling Hawai'i. Yoshiko Yamamoto is one of the premier block printers in the Arts and Crafts style. Yamamoto's block prints are letterpress printed using hand cut blocks on acid free paper. She is the co-owner of The Arts and Crafts Press, and co-author of several books about the arts and crafts movement, published by Gibbs Smith and Chronicle.