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North America’s classic road trip routes boast some serious mileage. The famous Route 66 stretches for 2,451 miles from Chicago to Los Angeles and the TransCanada Highway connects the Pacific and Atlantic coasts over 8,030 kilometers of roadways. 

Reviewing online directions and road maps before you head out is a no-brainer. Folks that are familiar with your destination can also provide valuable info on the condition and location of elusive back roads and shuttle routes—details even a good map can’t provide.

“The greatest gift is a passion for reading,” wrote american literary critic, novelist and short story writer Elizabeth Hardwick. I think she was half right. The other half is a passion for the outdoors.

A paper produced almost 20 years ago by the University of Chicago on early childhood development and learning concluded that, “an infant’s brain structure is not genetically determined. Early experiences have a decisive impact on the architecture of a baby’s brain.”

This makes sense to me. I’m on the nurture side of the nurture-nature debate. I believe we are formed by life experiences.

There is plenty of other research that suggests the development of early literacy skills is critically linked to a child’s success in learning to read. Today, the benefit of reading to our children is drummed into us. Read to your kids, read to your kids, read to your kids. We get it from our parents, teachers and the media. Read. Read. Read.

“When we read to children, brain cells are turned on and new brain cells are formed, adding a bit more definition and complexity to the intricate circuitry that will remain in place for the rest of their lives,” says the university paper.

So if reading to our children is hardwiring them for life, I think we need to be more careful about what we’re reading. What’s happening in their little heads when we read them stories of huffing puffing wolves and thundering waterfalls?

We’re not born afraid of the woods. Mother Goose and Walt Disney scare us into being that way. and they do so without well-meaning parents thinking too much about it.

The comedian famous for one-liners Henny Youngman wrote, “When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading.”

When I realized I was reading to my children about the evils of being outside, I did two things. I took them outside to read. And when we couldn’t go outside, I started reading to them about the fun you can have outside.

The children’s books suggested on the following page are a wonderful start, but I also like to pull from my own library. Like, Tom Brown’s Field Guide to Nature Observation and Tracking. We read a little Tom Brown and then practice sneaking around, we build sticky forts and poke at animal scat. Cool.

Another family favorite is Mountaineering, The Freedom of the Hills. Out comes the storage bins full of my old lead climbing equipment. We set up complex anchors out of clothes pegs and turkey string. lego mini-figures with ice axes leapfrog the three pitches it takes to reach the summit of the sofa. At least one mini-figure is consequently evacuated from the back cushion by the search and rescue helicopter. Too bad, but it’s better the kids work the bugs out of their rope systems this way than on everest.

Mark Twain wrote, “the man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them.”

Good books for children, in my book, are ones about the wonders of the natural world and ones that inspire adventure, not instill fear. Good books are freedom of the hills and the rivers, even if you have to read them inside. 

This article first appeared in the Spring 2011 issue of Canoeroots Magazine.

It seemed 2010 was a year filled with pe troleum-related disaster—the Gulf, Lake Michigan, the Niger delta, the Yellow Sea. Gushing crude made for dramatic headlines, but these stories were as much about water as they were about oil.

In North America, we have 11.5 percent of the world’s renewable freshwater resources. However, our surplus is no excuse for sloppy stewardship or lack of policy governing downstream rights, ownership and access to water.

The Upper Delaware—a designated National Wild and Scenic River—topped American Rivers’ 2010 list of America’s Most Endangered Rivers. This watershed, which provides drinking water for 17 million people in New York and Pennsylvania, is threatened by development of the vast Marcellus Shale natural gas field.

While our understanding of balanced development and conservation continues to expand, as canoeists, so should our awareness and responsibility for our waterways.

With the spike in natural gas prices, the region has the potential to become one of the U.S.’s most lucrative energy deposits. Exploration and extraction come at the cost of surface and groundwater toxicity along with soil and habitat contamination throughout the Upper Delaware catchment.

In northwestern Canada, the Mackenzie River basin rivals the scale of the Amazon and Congo rivers. The Mackenzie is fed by a set of waterways at the epicenter of the largest industrial project on earth, the Alberta tar sands.

Currently, between two and five barrels of water are required for each barrel of oil extracted from the sands. This means the tar sands draw enough water every year to meet the needs of a city of 2.5 million people. Much of that water comes from the Athabasca River, raising concerns of overdrawing the resource.

The release of tailings into the Athabasca and the surrounding groundwater supply further intensifies pressure on the area. Tens of thousands of miles of waterways are affected by this continual contamination of the North’s most significant watershed.

This year marks an opportunity to clean things up. While our understanding of balanced development and conservation continues to expand, as canoeists, so should our awareness and responsibility for our waterways.

When a project like the Canadian Heritage Rivers System (CHRS) hits a milestone like it has in 2011, it’s worth celebrating. The CHRS program operates under the notion that rivers have shaped our continent and its people. And, under its framework, the people—communities, rec- reational user groups and landowners—are responsible for designating waterways as Heritage Rivers.

So hats off to organizations like American Rivers and programs such as the CHRS for engaging North Americans, keeping us all from being left thirsty for more.

This article first appeared in the Spring 2011 issue of Canoeroots Magazine.

In 2008, scientists made a rather exciting discovery at a cave in Paisley, Oregon—ancient human turds buried in 14,000-year-old rock strata.

Science has long assumed the first people to inhabit the Americas—the Clovis people—walked across Berengia, a land bridge over the Bering Strait, from Siberia and southward through the Rockies 11,000– 12,000 years ago.

The Paisley discovery rocked the scientific world. Says archaeologist David Meltzer, “The pre-Clovis genie is out of the bottle, and there’s no way of stuffing it back in.”

People before Clovis? Since the Ice Age was still in full swing, the high mountain passage that the Clovis are believed to have used would have been buried in ice.

These earlier settlers must have traveled by sea, and like the hunter-gatherers they were, followed marine animals living on rich coastal kelp forests. Enter the first paddlers in the New World.

Their route took them along the shore of Berengia, down the coast of Alaska and along the outside of the Queen Charlotte Islands, finally arriving at ice-free Oregon some 2,000 kilometers later.

Anthropologist Dr. Niobe Thompson speculates in his recent documentary, The Code Breakers (CBC, The Nature of Things, January 2010) that these ancient mariners likely built umiaks—wide, open boats up to 40 feet long, powered by single blade paddles or oars and fashioned from walrus skin, driftwood and bone.

To envision these vessels, you need look no further than Arctic photo archives or the work of replica builders like Washington state’s Skin Boat School. Says Thompson, “We can only assume that what works in recent times—the structure of the modern Alaskan and Chukotkan umiak—is similar in function and appearance.”

Unfortunately, the sea long ago reclaimed the coastline these ancient boats traveled, which means scientists may never find hard evidence of their passage. Nevertheless, Thompson says, “Pieces of the puzzle…give us a sense that sea travel was the only way humans could have reached North America…before the Ice Age ended.”  

This article first appeared in the Eary Summer 2011 issue of Canoeroots Magazine.

In the summer before Pedersen’s final year, with the help of his geography teacher at UCC and the Kitikmeot Inuit Association, he finally pulled it all together—a canoe trip on the Coppermine River that would end at his house on July 9, Nunavut Day.

The goal of the expedition—named Atanigi, “when two things come together” in the language of Kugluktuk—was to bring together Pedersen’s new classmates with youth from his home in the North. Because paddling is part of the extra-curricular program at UCC, Pedersen had no trouble drumming up interest for the trip in Toronto. Back home, however, extra-curricular activities involved powerboats, snow machines and ATVs…but not canoes.

With the infectious enthusiasm of Kugluktuk High School counselor cum recruitment officer Kenny Taptuna, however, half a dozen northern youth signed up. They found a canoe and the will to start learning strokes. Unfortunately, it was May and nearly everything was still frozen. As a result, when the group gathered as a whole for the first time on Air Tindi’s wharf in Yellowknife, half had no real paddling experience on flatwater, let alone preparation for whitewater.

Incredibly, the northerners surmounted their inexperience with natural athleticism and a seemingly near-genetic familiarity with boats in general. Aided by the skill and determination of three wilderness guides, the group practiced strokes and maneuvers on the first hundred or so kilometers of calm water near the Northwest Territories/Nunavut border.

By the time the crew turned north at Big Bend and started into the current and class II–III rapids for which the Coppermine is known, cross-cultural paddling teams were working like reasonably well-oiled machines. On the more difficult rapids, lead guide Colin Smith lashed two canoes together to make a pontoon boat— a.k.a. the “party barge”—which created a super stable, almost relaxing whitewater experience for novice paddlers.

At the Coppermine campsites, Taptuna taught nightly lessons in Inuit language and traditional games. Others started string games, throat singing lessons and impromptu inukshuk-building workshops. Traditions from the north and south blended in the common experience of paddling to the Arctic Ocean under the midnight sun.

When the paddlers arrived cold, wet and happy in Kugluktuk on Nunavut Day, they were celebrated for coming together to accomplish something remarkable. Pedersen and the other northerners were recognized by the town as the first people ever from that community to arrive via the river.

Equally significant was the realization of one young person’s dream to make this land just a little bit smaller by bringing people together in canoes.

This article first appeared in the Early Summer 2011 issue of Canoeroots Magazine.