Reviews for If we had a boat

The average rating for If we had a boat based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-04-28 00:00:00 Michael Eubanks written with great naturalist detail AND she did all the hand drawn sketching's. i loved the last few pages the most

Review # 2 was written on 2016-01-14 00:00:00 Kevin Leblanc "One begins to have a feel for each canyon itself- its way of going, its way of defining the sky, its way of turning, that belongs to it alone. That kind of aware walking brings rewards. There is nothing vicarious or secondhand about walking there; instead, I have an exhilarating sense of immediacy. To me there is an enchantment in these dry canyons that once roared with water and still sometimes do, that absorbed the voices of those who came before, something of massive dignity about sandstone beds that tell of a past long before human breathing, that bear the patterns of ancient winds and water in their crossbeddings. Here I find something of necessity." I haven't been to this exact area in Utah, and I probably have to give up my belief that I love Utah more than anyone else as the author has been intimately associated with it for longer than geologic time. This book was written in 1978 and she writes of solo backpacking trips which seems so amazing considering the times. She is so attentive to detail that I need, like how the light changes, what the night fall looks and feels like, the sense of home and reverence in this land. Zwinger was trained as an artist, not a biologist, or even a naturalist, and not a poet, or mystic but seems to be all combined so beautifully in one human. That said, the most powerful paragraphs were at the end of each chapter when she synthesized all she saw and heard and felt, and I wish there was more of it and a teeny bit less intricate detail of other things like every single lizard or insect or finding water. But worth it as I don't plan to go to this area, but feel like I don't have to; she described it so beautifully. Other parts of Utah are my pilgrimage sites, and have reliable water sources generally, and this just enriches the feeling of unwatered desert and the silence and stillness found there. But the Parthenon serves no useful purpose either; if we tore it down we could erect buildings to shelter an inadequately housed population…and yet man, if he took the trouble, could rebuild the Parthenon ten times over. But he will never be able to recreate a single canyon, which was formed during thousands of years of patient erosion by sun, wind, and water. Jean Dorst The canyon country does not always inspire love. To many it appears barren, hostile, repellent- a fearsome mostly waterless land of rock and heat, sand dunes and quicksand, cactus, scorpion, rattlesnake and agoraphobic distances. To those who see our land in that manner, the best reply is, yes, you are right. It is a dangerous and terrible place. Enter at your own risk. Carry water. Avoid the noonday sun… Pray frequently. Edward Abbey My curiosity about this country intensified…and so I went. I discovered that, like all canyons, they have a powerful sense of direction and this becomes imprinted upon one’s way of thinking: there are upcanyon and downcanyon, and one adjusts to that simple fact. More than anywhere else I sensed that here one must fit into the landscape, must know what is there and where, in order to survive. These canyons, like the ocean and the air, are unforgiving. The canyon walls are, for the most part, formidable barriers. The sandstone, limestone, and shale walls are carved either into overhangs or are sheer drops of hundreds of feet or treacherous talus. In most places they are simply impassable. Once down in the canyon, you’re locked in. With plants that are thorny, spiny, hostile. Locked with rattlesnakes—the ubiquitous buzztail, sunning on the rock ledge you’re about to haul yourself up onto. In spite of this, after walking there for days, coming home bug bitten, shins bruised, nose peeling, feet and hands swollen, I feel ablaze with life. I suspect that the canyons give me an intensified sense of living partly because I not only face the basics of living and survival, but carry them on my back. And in my head. And this intense personal responsibility gives me an overwhelming sense of freedom I know nowhere else. For most of the time, one disciplines oneself to ignore the discomfort of being hot or tired or having sore hip bones or being hungry, thirsty. Someone once characterized backpacking as the most miserable way of getting from Point A to Point B. But when salt restores the electrolyte balance, when water cools the insides as well as the brow, when food refurbishes the body’s cells, when time has been spent off one’s feet and a heavy pack is a mile downcanyon, then there follows a tremendous rush of well-being, a physical sense of buoyancy, all out of proportion to the time and place. I wish I could sit here for eons and watch as these sandstone walls crumble, grain by grain and fall to floor this dry wash, become rearranged by water and wind, compressed to other cliffs, excavated into other canyons, and feel the wind all the same. The rock changes, the channel changes, the wind just carries air from one place to another, more constant than the rock. The rock is ephemeral, the wind, eternal. I stand at the top of Collins Canyon and look back and down. The canyon turns, twisting out of sight, screening the gulch itself, as if the only way one is allowed knowledge of what went before is to go down and find out. A thin corner of blue sky catches on a sandstone pinnacle, so different up here, slickrock rolling away for miles, so open, windswept, windtorn. The canyon, sheltered by its cocoon of sun-warmed walls, is to a halcyon place. Down in the canyon, I grew a little, understood a little more, perceived even more, and in so doing split the carapace of time and place I commonly wear. Split it, wriggled out of it, left it there…the new skin was extra-sensitive so I perceived the canyon about me with new eyes, more sensitive touch, emotions closer to the surface… This stretching of self beyond stretchable boundaries, this glory of being where few have stood, of listening and seeing, of feeling the sun and the rock, somehow matters very much. The exhilaration is worth every bit of the discomfort and duress. I have pushed through discomfort to another level of being. I love being here, shot through with sunlight, incandescing it outward as I receive it inward. I feel an outer glory like an aura or a nimbus. Did an Anasazi once stand here, pulling strength out of the earth as I do, making obeisance to the gods of the winds? …Perhaps when one scratches the underside of heaven one is granted a special grace. The euphoria remains, and I can still call back that feeling of being astride the world and what it was like to be charged with the energy of the universe…the particular charge of serene energy to bring out whenever needed.