Northland: A 4,000-Mile Journey Along America's Forgotten Border

by Porter Fox

Overview

“Romantic, urgent, valuable and appealing as hell.” —Andrew McCarthy, New York Times Book Review

Writer Porter Fox spent three years exploring 4,000 miles of the border between Maine and Washington, traveling by canoe, freighter, car, and foot. In Northland, he blends a deeply reported and beautifully written story of the region’s history with a riveting account of his travels. Setting out from the easternmost point in the mainland United States, Fox follows explorer Samuel de Champlain’s adventures across the Northeast; recounts the rise and fall of the timber, iron, and rail industries; crosses the Great Lakes on a freighter; and traces the forty-ninth parallel from Minnesota to the Pacific Ocean. He weaves in his encounters with residents, border guards, Indian activists, and militia leaders to give a dynamic portrait of the northland today, wracked by climate change, water wars, oil booms, and border security.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393357097
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	06/04/2019
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	1,003,203
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Porter Fox is the editor of Nowhere and the author of Deep. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, The Believer, Outside, National Geographic Adventure, and The Best American Travel Writing. Raised in Maine, he lives in New York.

Table of Contents

Introduction xiii

Part I The Dawnland 1

Part II The Sweet-Water Seas 55

Part III Boundary Waters 107

Part IV Seven Fires 143

Part V The Medicine Line 187

Acknowledgments 227

A Note on Sources 229

Index 233

Editorial Reviews

"Fox is an amiable, entertaining guide to the past and present of this porous, rugged border with Canada.… [Northland is] an engaging travel memoir that highlights the lives of those who dwell on our northern edge."

Shelf Awareness - Bruce Jacobs

"In this sweeping account of the northern boundary of the U.S., Fox… moves seamlessly between geologic and human time scales.… He narrates his own travels with keen observation, attuned to the special details that set each place apart, and speaks to fascinating people along the way who have shaped their lives, in one way or another, around the border.… Although this boundary line is, for the most part, invisible, Fox finds that it still leaves an indelible mark on the places and people it touches."

Booklist

"Deeply researched [and] beautifully written.… [Fox is] a hell of a writer, and Northland paints a vivid portrait of the Canadian border."

Tom Bie

"Fox’s borderland journal offers a poignant reminder of the shared history of two nations and the contentious nature of the border line."

Natural History - Laurence A. Marschall

"In a time when no borders should be ignored—when ICE and ice are indifferent to human lives—a travelogue like Fox’s, freighted with history and hope, blood and bone and snow, is all the more important."

B. David Zarley

"Fox is an excellent guide, capturing the majesty of the Northland’s diverse geology, flora, weather and seasons."

Minneapolis Star Tribune - Peter Geye

"Northland… [has] that touch of jump and sparkle that every good travelogue needs."

Christian Science Monitor - Peter Lewis

[Fox] begins with a provocation—"No one knows where America's northern border begins"—and goes on to surprise, enlighten and delight us for the next 200-plus pages. With so much of our attention given over to the southern border with Mexico, few think to look north, to our oldest, longest (and more porous) boundary. Luckily for the reader, Fox has…Whether experiencing run-ins with crusty locals, reviving long dead historical characters last heard from in high school history books, enduring rough weather or savoring majestic landscapes, he brings it all to vivid life. With strong descriptive powers and a clear appetite for his task, Fox succeeds in making his journey sound romantic, urgent, valuable and appealing as hell.

The New York Times Book Review - Andrew McCarthy

05/28/2018
In this contemplative narrative, Fox (Deep) travels the United States’ border with Canada, following the footsteps of pre-Columbus Native Americans, European explorers, mountain men, and 18th-century government surveyors. The narrative is more ruminative than eventful—aside from a red fox defecating on a lawn or some sidelong glances from patrol agents, there’s not a whole lot that actually happens during Fox’s three-year exploration; in ways, the inactivity itself reflects the stasis of this borderland area. Fox has a keen eye for flora, fauna, geology, and meteorology (North Dakota is equidistant between the North Pole and the equator, making it “the most extreme weather zone in the world”); he’s also adept at conveying his knowledge and capturing the natural beauty and ancient landscapes of the borderlands (“Minnesota’s Boundary Waters is still primitive, carved by nature and untouched by humans”). Fox’s travels uncover a secret: this largely ignored border is key to the U.S. economy as it is home to an abundance of water, oil, and natural gas, and it will loom large if and when America’s more easily accessible natural resources become depleted. This is a worthy travelogue that explores the beauty of America’s untouched land. (July)

Publishers Weekly

"Porter Fox’s wild trip across the rivers and lakes, prairies and mountains is at turns wondrous, meditative, and scary. In Fox’s patient telling, the northland is less a border than a threshold, a kind of otherworldly membrane wherein people are in conversation with the stream systems and watersheds upon which life depends and that political boundaries work to ignore."

Robert Sullivan

"The border between the US and Canada can seem less significant than other boundaries that have shaped America—the southern border with Mexico, the Mason-Dixon line, the frontier—but this wasn’t always so. With a native northlander’s knowledgeable and loving eye, Porter Fox seeks and finds the furtive beauties and forgotten histories of our borderlands to the north."

Donovan Hohn

"Northland is a revelation: a gripping east-west journey 3,987 miles along an invisible line. The book is filled with history, irony, adventure, finely drawn characters, and a true sense of place. Fox, a son of the North and a gifted writer, is the perfect guide to this world."

McKenzie Funk

"Whether experiencing run-ins with crusty locals, reviving long dead historical characters last heard from in high school history books, enduring rough weather or savoring majestic landscapes, he brings it all to vivid life. With strong descriptive powers and a clear appetite for his task, Fox succeeds in making his journey sound romantic, urgent, valuable and appealing as hell."

Andrew McCarthy

"In this rip-roaring adventure story, Porter Fox illuminates every imaginable facet of the northern border: historical, natural, economic, environmental, geopolitical, and, above everything else, the human."

Neel Mukherjee

"A riveting illumination of the northern border’s contentious past, made urgent by the denizens we meet along the pages who are fighting—doggedly, courageously—for the right to course-correct its future."

Courtney Maum

"Northland is more than a rollicking, acutely reported, and beautifully written account of an epic journey from Maine to Washington across the arc of this country’s magnificent and half-forgotten boreal perimeter. It is also an illuminating, provocative, and poignant glimpse into what America once was—along with a celebration of what remains of that same America along its obscure, dismissed, and unspeakably lovely northern frontier."

Kevin Fedarko

★ 2018-04-30
The life and times of America's other border.The southern border of the United States gets all the attention, but it's barely half as long as the northern border; its story is "a tale of early mistakes, and more than two centuries of fixes." Fox (Deep: The Story of Skiing and the Future of Snow, 2013), a Maine native (he now lives in New York) and editor of the travel journal Nowhere, took a coast-to-coast, two-year journey weaving in and out of a boundary that, "on paper, looks like a discarded thread—twisted and kinked in parts, tight as a bowstring in others," to see it firsthand and to recount its rich history. He didn't make an itinerary: "I packed a canoe, tent, maps, and books and headed for the line." He began one chilly October morning in Lubec, America's easternmost border town near Passamaquoddy Bay. In June 1604, writes the author, Frenchman Samuel de Champlain entered the bay with two large boats and a crew of 150 to begin his own exploring. Throughout, Fox chronicles in detail Champlain's adventures, good and bad, as well as those of many other explorers and adventurers from the border's past. This gives the book an added richness, providing helpful historical context to the places the author visits. Early on, Fox's trip almost ended when he nearly capsized a small outboard boat in high waves in below-freezing Sandy Bay. He recounts that in 1775, the Continental army attempted a doomed invasion of Canada, and in the 1920s and '30s, a U.S. planning committee even "drew up plans to seize Canada." In Montreal, Fox hitched a ride on a "moving skyscraper," the freighter Equinox, as he traversed the Great Lakes. In eastern North Dakota, he got caught up in Indian protests over the oil pipeline.Richly populated with fascinating northlanders, Native Americans, and many border patrol agents, this is highly entertaining and informative travel literature.

Kirkus Reviews