Portage : a family, a canoe, and the search for the good life / Sue Leaf.

When as a child she first saw a canoe gliding on Lake Alexander in central Minnesota, Sue Leaf was mesmerized. The enchantment stayed with her and shimmers throughout this book as we join Leaf and her family in canoeing the waterways of North America, always on the lookout for the good life amid the splendors and surprises of the natural world. The journey begins with a trip to the border lakes of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, then wanders into the many beautiful little rivers of Minnesota and Wisconsin, the provincial parks of Canada, the Louisiana bayou, and the arid West. A biologist and birder, Leaf considers natural history and geology, noticing which plants are growing along the water and which birds are flitting among the branches. Traveling the routes of the Ojibwe, voyageurs, and map-making explorers, she reflects on the region’s history, peopling her pages with Lewis and Clark, Jean Lafitte, Henry Schoolcraft, and Canada’s Group of Seven artists. Part travelogue, part natural and cultural history, Portage is the memoir of one family’s thirty-five-year venture into the watery expanse of the world. Through sunny days and stormy hours and a few hair-raising moments, Sue and her husband, Tom, celebrate anniversaries on the water; haul their four kids along on family adventures; and occasionally make the paddle a social outing with friends. Along the way they contend with their own human nature: they run rapids when it would have been wiser to portage, take portages and learn truths about aging, avoid portages and ponder risk-taking. Through it all, out in the open, in the wild, in the blue, exploring the river means encountering life; good decisions and missed chances, risks and surprises, and the inevitable changes that occur as a family canoes through time and learns what it means to be human in this natural world.

Prologue : in the beginning, a silver streak -- The pictographs on Lac La Croix : into the Boundary Waters, 1979 -- Locked in : the Mississippi at Minneapolis, 1981 -- Canoeing the Spirit River : the Rum, 1986 -- Missouri breaks : the upper Missouri River, 1993 -- Breaking in the new canoe : the Kettle River, 1994 -- Canoe swarms : back to the Boundary Waters, 1993-94 -- Kids canoeing : the Crow Wing, 1995 -- Self-reliance : the upper Mississippi River, 1997 -- Canoeing the Sandhills : the Niobrara River, 1998 -- Loving it to death : the Boundary Waters, 1998 -- Burnt Woods River : the Bois Brule of northern Wisconsin, 1999 -- Paddling with the alligators : Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve, 2001 -- Mother’s Day : the Cannon River, 2002 -- The eye of the wolf : Isle Royale National Park, 2003 -- The clarity of Nellie Lake : Killarney Provincial Park, Ontario, 2004 -- Looking for snakes : the Marias River, Havre, Montana, 2005 -- Abundance : the upper Iowa River, 2006 -- Sea caves : Lake Superior, 2007 -- Transition : Kejimkujik National Park, Nova Scotia, 2008 -- Nerve-wracked : the White River of Wisconsin, 2010 -- Wild and scenic : the upper St. Croix River, 2011 -- Pursuing the group of seven : Algonquin Provincial Park, 2012 -- Chronos and Kairos : the Little Missouri River, 2013 -- Ancient valley : the Kickapoo River, 2013 -- Urban adventure : Minnehaha Creek, 2014 -- Father’s Day : the Fox River, 2014 -- Draining the ancient lake : the Red Lake River of northwestern Minnesota, 2014 -- What is the good life? The Au Sable River of lower Michigan, 2014.