<![CDATA[On the Water: Discovering America in a Row Boat]]>

false <![CDATA[On the Water: Discovering America in a Row Boat]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175932909m/575487.jpg 575487 1 “I take a stroke and lean back, gazing up into the jet skies, bejeweled by the moon and the galaxies of stars. The hull glides in silence and with such perfect balance as to report no motion. I sit up for another stroke, now looking down as the blades ignite swirling pairs of white constellations of phosphorescent plankton. Two opposing heavens. ‘Remember this,’ I think to myself.” Few people have ever considered the eastern United States to be an island, but when Nat Stone began tracing waterways in his new atlas at the age of ten he discovered that if one had a boat it was possible to use a combination of waterways to travel up the Hudson River, west across the barge canals and the Great Lakes, down the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico, and back up the eastern seaboard. Years later, still fascinated by the idea of the island, Stone read a biography of Howard Blackburn, a nineteenth-century Gloucester fisherman who had attempted to sail the same route a century before. Stone decided he would row rather than sail, and in April 1999 he launched a scull beneath the Brooklyn Bridge to see how far he could get. After ten months and some six thousand miles he arrived back at the Brooklyn Bridge, and continued rowing on to Eastport, Maine. Retracing Stone’s extraordinary voyage, On the Water is a marvelous portrait of the vibrant cultures inhabiting American shores and the magic of a traveler’s chance encounters. From Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where a rower at the local boathouse bequeaths him a pair of fabled oars, to Vanceburg, Kentucky, where he spends a day fishing with Ed Taylor -- a man whose efficient simplicity recalls The Old Man and the Sea -- Stone makes his way, stroke by stroke, chatting with tugboat operators and sleeping in his boat under the stars. He listens to the live strains of Dwight Yoakum on the banks of the Ohio while the world’s largest Superman statue guards the nearby town square, and winds his way through the Louisiana bayous, where he befriends Scoober, an old man who reminds him that the happiest people are those who’ve “got nothin’.” He briefly adopts a rowing companion -- a kitten -- along the west coast of Florida, and finds himself stuck in the tidal mudflats of Georgia. Along the way, he flavors his narrative with local history and lore and records the evolution of what started out as an adventure but became a lifestyle. An extraordinary literary debut in the lyrical, timeless style of William Least Heat-Moon and Henry David Thoreau, On the Water is a mariner’s tribute to childhood dreams, solitary journeys, and the transformative powers of America’s rivers, lakes, and coastlines. From the Hardcover edition. 562467 8 7 2003 On the Water: Discovering America in a Row Boat total:24|5:6|4:11|3:7|2:0|1:0| 24 95 31 3 5 0 false false Thu Apr 03 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Tue Mar 04 15:17:13 -0800 2008 Thu Apr 03 06:39:53 -0700 2008 more...]]> 5 0 false false Sat Aug 23 09:10:26 -0700 2008 Sat Aug 23 09:16:30 -0700 2008 more...]]> 4 0 false false Mon Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Mon Apr 07 10:51:11 -0700 2008 Mon Apr 07 10:59:27 -0700 2008 5 0 false false Tue Nov 10 07:53:28 -0800 2009 Thu Nov 12 08:57:13 -0800 2009 3 0 false false Thu Oct 15 08:19:26 -0700 2009 Mon Nov 09 09:29:40 -0800 2009 0 0 false false Tue Sep 15 19:21:45 -0700 2009 Tue Sep 15 19:21:45 -0700 2009 3 0 false false Sat Sep 26 12:59:56 -0700 2009 Wed Sep 02 08:13:33 -0700 2009 Sat Sep 26 12:59:56 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Wed Sep 02 06:11:56 -0700 2009 Wed Sep 02 06:11:56 -0700 2009 4 0 false false Mon Oct 05 08:43:44 -0700 2009 Mon Aug 31 07:50:20 -0700 2009 Mon Oct 05 08:43:44 -0700 2009 5 0 false false Mon Jul 01 00:00:00 -0700 2002 Sat Aug 29 18:30:48 -0700 2009 Sat Aug 29 18:31:03 -0700 2009 5 0 false false Fri Jun 19 12:25:48 -0700 2009 Mon Jul 20 08:51:42 -0700 2009 4 0 false false Mon Jun 15 11:31:29 -0700 2009 Wed Jul 01 16:26:18 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Sat Jun 13 18:09:34 -0700 2009 Sat Jun 13 18:09:34 -0700 2009 4 0 false false Sat May 23 09:50:13 -0700 2009 Sat May 23 09:50:19 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Sun Jun 14 14:14:46 -0700 2009 Sat May 16 07:46:25 -0700 2009 Sun Jun 14 14:14:46 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Sat Apr 25 21:27:18 -0700 2009 Sat Apr 25 21:27:18 -0700 2009 3 0 false false Wed Apr 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sat Mar 14 16:32:58 -0700 2009 Wed Apr 08 18:35:07 -0700 2009 4 0 false false Fri Jan 02 13:06:53 -0800 2009 Fri Jan 02 13:06:53 -0800 2009 0 0 false false Sat Aug 23 09:23:33 -0700 2008 Sat Aug 23 09:23:33 -0700 2008 3 0 false false Sun Jun 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Tue Jul 29 02:57:04 -0700 2008 Tue Sep 22 10:22:00 -0700 2009 http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=575487