A Boundary Waters History: Canoeing Across Time - Paperback

by Stephen Wilbers (Author)

Teasing out the history of a place celebrated for timelessness--where countless paddle strokes have disappeared into clear waters--requires a sure and attentive hand. Stephen Wilbers's account reaches back to the glaciers that first carved out the Boundary Waters and to the original inhabitants, as well as to generations of wilderness explorers, both past and present. He does so without losing the personal relationship built through a lifetime of pilgrimages (anchored by almost three decades of trips with his father). This story captures the untold broader narrative of the region, as well as a thousand different details sure to be recognized by fellow pilgrims, like the grinding rhythm of a long portage or the loon call that slips into that last moment before sleep.

Author Biography

Stephen Wilbers has published more than eight hundred columns on effective writing in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the Orange County Register and other newspapers. He has collected some of those columns into two books, Writing for Business (winner of a 1994 Minnesota Book Award) and Writing by Wilbers. He earned his BA at Vanderbilt University and his MA and PhD at the University of Iowa, where he wrote a history of the Iowa Writers' Workshop for his dissertation. He was a visiting Fulbright fellow at the University of Essex in Colchester, England. At the University of Minnesota, he directed Student Academic Support Services in the College of Liberal Arts before serving as associate director of the Program in Creative and Professional Writing. A proud member of the Loft Literary Center since 1981, Wilbers served as the Loft board chair from 2007 to 2009. He and his wife, Debbie, live in Minneapolis and have two grown children, Eddy and Kate. For additional information, visit www.wilbers.com.