Northern Byways and Other Essays From The Road

By AgathaO and Pleun Bouricius

Northern Byways invites you along on a journey of?discovery, a "windshield survey of the lay of the land itself across the thinly populated expanses that most of us Americans and Canadians proclaim to love."Follow the Dutch/American author and her Canadian/American traveling companion across the United States to British Columbia, and back through Canada. For five weeks, the pair sticks to the most northerly byways of both countries, camping in their 2008 Toyota Tacoma.As the trip becomes their destination, they examine the landscapes they encounter, aided by on-the-fly internet research. Who or what is this place named after? How did it get like this? Would we come back here? What are those small widgets by the side of the road? Will we make it up this mountain when the clutch goes? What do people here live on and whose dreams created this outcome? What does "Reservation," mean, exactly? Are fenced in bison wildlife? Where is this town going? How long has this river been damned?The resulting compelling and richly illustrated essays are built around personal observations, studded with history, science, and information about what is happening in the backyards of our countries today. You will come away amused, informed, likely with questions about where we are going with the vast riches we have inherited from our forebears.The slim volume is broadly accessible and inviting, but writer and photographer AgathaO, in real life historian Pleun Bouricius, has meticulously documented her work and dedicates it to the people, many of them volunteers, who make our history and knowledge available online. "The collective activity in creating Wikipedia and keeping it up to date," she observes, "may be one of the most democratic and subversive actions people can undertake." The book shows how valuable the internet can be to anyone wishing to learn.Making its way across the continent and back, suffused with commentary on the way we live and work, this is travel writing at its most expansive - a treasure for the armchair traveler and afficionado of Canadian/American landscapes and roads alike.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0998961132
• ISBN13: 9780998961132
• Release Date: January 2024
• Publisher: Swift River Press
• Length: 115 Pages
• Weight: 0.64 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.5" x 0.3" x 8.5"
• Age Range: 12 years and up