The Only Kayak: A Journey Into The Heart Of Alaska

by Kim Heacox

Overview

Winner of the 2020 National Outdoor Book Award for Outdoor Classic!

In this coming-of-middle-age memoir, Kim Heacox, writing in the tradition of Abbey, McPhee, and Thoreau, discovers an Alaska reborn from beneath a massive glacier, where flowers emerge from boulders, moose swim fjords, and bears cross crevasses with Homeric resolve. In such a place Heacox finds that people are reborn too, and their lives begin anew with incredible journeys, epiphanies, and successes. All in an America free of crass commercialism and overdevelopment.

Braided through the larger story are tales of gold prospectors and the cabin they built sixty years ago; John Muir and his intrepid terrier, Stickeen; and a dynamic geology professor who teaches earth science "as if every day were a geological epoch."

Nearly two million people come to Alaska every summer, some on large cruise ships, some in single kayaks—all in search of the last great wilderness, the Africa of America. It is exactly the America Heacox finds in this story of paradox, love, and loss.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781493049400
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	05/01/2020
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	218,049
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Kim Heacox is an author, photographer, musician and climate change activist who writes opinion-editorials for The Guardian, The Washington Post and other high-profile publications, always in defense of the natural world. His books have received starred reviews from Kirkus, Publishers Weekly and Booklist. His 2015 novel, JIMMY BLUEFEATHER, is the only work of fiction in more than 20 years to win the National Outdoor Book Award. He is the founder of the Charlie Skyhawk Band, and, with his wife Melanie, a co-creator of the forthcoming John Muir Alaska Leadership School. He lives in Gustavus, Alaska, next to Glacier Bay National Park. Learn more about him (or contact him) at www.kimheacox.com.

Table of Contents

Prologue: Letting Go ix

Part 1 Coming Home

Chapter 1 Geotheomorphology 3

Chapter 2 Miracles 17

Chapter 3 Pioneers 32

Part 2 Staying Put

Chapter 4 Planet Princess 49

Chapter 5 The Man from Japan 72

Chapter 6 Feathered Feet 88

Part 3 Making Trouble

Chapter 7 Garforth Bear 105

Chapter 8 Deep Time 122

Chapter 9 Unelected, Unimpeached 140

Part 4 Finding Hope

Chapter 10 Terrane Wreck 165

Chapter 11 Old-Growth Guitar 184

Chapter 12 Snow 202

Epilogue: Holding On 215

Afterword 221

Bibiography/Suggested Reading 225

Acknowledgments 229

About the Author 231

Editorial Reviews

"[A] tender chronicle of a miracle in process, with glints of its rarity thrown by the handful from these pages."—Kirkus Reviews

"Writer and photographer Heacox delivers a genuine, deeply moving account of the past twenty-five years he has spent living in Glacier Bay, Alaska."—Publishers Weekly

"'Make access easy, and a place dies,' is his motto, and therein lies the paradox that Heacox tries to resolve in this book.. .. As he wrestles with such conundrums, Heacox creates a nicely balanced environmental portrait of Alaska's ice-cut coast."—Booklist

"In this elegant and moving memoir, Kim Heacox writes of his years living and working in Glacier Bay. It is about paddling trips with friends, intimate encounters with wildlife, his work as a ranger, and excursions with an engaging young woman who, as it happens, becomes his life partner. Through it all, he wrestles with the questions that plague all conscientious outdoor users: the never ceasing encroachment of untrammeled spaces, our relationship with the wild, and our relationship with one another. He often draws from thinkers, explorers, philosophers, and environmental writers of the past. This is a thoughtful and penetrating work of outdoor literature that clearly ranks among Alaska's finest.” — National Outdoor Book Awards, 2020

From the Publisher