The Only Kayak - by Kim Heacox (Paperback)
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<p/><br></br><p><b> About the Book </b></p></br></br>Finalist for the 2006 Pen Center USA Western award in creative nonfiction.<p/><br></br><p><b> Book Synopsis </b></p></br></br>Winner of the 2020 National Outdoor Book Award for Outdoor Classic! In this coming-of-middle-age memoir, Kim Heacox, writing in the tradition of Abbey, McPhee, and Thoreau, discovers an Alaska reborn from beneath a massive glacier, where flowers emerge from boulders, moose swim fjords, and bears cross crevasses with Homeric resolve. In such a place Heacox finds that people are reborn too, and their lives begin anew with incredible journeys, epiphanies, and successes. All in an America free of crass commercialism and overdevelopment. Braided through the larger story are tales of gold prospectors and the cabin they built sixty years ago; John Muir and his intrepid terrier, Stickeen; and a dynamic geology professor who teaches earth science "as if every day were a geological epoch." Nearly two million people come to Alaska every summer, some on large cruise ships, some in single kayaks--all in search of the last great wilderness, the Africa of America. It is exactly the America Heacox finds in this story of paradox, love, and loss.<p/><br></br><p><b> From the Back Cover </b></p></br></br>"I live in the sunlight of friends and the shadows of glaciers." So begins THE ONLY KAYAK, a coming-of-middle-age memoir by Kim Heacox, who writes in the tradition of Edward Abbey, John McPhee, and Henry David Thoreau, with a voice a times tender, irate, funny, and deeply humane. What does it mean to fall in love with a place that cannot stay the same? When do you hold on and when do you let go? As Kim discovers in this provocative story, we need to be better students of change rather than instruments of change. Born in Idaho's Bitterroot Mountains and raised in Spokane, Kim moves to Alaska as a young park ranger and discovers a land and sea newly reborn from beneath a retreating glacier. "People are reborn here, too," he writes. "This place is that powerful. In Glacier Bay you don't inherit, you create. You practice resurrection because the land and sea show you that anything is possible. Moose swim across fjords. Bears traverse glaciers. Flowers emerge from granite boulders. Inlets fill with glacial silt. Shorelines shift and nautical charts become obsolete as the land - the actual crust of the Earth - rebounds after the immense weight of glacial ice (of just a few hundred years ago) has been lifted." In this tale of friendship, risk, and hope, we find a story of coming home and learning to live gracefully among the deep blue glaciers of Alaska, a place Kim calls "the Africa of America." His words offer us a chance to look into our own selves and ask how we might live with greater deliberation, purpose, and thankfulness for the wild places we still have.<p/><br></br><p><b> Review Quotes </b></p></br></br><br>"[A] tender chronicle of a miracle in process, with glints of its rarity thrown by the handful from these pages."--Kirkus Reviews "Writer and photographer Heacox delivers a genuine, deeply moving account of the past twenty-five years he has spent living in Glacier Bay, Alaska."--Publishers Weekly "'Make access easy, and a place dies, ' is his motto, and therein lies the paradox that Heacox tries to resolve in this book. . . . As he wrestles with such conundrums, Heacox creates a nicely balanced environmental portrait of Alaska's ice-cut coast."--Booklist "In this elegant and moving memoir, Kim Heacox writes of his years living and working in Glacier Bay. It is about paddling trips with friends, intimate encounters with wildlife, his work as a ranger, and excursions with an engaging young woman who, as it happens, becomes his life partner. Through it all, he wrestles with the questions that plague all conscientious outdoor users: the never ceasing encroachment of untrammeled spaces, our relationship with the wild, and our relationship with one another. He often draws from thinkers, explorers, philosophers, and environmental writers of the past. This is a thoughtful and penetrating work of outdoor literature that clearly ranks among Alaska's finest." -- National Outdoor Book Awards, 2020<br><p/><br></br><p><b> About the Author </b></p></br></br>Kim Heacox is an author, photographer, musician and climate change activist who writes opinion-editorials for The Guardian, The Washington Post and other high-profile publications, always in defense of the natural world. His books have received starred reviews from Kirkus, Publishers Weekly and Booklist. His 2015 novel, JIMMY BLUEFEATHER, is the only work of fiction in more than 20 years to win the National Outdoor Book Award. He is the founder of the Charlie Skyhawk Band, and, with his wife Melanie, a co-creator of the forthcoming John Muir Alaska Leadership School. He lives in Gustavus, Alaska, next to Glacier Bay National Park. Learn more about him (or contact him) at www.kimheacox.com.
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