My Paddle to the Sea: Eleven Days on the River of the Carolinas * Drifting into Darien: A Personal and Natural History of the Altamaha River

Abstract

Among the most familiar forms of American nature writing, river narratives have been a dependable subgenre since Henry David Thoreau plied the Concord and Merrimack. Writing about Southern rivers, though, invokes a different heritage. Canonical works like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Life on the Mississippi, along with Deliverance, offer an alternative headwater for contemporary authors. Indeed, the current offerings from John Lane and Janisse Ray are buoyed by their inheritance not only as literary sojourners but also as southerners. In the broadest sense, both authors blend natural and human history with narrative to produce works similar to others devoted to a single river or watershed. Lane's My Paddle to the Sea chronicles a rainy eleven-day river trip down the Santee River system, beginning near the author's home on the Lawson's Fork and continuing on the Broad, Congaree, and Santee, finally terminating at the Atlantic. Ray's Drifting into Darien opens with an abbreviated account of her eight-day exploration of the Altamaha with a group of other naturalists and wilderness enthusiasts. The majority of Ray's book, however, is devoted to small essays on topics related to the river's watershed: the health of Georgia forests, a reconsideration of DeSoto's route through the state, the collection and identification of endangered mussels, to name a few.