The Bookworm: 'The Survival of the Bark Canoe'

The Survival of the Bark Canoe, by John McPhee. 114 pages. Farrar, Straus and Grixou. 1975.

The loon here is laughing again, so I laugh back. He laughs. I laugh. He laughs. I laugh. He will keep it up until I am hoarse. He likes conversation. He talks this way with other loons. I am endeavoring to tell him that he is a hopeless degenerate killer of trout. He laughs. (p. 30)

McPhee!

I open blogging in 2022 with an overdue Bookworm post about John McPhee’s The Survival of the Bark Canoe, which I picked at off and on since spring.

Survival is a fascinating history and ode to the bark canoe braided with the story of a canoe trip through the lakes, rivers, and streams of Maine. McPhee profiles Henri Vaillancourt, a New Hampshirite who took up the lost art of building bark canoes the way the Native Americans did, and travels with him in his canoes made of birch bark without nails, screws, or rivets. Canoes and canoeing are another fascination of McPhee’s that has become an excellent book.

McPhee’s incredible eye for detail is once again on display in Survival. I would love to know how he takes notes. Survival imparts a ton of local, regional, and North American history and the history of canoes; it is mind boggling to think about all the research involved and all McPhee knows. I am in awe of all the time and effort McPhee spent on this short book, and also so appreciative. Though I have been in a canoe only two or three times in my life, I have a newfound appreciation for them and their history. McPhee shares a couple mind-blowing facts: one can cross Canada in a canoe (albeit with a portage or two) and a sixth of all the Earth’s fresh water is in Canada.

As engrossing and fascinating as Survival is, the detail and info can become too much. I was quickly lost when McPhee drove into the minutiae of construction and the separate parts of the canoe. McPhee is prone to dragging some details and descriptions farther than I prefer, but he always recovers. I feel he tends to take for granted readers’ interest in and understanding of what he is writing about; it is not always the same as his.

My favorite parts of the book are McPhee’s accounts of the canoe trip with Vaillancourt and two others (or maybe three; I don’t remember). McPhee describes the trials and tribulations of traveling, camping, and dining in the forests of Maine. It is akin to RAGBRAI on water, which I can relate to.

The study of Vaillancourt is interesting and I wondered how he received the book. McPhee paints him as a neurotic phenom, a man who is very skilled at one thing but clueless and stubborn outside of his comfort zone, his shop where he makes canoes. I doubt he was flattered by his whole profile.

One funny aspect of the book his how McPhee and company referenced and mocked Deliverance and its author, James Dickey, who, they think, is far from an expert on canoes and canoeing. (“He owns an aluminum canoe, and, by the report of colleagues, has logged in it journeys of impressively short distance” [p. 66].) “Ain’t he a James Dickey bird” becomes an expression the group uses “to describe any person whose words or actions were filled with striking incongruities” (p. 69). The affect of Deliverance, though, is evident on their trip as other adventurers eye McPhee and company with suspicion.

Closing the book is a collection of notes and sketches by renown canoe researcher and expert Edwin Tappen Adney, which are very helpful in imagining the construction and parts of the canoe.