• The Only Kayak

  • A Journey into the Heart of Alaska
  • By: Kim Heacox
  • Narrated by: Matthew Josdal
  • Length: 9 hrs and 57 mins
  • 5.0 out of 5 stars (3 ratings)

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The Only Kayak  By  cover art

The Only Kayak

By: Kim Heacox
Narrated by: Matthew Josdal
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Publisher's summary

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.

©2005, 2020 Kim Heacox (P)2023 Tantor

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Environmental memoir at its finest

It is good to remember that future generations will judge us based on what we view as atrocities and what we do not. This book is a good reminder of that which we should always remember.

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More than just a paddle

Great descriptions of the subtlety and beauty of nature, sometimes more philosophical than I cared to be.

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