Wilderness Waters: Adventures Paddling & Fishing the Wilderness by Steve Osterholzer

Have you ever paddled wilderness waters? Does your soul long to explore remote lakes and oceans by canoe or kayak? Within Wilderness Waters, you’ll experience the magic, beauty, ruggedness, and challenge of some of North America's most stunning liquid landscapes.

They’re stories of adventure. In Alaska, you’ll feel the terror of nearly losing loved ones to frigid waters and the danger of an aggressive grizzly bear stalking directly toward you and your children. Your days on remote Minnesota lakes will be filled with battling monstrous pike and smallmouth bass, straining through roaring whitecaps, and suffering fierce hailstorms. At night, you’ll shout with joy at The Northern Lights and be silenced by the cry of a wolf pack on the move. You’ll quietly glide through curtains of mist as steaming geysers belch on the Yellowstone shoreline and laugh as the author and his wife are nearly swept backward into the rapids without paddles.

You’ll ask and find answers to challenging questions: Why go to the wilderness, and what will you find there? Physical challenges will test you: mile-long portages with heavy loads, freak snowstorms, and battling fierce headwinds will reveal you’re far stronger than you think. Ever wonder what it’s like to spend 21 days entirely by yourself? During the author’s solo trip, you’ll appreciate wilderness more fully as you silence the chatter of the modern world. Your senses will come alive: your eyes drinking in a sunrise the color of melted orange sherbet, your tongue tingling with the rich taste of freshly caught walleye, your ears filled with the haunting cries of a loon. You’ll be challenged to ask hard questions of yourself: Who ARE you, and what were you made to DO?

To journey into the wilderness of water is to journey into the wilderness of one’s own soul. May your adventure be as bold and beautiful as the world around you.