River-Horse

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On the Road Again

There's no shortage of 20th-century literature about traveling across America in a car. Even William Least Heat-Moon, author of River Horse, wrote a nonfiction work about his search in a beat-up Ford for himself and America (Blue Highways).

But not since the 19th-century adventures of Mark Twain, as told in Life on the Mississippi, have readers had the chance to vicariously take a journey across America by water rather than by road. River Horse, a voyage across America's waterways, is a return to a bygone literary tradition. Following in the footsteps of America's greatest explorers, from Henry Hudson to Lewis and Clark, Heat-Moon traveled around the waterways of America in a 22-foot cruiser boat called Nikawa (Osage for "river horse").

Heat-Moon covers 5,000-plus miles in four months, departing from Astoria, New York, and completing his journey in Astoria, Oregon. RIVER HORSE completes Heat-Moon's trilogy of explorations of America and the American people, which he began with Blue Highways and Prairyerth.

River Horse falls short of providing any great insight into the people whom Heat-Moon encounters along America's waterways, but that's okay. Instead, River Horse is a travel book of the first order because, very simply, it is a book about traveling. Many others have gone off in search of the spirit of the American people and written about their findings, but no one in the history of the world has taken the trip that Heat-Moon has taken, and that alone makes River Horse a fascinating read.

Heat-Moon tells us that after having visited almost every state in the continental United States ("except for a handful in the Deep South, and those I'll get to soon"), he realized that traveling across the country along America's rivers would provide him with a unique vantage point.

Because there's no aquatic equivalent of Route 66, it is almost impossible to see America wholly by water, which presents Heat-Moon with a formidable challenge. With meticulous planning, however, Heat-Moon devised a way for a small boat -- enter the scrappy Nikawa -- to navigate the path from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

Heat-Moon is joined by Pilotus, a compilation of characters who aid Heat-Moon (a.ka. William Trogdon) along the way. Heat-Moon admits up front that Pilotus, "my Pilades, my Pythia, my Pytheas," is the better writer of the two, which is why Pilotus gets all the good lines in the book. For example, Pilotus says to Heat-Moon about the journey: "To go from Gravesend Bay through the Graveyard of the Great Lakes and on to the Graveyard of the Pacific, that's, well, a grave undertaking."

Although River Horse is a work rich in spirit, it lacks an emotional component or impetus to its narrative, save Pilotus's insightful, if not quippy, commentary. It's understandable that Heat-Moon would want to remove himself from the narrative to avoid detracting from the magnitude of his journey. But Heat-Moon overshoots a little here, and as a result he is absent. And, at his worst, the narrator assumes a disembodied, pedagogical voice that is more reminiscent of Cliff Claven, the know-it-all mailman from the television show "Cheers," than a Captain Ahab or even a Tom Joad.

Great travel writing pays equal time to the mechanics of the journey and the experience of the person taking the journey. By that standard, River Horse is not great travel writing. Because of the nature of the traveling involved, River Horse is nothing less than a marvelous story of traveling.

The tale of each river that Heat-Moon crosses is rich with a legacy of Americana. Whether Heat-Moon is discussing Abraham Lincoln's introduction to the law or the pollution of America's waterways, he speaks like an old hand, calmed by the wisdom of his experience but no less enthused about what he has to share with his readers.

Heat-Moon's ambitious journey across America is the perfect antidote to end-of-the-century angst about what the future will hold. It's nice, almost soothing, to take a journey back in time with Heat-Moon, a journey that conveys a firm grounding in America's roots and gives insight into elements of the American spirit and the American landscape.

—Emily Burg

Emily Burg is a New York-based journalist who has been to 18 of the 50 states.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Writing under the name Heat-Moon (Blue Highways), William Trogdon once again sets out across America, this time propelled chiefly by a dual-outboard boat dubbed Nikawa, "River Horse" in Osage. In this hardy craft, he and a small crew attempt to travel more than 5000 miles by inland waterways from the Atlantic to the Pacific in a single season. Citing 19th-century travelogues and dredging odd bits of the rivers' past, Heat-Moon conveys the significance of passing "beneath a bridge that has looked down on the stovepipe hat of Abraham Lincoln, the mustache of Mark Twain, the sooty funnels of a hundred thousand steamboats." Though at first he is struck by how river travel is "so primordial, so unchanged in its path," he later notes that the only thing Lewis and Clark would recognize on a dammed and severely altered stretch of the Missouri River is the bedeviling prairie wind. But what remains constant for him is "the greatest theme in our history: the journey." It is an American theme, though by "westering" and persistently believing that the voyage is destined to succeed, Heat-Moon seems to be on dangerous waters for someone who is part Native American. But his romantic attachment to the nature of exploration doesn't occlude his indictments of pollution, overzealous river management and aboriginal displacement. The book, though largely engaging, is not without its slow spots, which Heat-Moon avers are true to the trip's nature: "the river is no blue highway because the river removes reverie." Heat-Moon has written a rich chronicle of a massive and meaningful undertaking. Unlike Blue Highways, however, the focus is not so much on people and places as on the trials of a journey that bypasses them in favor of reaching its destination. Illus. 250,000 first printing; $250,000 ad/promo; 13-city author tour. (Oct.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

From The Critics

"This time [Heat Moon] voyages across the country, from Atlantic to Pacific, almost entirely by its rivers, lakes and canals in a small outboard-powered boat, a bold and epic notion that should excite any armchair traveler."

Library Journal

Adventurer Heat-Moon carefully planned an unusual voyage from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific, via American lakes and rivers. Naming his boat Nikawa, which means "river horse" in the Osage Indian language, Heat-Moon set off from New York City harbor with his friend Pilotis. Using a diary format, he talks about places they visit, problems they encounter, and people they meet. The characters are basically colorful but lack charisma. Conversations/comments mostly reveal a rather banal, forced cleverness. Boating and travel quotations are woven in along with considerable profanity and several gruesome stories. Technically, the tapes are fine. Jay O. Sanders's clear voice, inflection, and overall talent improve the often-stilted material. A map showing the route of the trip would have been an interesting addition. A marginal purchase for adult travel collections.--Carolyn Alexander, Brigadoon Lib., Salinas, CA Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.\

John Pearson

There's high drama, skillfully captured, in parts of the narrative, along with perceptive observation of people and scenes. Heat-Moon, who holds a PhD in English literature, deepens his tale by interweaving the writings of earlier travelers. But Nikawa's brisk, mostly overnight stopovers give the author less opportunity for the kinds of encounters with people and places—sharply etched, revealing, quirky—that kept readers turning pages in his earlier book.
—BusinessWeek

Kirkus Reviews

A coast-to-coast journey by way of great rivers, conducted by a contemporary master of travel writing. "I've visited every county in the contiguous states except for a handful in the Deep South," writes William Trogdon, a.k.a. William Least Heat-Moon (Blue Highways, 1983; Prairyerth, 1991). "Put your finger at random anywhere in [a] United States atlas, and I've either been there or within twenty-five miles of it." He'd logged hundreds and thousands of road miles, true, but Least Heat-Moon—a skilled sailor and navy veteran—had spent far less time on America's rivers. To remedy that, he set out a couple of years ago on a 5,000-mile, four-month journey from Astoria, N.Y., to Astoria, Ore., in the company of an eminently pleasant Sancho Panza whom he calls "Pilotis" and a small crew, his craft a 22-foot-long dory called Nikawa, an Osage Indian word meaning "river horse." Least Heat-Moon has a lovely, light touch as an instructor, but instruct he does, reminding his readers of the importance of rivers in American history as he travels along the Hudson, Ohio, Missouri, Salmon, and other watercourses. His asides, the kind of remarks you'd hear in a roadside diner over a steaming cup of bad coffee, are uniformly interesting. Who knew, for instance, that for many years the Mississippi was considered a tributary of the Missouri and not the other way around? Why does history make so little of Abraham Lincoln's time working a flatboat along the Ohio River drainage, where he witnessed firsthand the horrors of slavery? Why was it that until the US Army Corps of Engineers got to tinkering with stream channels, American rivers rarely flooded, rarely caused the catastrophic damage that hasshaped the news over the last few years? Writing with an eye for local color and little-examined history (and sneaking in a pages-long sentence worthy of James Joyce in the bargain), Least Heat-Moon turns in a stirring narrative of a journey into landscapes few have seen—an America that "isn't a big country but hundreds of smaller ones." Vintage Least Heat-Moon, radiant with intelligence and masterful storytelling. (First printing of 250,000; $250,000 ad/promo; author tour)