Going Home: A Solo Voyage through North America by Spike Hampson 471 pages / 1 map / 20 photos |
||
|
After building a small boat in the mountains of Utah, Spike
Hampson launched her on a small river in Wyoming and voyaged across the
country to the east coast. He used rivers and lakes to get there
and eventually ended up in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. After 4000
miles on inland waterways and 1000 miles on the open ocean, he reached
Prince Edward Island in Maritime Canada. After storing his boat
there, he bicycled hundreds of miles southward through Nova Scotia and
Maine to reach to reach his childhood home in New Hampshire, a place to
which he had not returned for many decades. |
|
|
|
This is the story of his adventure, a travel
book of a different kind. The things along the way, the people
who volunteer to help out, the problems that have to be solved, the
thoughts and ideas that come from being so much alone--these are the
themes of the book. And Spike writes about them in bemused
understatement--the tone and attitude of an older
and more thoughtful sort of adventurer. |
 |
"I am stretched out: face down and winded, my chest rides on the front edge of the driver’s seat and my back wedges against the steering wheel. Hips and legs protrude out into the passageway and, lacking any sort of stable objects of resistance, float and flail in hopelessness. In my right hand is the final two feet of the fuel filler hose, the end of which must somehow be worked onto the below-deck extension of the fuel filler fitting." |
 |
|
|