Reviews for An Adirondack passage

The average rating for An Adirondack passage based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-07-25 00:00:00 Jesse Fletcher Review notes: An Adirondack Passage Christine Jerome 1994 2 stars The book jacket indicates that this is an "Exhilarating" 180 mile canoe trip. I really take issue with book jacket writers attempting to inject excitement and significance for sales appeal. This is a historical narrative based on a similar trip written about by George Sears in the late 1880's and 90's. This narrative covers the people and land development along the route in the Adirondacks. It has both historical and environmental overtones. The actual contemporary recreation trip, taken in 1990 was very tightly intertwined into the historical narrative. Many paragraphs of the actual trip began with a contemporary sentence describing the conditions and time of day, and mention a landmark shoreline location or structure. That mention then became an insertion point for 2-3 pages of historical narrative. For myself, this historical narrative was not interesting in the sense that I am not familiar with the geography, people, or climate of the area. The historical narrations began to resemble trivial pursuit topics in some sections. They (the historical narratives) probably constituted 85% of the total page volume. The author even stated at one point that this had become more of a historical narrative than a travel narrative. A general summation of the book's history and area would be that wealthy developers moved into the area and destroyed the original environmental bio-culture. Most of the streams and rivers had been dammed at some point. Logging, and hunting for sport decimated the wildlife populations to the point that many of the animals and fish are no longer resident, and many of the tree species in the current forested areas are different than the original forest species. The current area as described indicates that the area is largely urbanized to the extent that many pockets of land and shoreline are held privately and are inaccessible to the public. The areas that are accessible, are handled as a state or nation forest preserve. This means designated campsite restrictions with most of the modern amenities which only lack the hotel room structure. Overcrowding during weekends, the summer, and holidays sounds very typical of anyplace America. The average recreational pursuer requires big powerful fast boats on any water surface, loud music, and assumes that any trash is for tossing. The landowners are confrontational to tourists. The descriptive narrations of these conditions might have been accurate and well directed, but they didn't make for exciting reading, and don't stand out as being unique problems that haven't been narrated in similar forms many years before the 90's, and every year since. I began reading this book for the narrative experience of a long canoe voyage. This "voyage" was practically a long stay in a state park, with narrations of small lakes and relatively small streams/rivers. The camping was rarely primitive, and often involved hotels and restaurants. The average speed was only 8 miles per day. The boat being used was a mostly accurate recreation in terms of size, handling, and seaworthiness. And by seaworthiness, it could be forcibly stated that this boat was only suited to very flat water in very small bodies of water on calm days. It was pointed out that racing canoes on the same water can cover 90 miles in 3 days, so conceivably they could have done this entire journey in less than a week, and had a large part of the weekend for return travel. The author used the better part of a month for the trip. I don't have an objection to that except that the "exhilarating" action never kicked in. I would have liked to see a three part book with cross-referenced sections regarding the historical settlement, and the ecological changes, more segregated form the travel narrative.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-08-30 00:00:00 Karan Price This book was so good. I've read travel books before but never a nature travel book. I don't think I even realize there were books like this. Please recommend anything like this one to me. I think I've been missing out on something.