'Kayaking Alone' author due in town

"It's sort of strange," he says now, nearly seven years after embarking on his two-month, roughly 900-mile adventure. "It never dawned on me that I couldn't do it."

The avid -- and optimistic -- kayaker prepared for his epic journey for about three months, studying charts, carefully packing, even quitting his newspaper reporting job.

Wednesday night, he'll talk about his travels -- documented in his new book, "Kayaking Alone: Nine Hundred Miles from Idaho's Mountains to the Pacific Ocean" -- at Yakima's Inklings Bookshop.

Along with the narrative of his physically and mentally challenging solo trip, 43-year-old Barenti hopes to give readers an understanding of issues surrounding salmon recovery in the Pacific Northwest. The 244-page book -- his first -- is as much about salmon as it is about kayaking.

"We've been having this big, ongoing debate in the region on salmon and what to do about salmon," he said during a phone interview from his home in Spokane. "I hope the book gives people a good framework to understand that debate."

Barenti, a former Yakima
Herald-Republic reporter and
onetime Zillah resident, worked in the newspaper's now defunct Sunnyside bureau. He covered environmental issues, the Yakama Nation and towns in the upper part of the Lower Yakima Valley from 1999 to 2001. He has also worked at the Idaho Falls Post Register and has taught college-level English and creative writing.

Barenti has been kayaking about 13 years. In May 2001, he borrowed a boat from a friend and embarked on his sometimes lonely and often damp adventure. He didn't seek sponsors for the trip, which he estimates cost more than $500 but "definitely less than $1,000."

He paddled about 20 miles a day through Idaho, Washington and Oregon, interviewing people along the way and camping most nights.

In 13 chapters that are part travelogue, part
environmental history, he describes navigating whitewater, dealing with lockmasters at several dams, and eating ramen noodles and oatmeal from the same pot in which he cooked it, day in and day out. He also recounts paddling through cottonwood forests and basalt-walled canyons and past ponderosa pines, great blue herons, osprey, elk and deer.

He weaves his personal story with those of government programs, Pacific Northwest history and politics, as well as interviews with folks -- biologists, river guides, ranchers, rangers, locals -- he met along the waterways.

* Can't make it Wednesday night? Thursday afternoon, the author will be in Ellensburg, signing books at Jerrol's Book and Supply, 111 E. University Way, from 4:30 to 6 p.m.

If you go ...

What: Booksigning by Mike Barenti, author of "Kayaking Alone"

When: 7 p.m. Wednesday

Where: Inklings Bookshop, 5629 Summitview Ave. in Chalet Place.

Cost: The event is free. The book is $24.95.

For more information, call Inklings at 965-5830, or visit www.inklingsbookshop.com or www.mikebarenti.com.

• The Classified Marketplace
• • Announcements
  • Public Notices
  • Legal Notices
  • Merchandise
  • Yard Sales
  • Animals
  • Finance

• Newspaper Ads
  View All