Book Description
The acclaimed, best-selling author of Blue Highways
and PrairyErth chronicles his one-of-a-kind journey
through America's waterways from Atlantic to Pacific.
Brimming with history, drama, hilarity, and wisdom, River
Horse ranks among the greatest American travelogues. In
1995, Heat-Moon set out on his most ambitious trip yet, from
New York harbor to the breakwater of Astoria, Oregon, almost
entirely by water. Aboard his little launch Nikawa
("river horse" in Osage), Heat-Moon logged more
than five thousand miles, completing a trek no American had
ever managed, yet following in the wake of our greatest
explorers, from Henry Hudson to Lewis and Clark.
En route, he encountered odder adventures, bigger and
nastier cities, lonelier spaces, stranger people, and more
turbulent waters than even he had expected. He and Nikawa
braved record-shattering floods, foundered on hull-crushing
sandbars, and overcame innumerable other travails great and
small. The often uproarious, often terrifying narrative teems
with high adventure and fascinating characters. Heat-Moon, a
sage of the heatland, offers a singular arteriogram of our
nation and its folk at the century's edge.