Deep Woods, Wild Waters

Douglas Wood is an artist, musician, educator, wilderness guide, and award-winning author of several books, including A Wild Path, also published by the University of Minnesota Press. He lives with his family in a log cabin on the Mississippi River in Minnesota.

"Inviting as a dip in a cool northern lake on a sizzling summer day, Deep Woods, Wild Waters is a true gift. Douglas Wood’s memoir conveys the haunting beauty of the Northwoods with a naturalist’s eye. He recounts his life as a guide, musician, and writer-boy, father, and grandfather-and beckons readers to step away from modern, fast-paced lives to slow down, breathe, and discover the cosmos in a grain of sand."-Mary Casanova, author of Ice-Out   "I felt I was traveling right alongside Douglas Wood while reading his evocative life stories. The depth of his emotional honesty is powerful and gives us a peek into why he creates such fine work. This book is a treasure."-Jim Brandenburg, photographer and author   "In Deep Woods, Wild Waters, Douglas Wood has written more than a beautiful memoir. With the eyes of an artist, the soul of a poet, and the easygoing humor of a backwoods guide, he takes us on a journey through our shared landscape of mind and spirit, pointing out some of the major landmarks and encouraging us to go out and explore."-David Backes, author of A Wilderness Within: The Life of Sigurd F. Olson   "Deep Woods, Wild Waters is the most authentic and rich of Douglas Wood’s writings yet. It is as fluid as the water he paddles, as grand as the endless skyline he sees before him, and as poetic as the sound of the breeze in the pines and the symphony of the birds of a morning. Doug finds himself in this book. His images and stories urge you to find yourself in the only place it can truly be done-in nature. With Deep Woods, Wild Waters, Doug has, thus, risen to the pantheon of the great nature writers."-Don Shelby, explorer and veteran journalist    "Douglas Wood has become much more than an outdoor writer, he has become an icon of the North Woods, and through his travels, paddles, books, and lectures he has moved thousands of people. He continues that tradition in this book. Like Sigurd Olson, he takes the reader along, he contemplates and shares, and in the end the knowledge belongs to the reader, and the desire to paddle, explore, and be outside is the true gift-the inspiration-of his writing."-Mike Link, author and former Director of the Audubon Center of the North Woods   "While most of us are left speechless by gilded ripples on a moonswept lake, the mesmerizing call of the loon, or the crimson glow of embers, Douglas Wood has the words and weaves them well. He puts in poetic prose what we’ve all wanted to articulate during those magical moments of epiphany in the natural world. Doug refers to his as a ‘lucky life.’ We all share in that great fortune through this fine book."-Paul Schurke, polar explorer, author, and environmental educator   "Douglas Wood's memoir is a classic. It's a book readers will want to return to again and again. There is a lovely flow and order to it all, but a reader can start at the beginning, the middle, or the end-the essays are that good. In fact, ‘The Stars of Sandfly’ alone is worth the purchase of the book."-Larry Dolphin, former Director of the J.C. Hormel Nature Center "This is a book meant to be read aloud – to be shared and enjoyed, like a campfire tale."-Great Lakes Echo   "Many people are touched deeply while discovering the forest, streams, lakes, wildlife and plants that inhabit our North Woods. Very few, though, can take you there through words. Douglas Wood, musician and author, is one of the few."-Lake Superior Magazine   "In Deep Woods, Wild Waters, Wood gathers a lifetime of aphorisms and lays them carefully like kindling to make sure that every anecdote sparks into epiphany."-Sierra Club   "Our state can certainly be proud to be home to this master musician and storyteller."-Union-Times

• Contents Acknowledgments  Introduction The Little Lake Echo Island to Lost Bay The Secret Forest Streams of Consciousness The Gospel of Rocks Time Wasted Back to the Garden Into a Smaller World The Great Day That Dawns Backcast The Tao of the Canoe Turtle Stories A Poem of Flowers By the Fire The Last Sleep-Out The Promontory The Art of the Tale: The Cold Demise of Coffee Cup Charlie Distant Thunder Haunts of the Manitou The Wild Wind Marshes of Doubt Swinging the Coffee The Quest Finding the Fawn Gumption The Stick Throwers The Club Hunting for Something Ethereal Where Red Squirrels Live Changing Skies Base Camp The Landscape of Time Hello to Life Downstream The Stars of Sandfly The Education of a Grandfather All One Trip Afterword