Product Description

“I take a stroke and lean back, gazing up into the jet skies, bejeweled by the moon and the galaxies of stars. The hull glides in silence and with such perfect balance as to report no motion. I sit up for another stroke, now looking down as the blades ignite swirling pairs of white constellations of phosphorescent plankton. Two opposing heavens. ‘Remember this,’ I think to myself.”

Few people have ever considered the eastern United States to be an island, but when Nat Stone began tracing waterways in his new atlas at the age of ten he discovered that if one had a boat it was possible to use a combination of waterways to travel up the Hudson River, west across the barge canals and the Great Lakes, down the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico, and back up the eastern seaboard. Years later, still fascinated by the idea of the island, Stone read a biography of Howard Blackburn, a nineteenth-century Gloucester fisherman who had attempted to sail the same route a century before. Stone decided he would row rather than sail, and in April 1999 he launched a scull beneath the Brooklyn Bridge to see how far he could get. After ten months and some six thousand miles he arrived back at the Brooklyn Bridge, and continued rowing on to Eastport, Maine.

Retracing Stone’s extraordinary voyage, On the Water is a marvelous portrait of the vibrant cultures inhabiting American shores and the magic of a traveler’s chance encounters. From Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where a rower at the local boathouse bequeaths him a pair of fabled oars, to Vanceburg, Kentucky, where he spends a day fishing with Ed Taylor -- a man whose efficient simplicity recalls The Old Man and the Sea -- Stone makes his way, stroke by stroke, chatting with tugboat operators and sleeping in his boat under the stars. He listens to the live strains of Dwight Yoakum on the banks of the Ohio while the world’s largest Superman statue guards the nearby town square, and winds his way through the Louisiana bayous, where he befriends Scoober, an old man who reminds him that the happiest people are those who’ve “got nothin’.” He briefly adopts a rowing companion -- a kitten -- along the west coast of Florida, and finds himself stuck in the tidal mudflats of Georgia. Along the way, he flavors his narrative with local history and lore and records the evolution of what started out as an adventure but became a lifestyle.

An extraordinary literary debut in the lyrical, timeless style of William Least Heat-Moon and Henry David Thoreau, On the Water is a mariner’s tribute to childhood dreams, solitary journeys, and the transformative powers of America’s rivers, lakes, and coastlines.


From the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #719027 in Books
• Published on: 2003-07-08
• Released on: 2003-07-08
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

From Library Journal
Stone, a former teacher and newspaper publisher, followed his childhood dream of traveling on water a dream he took to a higher level after reading about the efforts of Howard Blackburn, a fisherman from Gloucester, MA, to sail around the eastern United States in the 19th century. (That epic journey of hardship at sea is recounted in Joseph E. Garland's Lone Voyager.) Stone decided to trace Blackburn's route but does it entirely by rowing. He began in Brooklyn, traveled up the Hudson, passed through the Erie Canal, portaged his craft to the Allegheny, and then headed on to the Ohio and down the Mississippi. At New Orleans, he took a break, got a larger boat, and continued rowing around Key West, up the Eastern seaboard, and on past Brooklyn, stopping at the Canadian border. Along the way, he encountered many fine and kindly folk (and a few odd ones) and the world's largest statue of Superman in Metropolis, IL, traveled with a stray cat along the Florida coast, and discovered that completion of the journey was not so much the goal as actually doing it. But complete it he does. A delightful account of a remarkable solitary voyage; recommended for all public and large academic libraries. Lee Arnold, Historical Soc. of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
*Starred Review* Here's a real treat for fans of travel writing. As a child, the author had imagined what it would be like to set out in a small boat and follow the rivers, lakes, and canals of the U.S. As an adult, in a 17-foot scull, he did just that; pushing off from New York City's Hudson River, he rowed to the Erie Canal, down to Ohio, onward to the Mississippi, across the Gulf to Key West, and back up along the coastline of the Atlantic to Maine. It was a 6,000-mile journey, and it took him 10 months to complete. This is the chronicle of his adventure, his voyage into and around America, the story of the people he met and the places he saw. It's not one of those faux-poetic, pseudo-philosophical travel books in which the author finds the meaning of the universe on the road (or in his boat). Instead, it's a straightforward, crisply written memoir: here's where I went, here's what I did, here are some people I met. The author shows great respect for the places and people he encountered, and only slowly, almost imperceptibly, buried in the fascinating detail, does a message emerge: the U.S. is a wonderful place to drift through, a country filled with interesting, unusual, helpful people and beautiful things to see. That's really all Stone is trying to say, but he says it so unpretentiously, always showing never telling, that the book has tremendous impact. Highly recommended for fans of plainspoken travel writing. David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About the Author
Nathaniel Stone grew up in Marblehead, Massachusetts. He taught tenth grade history in Pasadena, California, and Zuni, New Mexico, where he founded the local newspaper and currently resides.
www.natstone.com



From the Hardcover edition.

Customer Reviews

Let's Get Away From it All!
Have you ever been driving across a bridge and looked up the river and wondered what it would be like to be on the river instead of the road? Well this book will give you a look into what it is like to be on that river. The author does an excellent job painting the picture of isolation and contact with the rest of the world. While the reader does get some feel for what it is like to row for mile after mile, the author does not push the physical requirements too far. The writer treats us with his various encounters with different people along his way while covering a wide range of personalities. If you have wanted to take that long walk (or boat ride) down the road (or river) then this book is for you.

"On The Water"
This book is a great read, and it's one of those that you get lost in. The descriptions of Nathaniel Stone's travels and the people he meets come alive in your mind. And contrary to what another reviewer wrote, Zuni is not merely a place where Mr. Stone "went to teach Native Americans," Zuni is and has been his home for many years. He is a respected and well-liked member of the community and has a great many friends and "family" here. And I bet he's even helped butcher a sheep or two. If you ever get a chance to hear him speak about his rowing adventure, you are in for a treat. A wonderful book!!

well written, not a lot of action
Very well written book of Nat's rowing trip around the eastern half of the country. He's a very thoughtful person, and makes observations that make you think. He does interact with people on his trip, but those encounters are not written about with the detail that make you feel you are there. Consequently I don't feel I have 'met' any of the other characters. Also, though he has a few mishaps and adventures, most of his days are spent....rowing (as you would expect). While I have no problem with this, and it gives him ample time to muse over various topics, this isn't an exciting book. But it is very well written and won't disappoint. It will surely make you jealous of the life he discovered, where time does not matter, there are no appointments and he is at peace.