Where the sky is his ceiling and the mountains his walls, Michael Modzelewski describes his adventures as he forms unusual friendships with passing yachters, salmon fishermen, Kwakiutl Indians, loners and the owner of the house he is staying at, Will Malloff, a man of oversized personality-a healer, builder, woodsman, and thinker. Modzelewski writes with a love for nature and gentle humor about his interactions with the native animals (eagles, whales wolves), as well as local animals(cats, dogs, "tame" wild boars), and other settlers.

Set sail with this collection of stories of boating the Northeast's waterways from New Jersey to Canada. Inland Passage takes readers on a tour of the natural history of the Northeast, revealing how the waterways and waterfronts that make up these popular cruising grounds were formed. The stories also delve deeply into the history of how human ingenuity shaped the waters, and the way of life along the coast and inland waters in times long forgotten. Additionally, the book focuses on rare boats, their owners, and the many people from boatyards to museums who work to preserve them. Ride the waves with Shaw as he sails the major waterways from Cape May to Lake Ontario and the Thousand Islands on the Saint Lawrence River, the mountain lakes of the Adirondacks, the Erie Canal, the Hudson River, and Lake Champlain. Shaw takes readers on tours on- and off-shore, above and below water. Without ever leaving your seat, you'll shove off for the coasts many fascinating lighthouses, museums, bridges, harbors, inlets, beaches, and artificial reefs. You'll learn about New Jersey's disappearing (and reappearing!) island and how New York Harbor was built. Hear tales from the marine police, find out what a sand sucker is, and voyage through the most dangerous inlet on the Jersey Shore. Shaw will take you boat racing, whale-watching, and treasure hunting in the many shipwrecks along the Northeast. Readers will even get a history lesson on how the unique geography of the Northeast coast effected the Revolutionary, Civil, and Cold wars. Inland Passage brings alive the cruising experience, and the people and places that make the Northeast waters so special.

In the spring of 2010, with her world scaled down to an 18-foot sea kayak and the 1,200-mile ribbon of water called the Inside Passage, Susan Conrad launched a journey that took her north to Alaska. On the way, she forged friendships, lived her dream, and discovered the depths of her own strength and courage.

The bestselling, award-winning author of Bad Land takes us along the Inside Passage, 1,000 miles of often treacherous water, which he navigates solo in a 35-foot sailboat, offering captivating discourses on art, philosophy, and navigation and an unsparing narrative of personal loss. "A work of great beauty and inexhaustible fervor." —The Washington Post Book World With the same rigorous observation (natural and social), invigorating stylishness, and encyclopedic learning that he brought to his National Book Award-winning Bad Land, Jonathan Raban conducts readers along the Inside Passage from Seattle to Juneau. But Passage to Juneau also traverses a gulf of centuries and cultures: the immeasurable divide between the Northwest's Indians and its first European explorers—between its embattled fishermen and loggers and its pampered new class.

A mother-daughter love story of resilience and hope against the odds Keema Waterfield grew up chasing music with her twenty-year-old mother on the Alaskan folk festival circuit, two small siblings in tow. Summers they traveled by ferry and car, sharing the family tent with a guitar, cello, and fiddle. Adrift with a revolving cast of musicians, drunks, stepdads, and one man with a gun, Keema yearned for a place to call home. Preferably with heat and flushing toilets. Trying to understand the absence of her pot-dealing father, she is drawn deeper into her mother's past instead.

Discover the rich landscape and scenic beauty of Alaska's Inside Passage, including Skagway, Haines, Juneau, Sitka, Petersburg, Wrangell, and Ketchikan. Alaska's Southeast details the region's history, culture, geography, and flora and fauna. It also provides extensive information on when to go, what to bring, how to get there and how to get around, where to eat, and where to stay. With more than 10 million acres of forest, 1,000 islands, 10,000 miles of shoreline, 50 to 70 major glaciers, and thousands of brown bears and eagles, Alaska's Southeast offers much to be explored.

Young readers will thrill to this breathless story of courage and determination set in the Alaska wilderness. Abandoned by their mother in Seattle, thirteen year old twins Annie and David Ross enlist the help of Lars Hansen, an elderly commercial fisherman, to find their father in Alaska. In late November, when most fishing vessels are decommissioned for the winter, the trio sets out from Puget Sound in a forty foot salmon troller for an eight hundred mile journey along the Inside Passage. Pursued by the authorities as runaways, and with Lars's health failing, the three experience one adventure after another as they inch their way North, through terrifying winter storms and frightening encounters with strangers. In the process, Annie and David also make new, lasting friendships and kindle personal reserves of strength that they didn't know existed.

A collection of twenty stories showcasing the supernatural legends and unsolved mysteries of Southeast Alaska, with a focus on the region between Yakutat and Petersburg, where the author has lived his entire life, writing, teaching, guiding, commercial fishing, and investigating ghost stories. Each chapter is rooted in Bjorn’s own adventures and will intertwine fascinating history, interviews, and his reflections. Bjorn’s writing, sometimes poignant and often wickedly funny, brings to mind Hunter S. Thompson and Patrick McManus. Chapters touch on legends such as Alexander Baranov, Soapy Smith, James Wickersham, and the Kóoshdaa Káa (Kushtaka) to lesser known but fascinating characters like “Naked” Joe Knowles and purported serial killer Ed Krause. From duplicitous if not downright diabolical humans to demons of the fjords and deep seas and cryptids of the forest, Bjorn presents a lively cross-section of the haunter and the haunted found in Alaska’s Inside Passage.

Before Alaska became a mining bonanza, it was a scenic bonanza, a place larger in the American imagination than in its actual borders. Prior to the great Klondike Gold Rush of 1897, thousands of scenic adventurers journeyed along the Inside Passage, the nearly thousand-mile sea-lane that snakes up the Pacific coast from Puget Sound to Icy Strait. Both the famous—including wilderness advocate John Muir, landscape painter Albert Bierstadt, and photographers Eadweard Muybridge and Edward Curtis—and the long forgotten—a gay ex-sailor, a former society reporter, an African explorer, and a neurasthenic Methodist minister—returned with fascinating accounts of their Alaskan journeys, becoming advance men and women for an expanding United States. In Darkest Alaska explores the popular images conjured by these travelers' tales, as well as their influence on the broader society. Drawing on lively firsthand accounts, archival photographs, maps, and other ephemera of the day, historian Robert Campbell chronicles how Gilded Age sightseers were inspired by Alaska's bounty of evolutionary treasures, tribal artifacts, geological riches, and novel thrills to produce a wealth of highly imaginative reportage about the territory. By portraying the territory as a "Last West" ripe for American conquest, tourists helped pave the way for settlement and exploitation.