"The Survival of the Bark Canoe"
by John McPhee
1975

"Henri says that his reaction to Deliverance, while seeing the movie, was that he couldn't care less who was doing what to whom but he was shocked and alarmed by what was happening to the canoes." John McPhee

If you love the serenity of paddling gently across a lake in the heat of the summer. Even better, if you love the idea of paddling across a lake in the heat of the summer. Or if you love the idea of a canoe and the canoe itself, as a thing of beauty and practicality - as a piece of art itself - then "The Survival of the Bark Canoe" is a must read.

There is something very primitive about a canoe. Something primitive even about a kevlar, top-of-the-line, 30 pound high-tech canoe. Its not about the canoe really, its about the relationaship of the paddler to the canoe.

The birch bark canoe has been used by natives for a very very long time. The bark canoe rivals the kevlar canoe in performance and arguably in durability. The bark canoe is non-comparable to a modern hi-tech canoe in beauty and in primitive hi-tech.

A Vaillancourt built fur-trader canoe


McPhee introduces the reader to Henri Vaillancourt, a birch bark canoe artisan builder from rural New Hampshire (if there is a non-rural New hampshire to campare). Vaillancourt is crusty, tepid, self-absorbed, perfectionsist to a fault, and an extremely skilled self-taught canoe builder. As a character for a book, he is who you want to spend the 10 hours turning pages with. But you wouldn't want to take a canoe trip with him in the Maine Woods, which is exactly what McPhee and two other men did.

"The Survival of the Bark Canoe" is a typical McPhee read where the characters are so well described, the objective historical and contemorary information is relavant and does not disrupt the story, and as a reader, you get absorbed in seeing the world through McPhee's eyes.

McPhee is always a winner, and is a timeless literary non-fiction writer. I would recommend "Encounters with the Archdruid" as an acco0mpaniment to "The Survival of the Bark Canoe."

You can visit Henri Vaillancourt's web page and investigate this birch bark canoe phenomenon, or you can actually purchase one made from the master himself at http://www.birchbarkcanoe.net/default.htm