Minnesota is not only home to 11,842 lakes, 91,944 river miles, and the two major canoe makers in America. It’s also the starting point of thousands of paddling journeys, and home of those who write about them.
For the Minnesota Star Tribune, I surveyed Minnesota’s Literary Canoeing Canon, a story pegged to the new biography of legendary expedition canoeist Bob O’Hara, Where the Green Light Shines: A Fifty-Year Odyssey from the Boundary Waters to the Far North:
Early in his new book about the groundbreaking North Woods canoeist Bob O’Hara, author Ryan Rodgers shares an origin story that comes as much from reading as running rivers.
As a high school student, O’Hara was captivated by Sigurd Olson’s books, including Listening Point and The Singing Wilderness. In his writing, Olson’s descriptions of life in the wilderness filled young O’Hara’s imagination with visions of the north.
“He was so descriptive of how wonderful this north country was,” O’Hara told Rodgers. “I thought, ‘I need to go see that.’”
Where the Green Light Shines: A Fifty-Year Odyssey from the Boundary Waters to the Far North, just published by the University of Minnesota Press, tells the story of O’Hara’s unparalleled paddling history, including some 68 consecutive years of visiting the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.
To see the full list, read the rest here.
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