Canoeing Quotes

“Wilderness areas are first of all a series of sanctuaries for the primitive arts of wilderness travel, especially canoeing and packing. I suppose some will wish to debate whether it is important to keep these primitive arts alive. I shall not debate it. Either you know it in your bones, or you are very, very old.”
― Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There

“It has always been my belief that you can judge the compatibility of two people by the rhythm of their paddle stroke.”
― Daniel J. Rice, THIS SIDE OF A WILDERNESS: A Novel

“Our canoe raced toward the rock.”
― R.J. Harlick, The River Runs Orange

“From the Introduction to Coldhearted River: A Canoe Odyssey Down the Cumberland:

As I read about the Cumberland before the trip and began to scout it, its distinct personality began to emerge. It was colder, in a literal and figurative sense, than the Tennessee. Long stretches were empty, desolate, antisocial. It seemed haunted, distant, aloof, while the Tennessee was warm, embracing, pliant. The Tennessee was the friendly sister, close to my age, perhaps older, the Cumberland the younger one with a wild reputation. And like an outlaw, complex and difficult, it winded and twisted its way through Tennessee and Kentucky, still wild and ornery, roaring through high bluffs and narrow gorges, fogging up and flooding, resistant to human control. The Tennessee’s wildness was subdued, less confrontational, nine dams sedating, directing, and harnessing its power. While the Tennessee’s ghosts had whispered stories to me, the Cumberland’s, I suspected before the trip, would wail through the night, telling lies and creating mischief.”
― Kim Trevathan, Coldhearted River: A Canoe Odyssey Down the Cumberland