The Survival of the Bark Canoe

by John McPhee

softcover, 1st Trade Edition, 3rd Warner Communications. A Portfolio of Sketches and Models of Edwin TappanAdney (1868-1950), included.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Nature, Biography, Journalism, Memoir, Environment

145 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1975

About the author

John Angus McPhee is an American writer. He is considered one of the pioneers of creative nonfiction. He is a four-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in the category General Nonfiction, and he won that award on the fourth occasion in 1999 for Annals of the Former World (a collection of five books, including two of his previous Pulitzer finalists). In 2008, he received the George Polk Career Award for his "indelible mark on American journalism during his nearly half-century career". Since 1974, McPhee has been the Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University.

Reviews

[Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

My thanks to Left Coast Justin for this recommendation.

Survival of the Bark Canoe is a lovely read about art, craftmanship and the outdoors. Bark canoes plied the lakes and rivers of the north east US and Canada for over a century from the mid 1700’s into the 20th century. Designed and perfected by aboriginal people of the North East like the Malachite, Ojibwa, and Algonquin, these swift, capable and durable craft enabled their nomadic way of life, and later opened the wilderness to early European/American explorers, trappers and traders. In The Maine Woods, Henry David Thoreau writes of his journey into the North Woods in a bark canoe.



McPhee’s book is principally about Henri Vaillancourt, a demanding young man who at fifteen becomes obsessed with bark canoes and decides to dedicate his life to preserving the craft. In 1975 when this book was written, Henri is in in his early twenties and recognized as the best of perhaps a half dozen craftsman in the world still building bark canoes using traditional methods. McPhee describes how these amazing boats are built, their place in North East history, and finally of a journey into the North Woods with Henri following the path of Thoreau a hundred years earlier.

I’m not a canoeist. I’m not an outdoorsman. I’ve never been so far into the woods that I couldn’t easily find my way out. Still I loved this book. The principle reason: McPhee’s engaging writing, captured perfectly by this quote from the book jacket: “McPhee’s powers of description are such that we often feel the shock of recognition even when what is being described is totally outside our experience.” Reading McPhee it is easy to visualize every step of Henri’s building process, every beautiful stream, lake and portage of the journey into the woods, and the flora and fauna along the way. The North Woods must be stunning.

Throughout McPhee peppers his narrative with interesting stories and asides. His instruction on the characteristics of the northern loon is fascinating—it can swim faster than a fish, drive to 200 feet, but takes a stiff breeze and up to a quarter mile of lake to achieve flight. His history of the logging industry is equally compelling. I never imagined that logging and floating timber across the lakes and down the rivers of the North Woods involved carrying steam locomotives, miles of cable, and even ships anchors into the remote woods, in pieces to be reassembled on site and later abandoned.

The closest comp I can think of to this book is Daniel James Brown’s excellent The Boys in the Boat. If you enjoyed Boys you will like Bark Canoe. I’ll certainly be reading more of McPhee. Thankfully my local library has many titles by this prolific author.

As for Henri Vaillancourt, he continues to build these beautiful craft. You can see them and order one of your own at http://www.birchbarkcanoe.net.
-----
Found this video today of someone building a birch bark canoe. The process is similar to Vaillancourt's but he would be appalled by the use of modern tools. Valliancourt's canoes are built with three tools--a hand axe to fell trees, cut to length and split wood, a crooked knife to do all the dimensioning shaping, and an awl to make holes for sewing the bark to the canoe. Just the way the Indians did.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderful book about birch bark canoes and a canoe trip organized with the builder of these rare canoes.

I enjoy all of McPhee's works. His books most often cover nature and geology. This one is even better because of the human dynamics.

4 stars

[Darwin8u · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ll review it when I get back home from Mexico.

[Dree · Rating 4 out of 5]

Only McPhee could make bark canoes so interesting. Ask me what a gunwale is. I now know.

The beginning of this short book is about Henri Vaillancourt, a 20-something in New Hampshire who is building a business of custom-building bark canoes. His main source is a book published in 1964, Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America. Most of the contents of this book were put together by Edwin Tappan Adney, who spent much of his 19th/20th century life documenting these boats with their native builders. As Vaillancourt has shown, Adney's documentation is invaluable.

The second part of this book is a canoe trip through the Maine woods that McPhee takes with a friend of his and two friends of Vaillancourt's--much of it similar to a route Thoreau took. Fascinating in both what they do and see (wind! logging remains! no moose!), in Vaillancourt's bossiness and non-expertise when in a canoe, and in group dynamics as they try to travel with no schedule--though they each have their own hopes, as well as only so much food.

It doesn't sound great, but it is.

Some of McPhee's earlier works are pretty dated, being 40 years old (Oranges). This one, though is extra interesting, because Henri Vaillancourt is still building birchbark canoes, and has been for over 35 years:
http://www.birchbarkcanoe.net/. He has now built over 120 of them now, and been exhibited at the Smithsonian.

[Heather · Rating 4 out of 5]

John McPhee is the least painful way I know of to feel smarter. You learn so much about random stuff from him and it's enjoyable.
I am now an expert in birch bark canoes. Ask me anything.

[Reynold Witmer · Rating 5 out of 5]

John McPhee is slowly climbing the unofficial ranks of my favorite writers. So solidly an American writer, he seems most like Steinbeck in craft, but his adventure narrative reminds me in moments of Twain, or Bryson. I took advantage of winter weather to read this short book in an evening and a morning. As much as I dutifully plow through the great tomes of literature and knowledge, in the end this may be my favorite genre. This book is consciously following Thoreau, and, Thoreau-like, is consciously contrarian. But I loved it the way I love other great north american naturalist/adventure stories, from Sigurd Olson to Rockwell Kent. McPhee's story plays out in James Feningmore Cooper world, fittingly with lakes and bark canoes. But McPhee can sketch characters with a steinbeck like clarity, and I take it for granted that I know personally each of the characters from this chance meeting.
I will read this again.

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book that details one of the few remaining bark canoe builders. Although first published in 1975, the year I was born, the history and techniques of bark canoe building are still relevant. I hope that much has changed since then and the art and skill of bark canoe building are alive and well.

McPhee is definitely no greenhorn when it comes to canoeing. He has to instruct the guy that builds the canoes how to paddle it. Overall a very humorous and comprehensive character sketch of the canoe builder and a journal of a canoe trip through the Maine "wilderness" in the path of Thoreau.

Here are a few of my favorite parts:

"Travel by canoe is not a necessity, and will nevermore be the most efficient way to get from one region to another, or even from one lake to another--anywhere. A canoe trip has become simply a rite of oneness with certain terrain, a diversion of the field, and act performed not because it is necessary but because there is value in the act itself; and what you take along depends on what you can afford and on how you see yourself in the setting."

"On Malecite [tribe] canoes, a lynx would be drawn on one side and on the other a rabbit smoking a pipe. The rabbit symbolized the tribe. The lynx was the rabbit's moral enemy. That the rabbit could calmly smoke a pipe so near the lynx showed the cool of the Malecite in the presence of enemies." The drawing of the smoking rabbit is still used today as the emblem of the Mad River canoe company (of which I own two).

"We kneel, of course, [in the canoes]and lean against the thwarts. There are no seats in these canoes. Kneeling is the natural paddling position anyway. It lowers the center of gravity, adds to the canoe's stability, brings more body into the stroke. Arms don't ache. You don't get tired."

"The stream is only a few yards wide and has many bends. The canoes keep hitting the banks and sticking in the mud. With some trepidation, I suggest that there are bow strokes--draw, cross-draw, pry, cross-pry--intended to help the canoe avoid the banks of the rivers. Trepidation because it is astonishing how people sometimes resent being told how to paddle a canoe. I have paddled on narrow, twisting rivers in New Jersey with good friends--easygoing, even-tempered people--who got royally incensed when I suggested that if they would only learn to draw and cross-draw they would not continue to plow the riverbanks. The look in their eyes showed a sense of insult, resting on the implication that every human being is born knowing how to use a canoe. The canoe itself apparently inspires such attitudes, because in form it is the most beautifully simple of all vehicles. And the born paddlers keep hitting the banks of the rivers."

"I go down in my pack for my pharmaceutical bottles, which are white and plastic and contain bourbon and gin. Henri makes himself a gin-and-Tang. There are worse things in life than stopping early for the day, surveying whitecapped water across the rim of a tin cup, standing in a wind where no-see-um no fly."

[Eric_W · Rating 5 out of 5]

Henri Vaillancourt builds birch bark canoes. He taught himself how to do it and now creates them in an effort to prevent the skill from dying out. Contrary to what one might think, these canoes are incredibly strong. As a demonstration, Vaillancourt will drive his fist as hard as he can into the skin of one, which remains unaffected. The bark of the white birch tree is strong, resilient and waterproof. He splits all the wood for the frames — split wood is stronger and more flexible than cut wood. But Vaillancourt is perfectly content to let the myth of the fragile bark canoe continue. He knows they would survive white water — the Indians used them under all sorts of conditions, including the ocean — but he doesn’t trust his customers. Any canoe can be damaged, and he knows bark canoes are too rare to risk being destroyed. After all, he can only build about eight a year.

Only John McPhee could write about Henri and the canoe. All of McPhee’s books and articles are classics, and this one is no exception. McPhee describes, in loving detail, the entire process of building one of these canoes, from the splitting of the tree for the thwarts and ribs, to laying on the birch bark. Henri never uses power tools. Indeed, all he needs are an axe, an awl, and a crooked knife. Even the paddles he carves himself. McPhee, Vaillancourt and a couple of friends take a trip into the wilds of Maine, which have remained almost unchanged since Thoreau wrote about them more than a hundred years ago. It’s here that Vaillancourt finds his birch trees. All of them are steeped in Thoreau although Vaillancourt sneers at his impracticality, arguing that you can use nature without destroying it, and that Thoreau could travel in a bark canoe, yet when asked to describe how it was constructed could not. That Thoreau set several forest fires accidentally and walked away from them does not sit well with Vaillancourt either.

Sleeping at night in the Maine woods can only be described as “insectile.” While mosquitoes cannot make it through the screens on the tents, no-see-ums can. “They home on flesh. They cover the hands, the arms, the neck, the face. Like an acid, they eat skin. They are not ubiquitous, but they have been with us now for two nights in a row. At 3 A. M., I got up and . . . went into the water like a fly-crazed moose. I stayed in the lake in the dark for an hour . . . only the nose out — dozing.” Thoreau slept in the smoke from a fire covered with wet logs in a vain attempt to repel the insects. The Indians would never have made a warm weather camping trip. They weren’t fools. The tribes who lived there left during the summer months. They went, much like the Bushes, to the coast and Kennebunkport.

[Rebeca · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The sky after dark was as clear as a lens. There was no moon. We stood on the shore, tilted back our heads, looked up past the branches of the jack pines, and watched for shooting stars. One after another they came, at intervals too short to require patience."

"The wind and Henri's patience are drawing lines across the day, and when they converge we will load up and go... The waves are rolling hard, but the waiting, apparently, has built the case for going."

[KennyO · Rating 4 out of 5]

McPhee's writing once again has charmed me. Until I got a few pages in I had forgotten that I'd read this one nearly forty years ago. There's a character study, there's some technology, some how-to, some geography, some history, a bit of travelogue and plenty of reminder of what a marvel the canoe is, with the bark canoe being the pinnacle of the art. This last point is finely supported by McPhee in several ways and several places. Rereading this has been a happy occasion for me.

[Graychin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thoreau wrote in The Maine Woods that the making of birch bark canoes “will ere long, perhaps, be ranked among the lost arts.” And yet we have in John McPhee’s 1975 book, as promised, the tale of its unlikely survival in the gifted hands of young Henri Vaillancourt of Greenville, New Hampshire.

McPhee’s own gift, apart from a command of sinewy American-English prose, is his ability to find the interest in anything, which always hides in details. Here McPhee discovers it in the science of selecting trees, the carving of thwarts and ribs and gunwales, the stitching of bark with split roots, and in the history of the North American fur trade and the lives of French-Canadian voyageurs and Penobscot loggers.

The foremost point of interest, however, is Vaillancourt himself and the 150-mile trip through northern Maine which McPhee and three others make in his company aboard two of his canoes. It is a rough traverse, in more ways than one, retracing the path of Thoreau. But our narrator’s eyes are keen and there’s plenty of McPhee-brand humor to charm the way. The men toil against headwinds and over portages (“Henri is using the word ‘bummer’ at about double the rate he was using it an hour or two ago”). They squint hungrily for any sign of that elusive creature of the north woods which they expect to surprise around every corner, in the buzzing “stillness of a moose intending to appear.”

I wonder how Henri Vaillancourt judged The Survival of the Bark Canoe. It would be in character if he resented it. It’s true that McPhee’s Vaillancourt can be arrogant, antisocial, a bit of an oddball. But he’s also an artist, a sort of genius. Forty years on (my research confirms) Vaillancourt still lives in Greenville and still makes bark canoes, but his website contains no reference that I could find to McPhee’s book, though he must owe it some portion of his fame and success.

Like Vaillancourt’s canoes, McPhee’s books offer the satisfaction of something handmade. For the lithe little vessel of this volume, McPhee has selected his materials skillfully, and he knits them together with care. He reminds us, without actually saying so, that the writing of a book, no less than the making of a bark canoe, may be “an act performed not because it is necessary but because there is value in the act itself.”

[Bill Pentland · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had been reading a steady stream of fiction for the last several months. After finishing The Dark Forest I decided to jump into a non-fiction work. I grabbed The Survival of the Bark Canoe by John McPhee. This is the 3rd book by McPhee I have read. The first was Rising from the Plains, which is a geological history of Wyoming, in particular the area known as the Guernsey Uplift, now beset by terrible fires which have caused the evacuation of the historic town of Hartville. The 2nd was The Pine Barrens, which I read because the Pine Barrens played an important part in the awesome Repairman Jack series by F. Paul Wilson. McPhee is as much a journalist/reporter as he is an author. He is descriptive; he is factual; he is succinct. He researches about his subject matter; he interviews people and knows what type of questions to ask. He is an active participant in his research. In Bark Canoe, after giving us a history of the craft, he interviews one of the practitioners of the art of building a bark canoe. He watches Henri Vaillancourt go through his process of building a bark canoe from scratch, which involves gathering all the materials in a fashion the original builders used. Not only does McPhee interview, he takes part in an expedition using the bark canoe. I say expedition because that's what it was. Not a little 2 day float on the Current like I used to make with my frat brothers. This was an expedition involving portaging, "frogging", and miles of paddling into strong headwinds on Lake Champlain, fighting off hordes of mosquitos, driving rain, and uncertain conditions.
So, McPhee writes from actual experience. I learned a lot about what life must have been like for those early "voyageurs" and woodsmen from the dawn of our country. All of this took place in Maine and in country that seemed to be like the country portrayed in Last of the Mohicans. Very good book. Short but filled with really good stuff.

[Mike Dennisuk · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beauty and simplicity in the hands of a Master craftsman. I purchased this book at a small neighborhood bookstore in Cincinnati called Downbound Books. I told the owner that I was interested in reading something by John McPhee. He suggested that Survival of the Bark Canoe was a good place to start.

It turns out this is my second book by Mr. McPhee. In the time between then an now I have read A Sense of Where You Are which was excellent. Bark Canoe is a story about craftsmanship, personality and 150 mile canoe trip. Beautifully told. I am coming to love Mr. McPhee’s poetic writing style and his engaging storytelling technique. I am anxious to dive into Coming Into the Country which is currently on my bookshelf (also purchased at an independent bookshop) but I think I’ll wait a bit for the right time.

[Michael]

I'm a mark for McPhee's super slow, super short books on things like rural GPs and nuclear energy and yes, bark canoes. He's up there with Didion and Malcolm with his ability to evoke real-life characters with economical prose.

[Michael Powell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Roger Ebert says that it is not what a movie is about that makes it "good" (or not) it is how the movie is about what the movie is about.

In the same way a great writer can take a subject in which you have no interest and write a compelling book about that subject.

This is such a book.


about the author:
"John McPhee was born in Princeton, New Jersey, and was educated at Princeton University and Cambridge University. His writing career began at Time magazine and led to his long association with the New Yorker, where he has been a staff writer since 1965. The same year he published his first book, A Sense of Where You Are, with FSG, and soon followed with The Headmaster (1966), Oranges (1967), The Pine Barrens (1968), A Roomful of Hovings and Other Profiles (collection, 1968), Levels of the Game (1968), The Crofter and the Laird (1970), Encounters with the Archdruid (1971), The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed (1973), The Curve of Binding Energy (1974), Pieces of the Frame (collection, 1975), and The Survival of the Bark Canoe (1975). Both Encounters with the Archdruid and The Curve of Binding Energy were nominated for National Book Awards. Selections from these books make up The John McPhee Reader (1976).
Since 1977, the year in which McPhee received the Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the bestselling Coming into the Country appeared in print, Farrar, Straus and Giroux has published Giving Good Weight (collection, 1979), Basin and Range (1981), In Suspect Terrain (1983), La Place de la Concorde Suisse (1984), Table of Contents (collection, 1985), Rising from the Plains (1986), Heirs of General Practice (in a paperback edition, 1986), The Control of Nature (1989), Looking for a Ship (1990), Assembling California (1993), The Ransom of Russian Art (1994), The Second John McPhee Reader (1996), Irons in the Fire (1997), Annals of the Former World (1998). Annals of the Former World, McPhee’s tetralogy on geology, was published in a single volume in 1998 and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1999. The Founding Fish was published in 2002."

[Roger Burk · Rating 5 out of 5]

Henri's life work is to recover the ancient Native American craft of building birch-bark canoes. He makes canoes from trees, using only an axe, an awl, and a crooked knife. No nails; parts are tied together with tree roots. Pitch serves for glue and caulk. The sublime writer John McPhee joins him and some friends in a canoe trip across northern Maine, with many headwinds, muddy portages, and rainstorms. They hope to see a moose.

[Caroline · Rating 4 out of 5]

A gunwale is the outer ledge of the canoe; it is bisected by thwarts. -- There’s hardly anything as fun as reading to friends' recommendations, but this is especially great on voyageurs, their colorful shirts, hundred pound bales of mink, and 8-gallon keg (1) of brandy. Also, in specific company, a dinner menu out of camp: reflector oven gingerbread, freeze-dried vanilla ice cream, and jerky. But on the living room floor, please.

[Colin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Outstanding book, aren't all of John McPhee's books outstanding? Obviously, I am a fan of McPhee narrative style. In this instance, McPhee describes a man that is keeping the construction and travel in traditional birch bark canoe alive. Well worth the read if you are a canoeist and someone who loves the outdoors and human-powered travel.

[JW · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having just moved to Maine added resonance to this work by the excellent McPhee. A trip resembling Thoreau's travels along Maine's rivers and lakes is done in a hand-made birch bark canoe by the master canoe maker, Henri Vaillancourt from New Hampshire. The travels are well told as is the making, care, and craftsmanship of canoe making.

[Grant · Rating 5 out of 5]

the turn here from "expert in a dying field, watch him do his craft" to the latter half of the book is so good. wish i loved anything as much as henri loves every single canoe he has ever made (except for the first one). the wry humor especially shines here

[Natasha Salmi]

Interesting read! I feel like I could write a whole other book analysing this book.

Knowing a bit about North American environmental history, I read this book with a 21st century environmental historian lens, which is full of ideas that had not been invented yet in McPhee’s time. McPhee has a very specific 1970s environmentalist white male relationship to his environment and its colonial past, reflecting of the time this book was written. This is not a bad thing - it’s just a reflection of the ideas he was exposed to at the time.

[Matt Messinger · Rating 4 out of 5]

McPhee is an wonderful,writer. He can imbue an esoteric topic -- a man whose dedicated his life to the handmade creation of birch bark canoes -- with the universal. As he does in this book. In his profile of Henri Villaincourt McPhee delves into the details of his life: his living with his parents, his travels deep into the NH woods to identify birch trees perfect for his canoes, his pursuit of seeing every birch bark canoe in existence, and his extreme confidence in the quality of his canoes, somehow combine to create a portrait of the universal. How do we find meaning in how we spend our time. It is McPhees greatness that allows him to find the universal in the above. He can make most any topic interesting.

[Kerri · Rating 5 out of 5]

McPhee is part fly-on-the-wall, part participant, part historian, always the multifaceted storyteller. Interested in how birch canoes are made? I wasn't either. Doesn't matter; McPhee will make you so curious you'll want to head into the Maine woods and start looking for the perfect tree.

[Will Lashley · Rating 5 out of 5]

In 2010, John McPhee gave an interview to one of his former students, Peter Hessler of the Paris Review, that was published as the third instalment in their series “The Art of Nonfiction.”Hessler wrote a deft description of McPhee’s mastery of the art of nonfiction in his preface to the interview. “He rarely draws attention to himself, but his sense of structure, detail, and language is so refined that his presence is felt on every page. For profile subjects he gravitates toward craftsmen of a similar stripe.” If you want to get some insight into McPhee, the Paris Review interview is indispensable.  

If I had to choose one work that I believe best reveals McPhee the man, it would be his early book “The Survival of the Bark Canoe,” about an excursion down the Allagash River in Maine with Henri Vaillancourt, in canoes of Pre-Columbian design constructed by Vaillancourt. The canoe builder Vaillancourt is as shy as McPhee himself, and just as boundless in his enthusiasm for the utility and elegance of the elemental hand carved spruce and cedar frames covered in birchbark, and fastened with, “No nails, no screws, or rivets, just root lashings.” In one of the most memorable scenes, Vaillancourt whittled away at his companions gear they planned to take along on their journey.."hang it up"..."leave it"..'forget it"..."it's not necessary".."the idea is to travel light." It is analogous to a description of McPhee paring down his own prose. As craftsmen, Vaillancourt and McPhee are mirror images of each other.

“You set your own standards. Travel by canoe is not a necessity and will nevermore be the most efficient way to get from one region to another or even one lake to another - anywhere. A canoe trip has become simply a rite of oneness with certain terrain, a diversion of the field, an act performed not because it is necessary but because there is value in the act itself; and what you take along depends on what you can afford (Henri could not afford to buy beef jerky so he had to make it) and on how you see yourself in the setting.” 

Enchantment is not a word normally used to describe nonfiction, but that is why I return over and over to his books. The minutiae of a setting make as much of an impression as any of the characters. It is that enchantment with the “real world” that is palpable and why “his presence is felt on every page.” McPhee is a student of life, and his faith is larger than fiction. As he himself has said, “Sometimes the scene is carried by the binding force of fact.”

[Roy Lotz · Rating 4 out of 5]

My longest canoe trip was approximately three hours. It was on a Canadian lake. My brother and I set off with the wind at our backs, paddling effortlessly, until we decided to turn around. As soon as the canoe was perpendicular to the wind, we capsized. My phone was ruined. We swam the canoe to the shore and turned it over to get the water out. The rest of the journey was a hard battle against the oncoming wind.

On that same lake, a couple years later, we took another canoe trip, this time to a small island where some family friends have their summer house. We arrived successfully. There, I was loaned the journals of one Edwin Tappan Adney, an eccentric intellectual who used to live in that part of Canada. Among that man’s many accomplishments was the preservation of the technique for making canoes out of wood and birchbark—a technology developed by several indigenous groups living in that region, but which nearly disappeared with the decline of indigenous lifeways.

This book is the next chapter in that story. It begins with a profile of Henri Vaillancourt, who was born the year that Adney died. From a young age he became obsessed with the idea of bark canoes and basically taught himself using the book of Adney’s drawings and explanations, eventually becoming the acknowledged master of his very specific craft. The second part of the book is a narrative of a voyage into the Maine woods along with Vaillancourt and a few friends, on two of the bark canoes. In this, they retrace the steps of Henry David Thoreau, whose only experience with real wilderness took place in these woods.

For such a niche subject, I found the book to be oddly compelling. For one, McPhee’s profile of Vaillancourt is a wonderful portrait of the born artist—somebody for whom craft is a supreme passion. And though I did not really understand it, I greatly enjoyed the details of how a person can make a canoe with trees, bark, and sap, using only a knife and an axe and a bit of fire. McPhee’s narration of his journey was also pleasant reading. The Maine woods are very much like the Canadian forests familiar to me. I could hear the loons calling and see the moose running by.

Somehow, then, this short book about a subject irrelevant and uninteresting to most people manages to be rich and suggestive. I can see why McPhee commands such respect among writers. He, too, is a supreme craftsman.

[Richard Thompson · Rating 4 out of 5]

John McPhee is the thinking person's Bill Bryson - Same eclectic selection of subjects, leaning toward nature, same chatty journalist style with a nice attention to detail, similar cast of quirky characters. But with Mr. McPhee we get a bit more detail of the science and technology, so that you really need the diagrams and occasionally need to reread a paragraph to fully absorb it. And the scientific and historical facts that Mr. McPhee sprinkles over his pages to put the icing on the story cake are a bit more odd and obscure that we get from Mr. Bryson.

The star of this book is Henri Vaillancourt, who appears in this book from the 1970s as a young man living in his parents' house in a small town in New Hampshire who has dedicated his life to reviving the art of building birch bark canoes. In the process of meeting Henri, we learn more than I ever imagined that there was to know about bark canoes - the different woods and barks, the superiority of particular kinds of birch for the covering, the parts, the phases of construction, the different styles. The things look flimsy. They look simple. But it turns out that they are sturdy and complex. And Henri is a complex person. He is a monomaniac, always focused on his canoes - where to get the perfect woods, how to make them better, how to learn more about the history. He is a perfectionist and obsessive personality, which is both a strength and a failure. He is a natural leader, but also the kind of person who could lead his followers over a cliff. And it turns out that he isn't such a skilled woodsman. He is so focused on the canoes that he never learned a lot of the other basics of wilderness travel. It makes for an interesting mix that all comes out in the story of Henri, the author and some friends going on a canoe trip to the Maine woods.

I loved the way that Thoreau is worked into the book. He took a two canoe trips into the Maine woods and wrote a book about it. Several of the people on the trip in this book know Thoreau well and they are able to quote from his book. Thoreau becomes almost another character along on the trip with them. They respect him and see how he was ahead of his time in his care for nature, but they also see his failings and freely make fun of him for the things he missed or misunderstood.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked this up because I am an avid fan of McPhee's writing. One of his books (Encounters with the Archdruid) launched me on my career as a geographer, even though he is a professor of English (which was my major at the time). I am not a McPhee completist, exactly, but I have thoroughly enjoyed many of his books on a wide range of topics.

I picked up this slim volume because I am now an avid rower, and though paddling a canoe is quite different from rowing a whaleboat, I have become a bit of a nerd regarding all kinds of human-powered boats.

As always, McPhee approaches his subject through biography. Specifically, he identifies a person with special insight into a subject and then invites himself to spend time with that person. In this case, he found Henri Vaillancourt, a young man who was completely obsessed with -- and accomplished in -- the building of bark canoes, and he tells the story of his self-education and approach to the work.

And then the two of them -- with a few other men -- set off on a nearly Sisyphean journey through the rivers, lakes, and treacherous portages of the northern woods. It is a story of full immersion in the craft and use of a boating technology that draws heavily on indigenous expertise. It is also a bit of a dudefest, with men in all of the major and most of the minor roles.

The arduous nature of the journey -- and perhaps the relative youth of the author at the time he wrote this -- is reflected in the degree to which McPhee is at times critical of -- even perturbed by -- his protagonist. In the end, though, this book is written with deep respect for Vaillancourt's dedication to his craft and to the land and water of which it is an integral part. For the rest of us, it is a welcome meditation on the tools that form the interface between humans and the natural world.

[Becky · Rating 4 out of 5]

I started reading this book and immediately began to plan a trip north. I needed to be in the woods. I felt like I was there in New Hampshire, learning the history of the craft of birchbark canoes, watching a crotchety artist at work and getting lost in the Maine woods. A lovely piece of writing and a good story, interweaving the history of the craft and fur trading with a particular canoe trip with slowly rising tensions.

Some quibbles I have, though: I thought the description of the different parts of the canoe -- which was extensive -- never really explained what the different parts were. I couldn't picture what was happening and there was jargon in the way. I still don't know what a gunwale is, but I know the author expected me to know. Honestly I think a diagram here could have gone a long way. Or some clearer verbal descriptions. There was an illustration of sorts at one point but it was too burdened with available typewriter technology to be actually useful. I felt like he relied a lot on jargon that he didn't explain well. When he came to explaining gunwales, thwarts and ribs I just sort of tuned out.

Also, I felt at times like the Native American history was a bit romanticized. Spoken of as a thing of the past when I wasn't quite sure that was accurate. I wonder how this would be written today by someone who consulted more directly with actual Native Americans and a clearer point of view on colonialism.

Anyway, a very pleasant summer read. I would recommend taking it into the woods.

[Abby · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the third John McPhee book I have read this year and my love for the man grows exponentially with every book I finish. He is simply one of the most phenomenal authors I've ever had the pleasure of reading. Unlike many of the other reviewers here, I actually was interested in birch bark canoes before reading this book, and had not more than a little trepidation about how McPhee would broach the subject of a white man who is widely hailed as the most gifted builder of birch bark canoes (an art form created and refined by various Northeastern Native American tribes). Although McPhee describes Vaillancourt's mastery with undisguised awe in the first half of the book, the second half is a different story. The canoe trip that McPhee takes with Vaillancourt and two other men is recounted with sly humor and careful notation of Vaillancourt's weaknesses as an expedition leader. There's a reason why the builder doesn't include McPhee's book in the list of pieces written about him on his website!

Unlike the other McPhee books I've read so far, this one struck me as having a more propelling narrative character. Perhaps that's due to the fact that much of it was spent retelling the canoe trip. In any case, I found the storytelling just as enjoyable as the information I gleaned from this text. Highly recommended.

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

Who doesn't love John McPhee? The subject of bark canoe building should be dry as, well, birch bark. But, of course, it's not and is, in fact, fascinating. Essentially, a long-form profile of the stubborn and obsessed Henri Vaillancourt, McPhee gets deep into the weeds of an art form that, by all rights, should have long died out were it not for the efforts of the aforementioned French-Canadian, an obsessive who's committed his life to the revival and preservation of the ancient ways developed by Native American and First Nations tribes like the Ojibway and Malecite. It's quite incredible that today, in his 70s and nearly 50 years after this book was written in 1975, Vaillancourt is still building canoes, perfecting the art (as can be seen on the website below). As a side note, it's amusing to notice that of all the things written about him, which are listed on his website, there's not a single mention of this book, which must be the most famous thing that's ever covered him, certainly the most famous author who has ever written about him, let alone dedicating an entire book to the man. My guess is that Vaillancourt is still sore about McPhee's less-than-flattering portrait of their ill-fated camping trip in the second half, following the nearly awestruck first section of the book.