Book Review: Nikawa
by Brand Frentz

Heat-Moon, William Least. River Horse. 1999, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston and New York, 509 pp., price — $26.00. The title of the book is the name of the author’s boat, Nikawa, a coined Osage word meaning "river horse."

Why would paddlers want to read about a guy steering his 22-foot fiberglass fishing boat with two 45-horse motors through garbage traffic in New York Harbor in April 1995? Well, what piqued my interest was that he was a writer, not a fisherman, and his destination was Astoria, Oregon. He planned to navigate across the continent by boat! That poses some interesting problems. And that is what you read about — how he and his helpers made the trip — in William Least Heat-Moon’s most recent book, River Horse.

Such a trip poses two big portage problems: from the Atlantic watershed to the Mississippi, and then across the Rocky Mountains. Heat-Moon was not exactly portaging his one-ton boat (it was trailered, of course), and he needed to resort to a 17-foot Grumman canoe in some shallow stretches, and to a whitewater raft once. But he did use interesting routes for these crossings. No map lover will want to miss this itinerary.

Here is his route in a nutshell: Atlantic Ocean, Hudson River, Erie Canal, Lake Erie—portage—Lake Chautauqua—portage—Allegheny River, Ohio River, Mississippi River, Missouri River, Jefferson River, Beaverhead River—portage—Salmon River, Snake River, Columbia River, Pacific Ocean.

Heat-Moon also planned carefully and worried constantly about one uncertainty of nature: the water level in the Upper Missouri had to be high enough to allow him to penetrate far into the Rocky Mountains. In other words he had to catch the spring melt. His plan worked, or his luck held; 1995 was a high-water year on the Missouri, and he came upstream in June riding floods to the end of the line.

That is the trip, a tough, demanding, and sometimes dangerous journey that took over three months to complete. But was it an "adventure"? It was not a wilderness adventure, although he saw a lot of lonely, undeveloped landscape. And not a challenging physical adventure, although it was not easy at times and strength and endurance and fearlessness helped. It is more of a cultural adventure, using motors and restaurants and cars pulling trailers to travel by water to a hundred odd little (and some big) places and seek out the local folks, listen to their stories and recount their history. It is really a trip by water that resulted in a vast travelogue.

America is a big country, with a million different places and people and histories, and this book is like it. It is a big book (and a pretty big price too, by the way) that has something for everyone, probably too much for some. There are over 500 pages spotted with unusual and arcane words, endless trivial and significant notes in passing, exhaustive firsthand information about each of the waters they traveled (and clear maps), deep philosophical thoughts , clear statements about Indian issues, too much about the crew and their meals and chitchat, important environmental information and concerns, and much more, all held together loosely by a very unusual boat trip.

Anybody who reads this book will learn a lot and should come away impressed by the writer. On top of that, I enjoyed it.