Paddling The Tennessee River: A Voyage On Easy Water (Outdoor Tennessee Series) - Softcover

Trevathan, Kim

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1572331445 ISBN 13: 9781572331440

Publisher: University of Tennessee Press, 2001

Synopsis

In late August 1998, Kim Trevathan and his dog, Jasper, set out by canoe on a long, slow trip down the 652 miles of the Tennessee River, the largest tributary of the Ohio. Trevathan wanted to experience the river in its entirety, from Knoxville’s narrow, winding channel, which flows past rocky bluffs, to the wide-open waters of Kentucky Lake at its lower end.

Over the course of the five-week voyage, Trevathan rediscovered the people and places that made history on the Tennessee’s banks. He crossed the path of the explorer Meriwether Lewis along the Natchez Trace, noted the sites of Ulysses S. Grant’s Civil War battles, and passed Hiwassee Island, the spot where a teenaged runaway named Sam Houston lived with Cherokee Chief Jolly.

Trevathan also came to know the modern river’s dwellers, including a towboat pilot, two couples who traded in their landlocked homes for life on the river, a campground owner, and a meteorologist for NASA. He placed his life in the hands of U.S. Army Corps of Engineers lock operators as he and Jasper navigated the river’s nine dams.

Paddling the Tennessee River is a powerful travel narrative that captures the river’s wild, turbulent, and defiant past and confronts what it has become―an overused and overdeveloped series of lakes. But first and foremost, the book is the story of a man and his dog, riding low enough to smell the water and to discover the promise of a slow river running through the southern heartland.

About this title

About the Author

Kim Trevathan is professor emeritus of writing at Maryville College. He is a freelance writer and the author of three other books on water voyages, including most recently Liminal Zones: Where Lakes End and Rivers Begin.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Tennessee Press
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1572331445
• ISBN 13: 9781572331440
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 3
• Number of pages: 320