The Only Kayak: A Journey Into the Heart of Alaska - Paperback

by Kim Heacox (Author)

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.

Back Jacket

I live in the sunlight of friends and the shadows of glaciers.So begins The Only Kayak, Kim Heacox's coming-of-middle-age memoir written in the tradition of Edward Abbey, John McPhee, and Henry David Thoreau, with a voice at times tender, irate, funny, and deeply humane. In it, he asks, what does it mean to fall in love with a place that cannot stay the same? When do you hold on? When do you let go? Born in Idaho's Bitterroot Mountains and raised in Spokane, Washington, Heacox moves to Alaska as a young park ranger and discovers a land and sea newly reborn from beneath a retreating glacier. "People are reborn here too," he writes. "This place is that powerful. In Glacier Bay you don't inherit, you create. You practice resurrection because the land and sea show you that anything is possible. Moose swim across fiords. Bears traverse glaciers. Flowers emerge from granite boulders. Inlets fill with glacial silt. Shorelines shift and nautical charts become obsolete as the land--the actual crust of the Earth--rebounds after the immense weight of glacial ice (of just a few hundred years ago) has been lifted." In this tale of friendship, risk, and hope, we find a story of coming home and learning to live gracefully among the deep blue glaciers of Alaska, a place Kim calls "the Africa of America." His words offer us a chance to look into our own selves and ask how we might live with greater deliberation, purpose, and thankfulness for the wild places we still have.

Author Biography

Kim Heacox is an author, photographer, musician and climate change activist who writes opinion-editorials for The Guardian, The Washington Post and other high-profile publications, always in defense of the natural world. His books have received starred reviews from Kirkus, Publishers Weekly and Booklist. His 2015 novel, JIMMY BLUEFEATHER, is the only work of fiction in more than 20 years to win the National Outdoor Book Award. He is the founder of the Charlie Skyhawk Band, and, with his wife Melanie, a co-creator of the forthcoming John Muir Alaska Leadership School. He lives in Gustavus, Alaska, next to Glacier Bay National Park. Learn more about him (or contact him) at www.kimheacox.com.