front cover of Sailing by Starlight
Sailing by Starlight
In Search of Treasure Island
Alex Capus
Haus Publishing, 2011
Capus takes us on an exploratory journey via the loss of a Spanish vessel laden with gold and jewels in the South Seas, the burial of treasure, an ancient map, and a long and dangerous voyage across the Pacific, to prove that Robert Louis Stevenson's "treasure island" actually exists; and that it exists in a place quite different from where hordes of treasure-hunters have been seeking it for generations. In fact, he posits, it was for this reason alone that Stevenson spent the last five years of his life in Samoa. On a long trip round the Pacific islands with the idea of writing articles for American periodicals, Stevenson, travelling with his beloved wife, Fanny, and stepson Lloyd Osbourne, had no notion of stopping at Samoa when their ship made landfall in December 1889. Yet, only six weeks later, at the age of 39, he would invest all his available assets in a patch of impenetrable jungle and spend the rest of his life there. This book traces what led Stevenson to Samoa and the origins of his famous story. For facing him from this unlikely spot was another island – a conical isle, Tafahi, where legends abound, and it was, Capus suggests, this isle that would cause him to change the course of his life.
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front cover of The Same River Twice
The Same River Twice
A Boatman's Journey Home
Michael Burke
University of Arizona Press, 2006
In the summer of 1991 Michael Burke, an experienced river guide, embarks on a three-week journey down a series of remote rivers in British Columbia. Leaving behind his pregnant wife, he embraces the perils of a voyage with a companion he barely knows in a raft that may not weather the trip. He attempts to reconcile the shifting fates of his life—his transition from river guide to husband, father, and academic. At the same time, he hopes to explore his connection to a distant relative, Sid Barrington, who was a champion “swiftwater pilot of the North” in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

As Burke contemplates what he and Sid may have had in common, he meditates on the changing meaning of rivers, and the impossibility of fully recovering the past. In clear and graceful prose, Burke blends Sid’s colorful history with his own uncommon journey. He also reflects upon the quick currents of time and the fierce passion he shares with Sid for the life of river running in Alaska and the west. Unlike most river-running books that often describe waterways in the lower forty-eight states, The Same River Twice introduces readers to rough, austere, and unfamiliar rivers in the northern wilderness. Burke has an intimate understanding of these remote, free-flowing rivers. He effectively captures the thrill of moving water, the spirit of rivers and river canyons, and the life of river guides. This insightful memoir brings readers into a confluence of rivers, where past and present merge, revealing the power of wilderness and the truth about changing course.
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front cover of The San Luis Valley
The San Luis Valley
Sand Dunes and Sandhill Cranes
Text by Susan J. Tweit; Photographs by Glenn Oakley
University of Arizona Press, 2005
It is a high valley edged by serrated peaks, a remote expanse the size of Connecticut lying, as if forgotten, between two mountain ranges. Here, North America’s tallest sand dunes blow against glacier-gouged summits, the Rio Grande begins its long journey from snowflake to saltwater, and vast reaches of desert scrub hide verdant pocket wetlands. Colorado’s San Luis Valley is not a place for the timid. Sizzling hot in summer, frigid cold in winter, this huge landscape is humbling in its openness, a place defined by the rhythms of nature—and by the thrust and parry of male courting female in the ritual dance of sandhill cranes. These majestic birds arrive by the thousands twice a year to feed, rest, and socialize in the valley’s wetlands—invisible except from the air—and their cries temper the constant wind. Susan Tweit lives in the high desert of southern Colorado not far from the valley’s dunes and wetlands. With the precision of a scientist and the passion of a poet, she guides readers through this land of sand dunes and sandhill cranes, describing its natural features and tracing its human history from buffalo hunters and conquistadors to Hispanic farming communities and UFO observatories. And in stunning images, photographer Glenn Oakley brings his intimate feel for light and landscape to portraying not only the subtle beauty of this high-desert sanctuary but also the grandeur of the cranes in flight. As an intimate look at Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve and the San Luis Valley, this book reveals a desert place as seductive and sobering as existence itself.
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front cover of The San Pedro River
The San Pedro River
A Discovery Guide
Roseann Beggy Hanson
University of Arizona Press, 2001
The San Pedro River in southeastern Arizona not only features some of the richest wildlife habitat in the Southwest, it also is home to more kinds of animals than anywhere else in the contiguous United States. Here you'll find 82 species of mammals, dozens of different reptiles and amphibians, and nearly 400 species of birds—more than half of those recorded in the entire country. In addition, the river supports one of the largest cottonwood-willow forest canopies remaining in Arizona. It's little wonder that the San Pedro was named by the Nature Conservancy as one of the Last Great Places in the Northern Hemisphere, and by the American Bird Conservancy as its first Important Bird Area in the United States.

Roseann Hanson has spent much of her life exploring the San Pedro and its environs and has written a book that is both a personal celebration of and a definitive guide to this, the last undammed and unchanneled river in the Southwest. Taking you from the San Pedro's entry into the U.S. at the Mexican border to its confluence with the Gila River about a hundred miles north, she devotes a separate chapter to each of seven sections of river. Each chapter contains an eloquent essay on natural and cultural history, laced with Hanson's own experiences, plus an exploration guide brimming with useful information: how to get to the river, finding hiking trails, camping and other accommodations, birdwatching tips, access to biking and horseback riding, and nearby historic sites. Maps are included for each stretch of river, and the text is illustrated throughout with drawings from Roseann's copious field notebooks. Along the 40 miles of the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area, a sanctuary protected by the Bureau of Land Management since 1988, Hanson shows how the elimination of cattle and off-road vehicles has restored the river corridor to a more natural condition. She tells of the impact of humans on the San Pedro, from Clovis hunters to American settlers to Washington bureaucrats, and shows how, as the river winds its way north, it is increasingly threatened by groundwater pumping and urbanization.

In addition to the "discovery" sections of each chapter, Hanson has included species checklists for habitats and plants, birds, mammals, and reptiles and amphibians to make this a perfect companion for anyone exploring the area, whether as occasional tourist or frequent visitor. The book's blending of graceful prose and practical information shows that a river is the sum of many parts. Roseann Hanson will give you a special understanding—and perhaps a sense of stewardship—of this wild place.
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front cover of Seeking Provence
Seeking Provence
Old Myths, New Paths
Nicholas Woodsworth
Haus Publishing, 2016
A region steeped in fable and myth, Provence is a cultural crossroads of European history. A source of inspiration to artists, poets, and troubadours, it is now an enviable refuge for the wealthy and fashionable. Nicholas Woodsworth, who was born in Ottawa, Canada, married into a Provençal family and has lived in the region for decades. Lovingly recounting vivid details of life in Provence, he provides here a welcome antidote to the typical rosé-tinted, romantic view of it being a perennially sunny destination for tourists.

The true Provençaux have always lived a hard life close to the land and the rhythms of the seasons. And it is in the revelation and understanding of these lives, of the Provençal people, that the truths of the region are to be found. As much a study of Provençal culture and history as a memoir and travel book, this is a deep and soulful investigation into a way of life that remains very distinct from that of the rest of France.
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front cover of The Serpent Coiled in Naples
The Serpent Coiled in Naples
Marius Kociejowski
Haus Publishing, 2022
A travelogue revealing the hidden stories of Naples.
 
In recent years Naples has become, for better or worse, the new destination in Italy. While many of its more unusual features are on display for all to see, the stories behind them remain largely hidden. In Marius Kociejowski’s portrait of this baffling city, the serpent can be many things: Vesuvius, the mafia-like Camorra, the outlying Phlegrean Fields (which, geologically speaking, constitute the second most dangerous area on the planet). It is all these things that have, at one time or another, put paid to the higher aspirations of Neapolitans themselves. Naples is simultaneously the city of light, sometimes blindingly so, and the city of darkness, although often the stuff of cliché. The boundary that separates death from life is porous in the extreme: the dead inhabit the world of the living and vice versa. The Serpent Coiled in Naples is a travelogue, a meditation on mortality, and much else besides.
 
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front cover of Shadows in the Sun
Shadows in the Sun
Travels to Landscapes of Spirit and Desire
Wade Davis
Island Press, 1998

Wade Davis has been called "a rare combination of scientist, scholar, poet and passionate defender of all of life's diversity." In Shadows in the Sun, he brings all of those gifts to bear on a fascinating examination of indigenous cultures and the interactions between human societies and the natural world.

Ranging from the British Columbian wilderness to the jungles of the Amazon and the polar ice of the Arctic Circle, Shadows in the Sun is a testament to a world where spirits still stalk the land and seize the human heart. Its essays and stories, though distilled from travels in widely separated parts of the world, are fundamentally about landscape and character, the wisdom of lives drawn directly from the land, the hunger of those who seek to rediscover such understanding, and the consequences of failure.

As Davis explains, "To know that other, vastly different cultures exist is to remember that our world does not exist in some absolute sense but rather is just one model of reality. The Penan in the forests of Borneo, the Vodoun acolytes in Haiti, the jaguar Shaman of Venezuela, teach us that there are other options, other possibilities, other ways of thinking and interacting with the earth." Shadows in the Sun considers those possibilities, and explores their implications for our world.

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front cover of The Shark God
The Shark God
Encounters with Ghosts and Ancestors in the South Pacific
Charles Montgomery
University of Chicago Press, 2007
When Charles Montgomery was ten years old, he stumbled upon the memoirs of his great-grandfather, a seafaring missionary in the South Pacific. Twenty years later and a century after that journey, entranced by the world of black magic and savagery the bishop described, Montgomery set out for Melanesia in search of the very spirits and myths his great-grandfather had sought to destroy.  In The Shark God, he retraces his ancestor’s path through the far-flung islands, exploring the bond between faith and magic, the eerie persistence of the spirit world, and the heavy footprints of the British Empire.

In the South Pacific, he discovers a world of sorcery and shark worship, where Christian and pagan rituals coexist and an ordinary day is marked by confrontations with America-worshiping cult leaders and militants alike. A defiantly original blend of history and memoir, anthropology and travel writing, The Shark God is ultimately a tale of personal and political transformation.
 
The Shark God, a travel story as dark and twisted as one might ever wish to hear . . . reaches a superb climax with some apocalyptically page-turning scenes.”—Guardian
 
“A fascinating account of the drama of Melanesian life.”—Times Literary Supplement
 
“With exquisite writing, Montgomery lovingly captures the beauty and the horrors, the mysteries and the shams of the people and places he visits.”—Publishers Weekly
 
“A very real and memorable talent. . . . The endurance [Montgomery] displayed on his travels was admirable, the adventures he survived were tremendous, and the quality of his prose seems matched only by the wisdom of his observations.”—Simon Winchester, Globe and Mail (Toronto)
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front cover of The Sierra Nevada
The Sierra Nevada
A Mountain Journey
Tim Palmer
Island Press, 1988

This book presents a natural history of the Sierra Nevada that brings the land, the people, and the surrounding communities to life.

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front cover of Snowshoeing Through Sewers
Snowshoeing Through Sewers
Adventures in New York City, New Jersey, and Philadelphia
Michael Aaron Rockland
Rutgers University Press, 2008
When Daniel Boone heard a neighbor's dog bark, he moved West. But when there's no Wild West left, where is adventure to be found? Michael Aaron Rockland looks for adventure in the megalopolis, "not where no one has been but where no one wishes to go . . . across traffic-clogged cities, the parking lots of wall-to-wall suburban malls, and the sinister waterways that seep through rusting industrial sites."

In these ten alternately poetic and comic tales of adventure in the New York/Philadelphia corridor, the most densely populated chunk of America, Rockland walks and bikes areas meant only for cars and paddles through waters capable of dissolving canoes. He hikes the length of New York's Broadway, camps in New York City, treks across Philadelphia, pedals among the tractor trailers of Route 1 in New Jersey, and paddles around Manhattan and through the dark tunnels under Trenton.

Whereas Henry David Thoreau built his cabin on Walden Pond to get out of town, for Rockland, the challenge is to head into town. As he writes, "in the late twentieth century, a weed and trash-filled city lot . . . may be a better place than the wilderness to contemplate one's relationship to nature."
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front cover of Some Strange Corners of Our Country
Some Strange Corners of Our Country
Charles F. Lummis; Foreword by Lawrence Clark Powell
University of Arizona Press, 1989
Lummis's prose portraits of the Grand Canyon, Petrified Forest, Montezuma Castle, and other sites reflect the author's knowledge of Southwest anthropology and history.
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front cover of Sounds of Vacation
Sounds of Vacation
Political Economies of Caribbean Tourism
Jocelyne Guilbault and Timothy Rommen, editors
Duke University Press, 2019
The contributors to Sounds of Vacation examine the commodification of music and sound at popular vacation destinations throughout the Caribbean in order to tease out the relationships between political economy, hospitality, and the legacies of slavery and colonialism. Drawing on case studies from Barbados, the Bahamas, Guadeloupe, Saint Martin, and Saint Lucia, the contributors point to the myriad ways live performances, programmed music, and the sonic environment heighten tourists' pleasurable vacation experience. They explore, among other topics, issues of authenticity in Bahamian music; efforts to give tourists in Barbados peace and quiet at a former site of colonial violence; and how resort soundscapes extend beyond music to encompass the speech accents of local residents. Through interviews with resort managers, musicians, and hospitality workers, the contributors also outline the social, political, and economic pressures and interests that affect musical labor and the social encounters of musical production. In so doing, they prompt a rethinking of how to account for music and sound's resonances in postcolonial spaces.

Contributors. Jerome Camal, Steven Feld, Francio Guadeloupe, Jocelyne Guilbault, Jordi Halfman, Susan Harewood, Percy C. Hintzen, Timothy Rommen
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front cover of The Spirit of Mediterranean Places
The Spirit of Mediterranean Places
Michael Butor
Northwestern University Press, 1997
This book gathers French writer Michel Butor's essays on his travel in the Mediterranean. Included are pieces on Cordova, Istanbul, Salonica, Delphi, Crete, and northern Italy, as well as an extended essay on Egypt--where, when he was 24, Butor spent a year teaching French in a secondary school. Michel Butor is one of the leading exponents of the avant-garde writing that emerged in France in the 1950s .
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front cover of States of Desire Revisited
States of Desire Revisited
Travels in Gay America
Edmund White
University of Wisconsin Press, 2014
States of Desire Revisited looks back from the twenty-first century at a pivotal moment in the late 1970s: Gay Liberation was a new and flourishing movement of creative culture, political activism, and sexual freedom, just before the 1980s devastation of AIDS. Edmund White traveled America, recording impressions of gay individuals and communities that remain perceptive and captivating today. He noted politicos in D.C. working the system, in-fighting radicals in New York and San Francisco, butch guys in Houston and self-loathing but courteous gentlemen in Memphis, the "Fifties in Deep Freeze" in Kansas City, progressive thinkers with conservative style in Minneapolis and Portland, wealth and beauty in Los Angeles, and, in Santa Fe, a desert retreat for older gays and lesbians since the 1920s.
            White frames those past travels with a brief, bracing review of gay America since the 1970s ("now we were all supposed to settle down with a partner in the suburbs and adopt a Korean daughter"), and a reflection on how Internet culture has diminished unique gay places and scenes but brought isolated individuals into a global GLBTQ community.
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