March 27, 2008

On Wednesday, April 2, at 7:30 p.m., Waucoma Bookstore will host Mike Barenti at the Hood River Hotel, 112 Oak Street, for a reading and book signing.

Barenti will be reading from his book “Kayaking Alone: Nine Hundred Miles from Idaho’s Mountains to the Pacific Ocean” ($24.95, University of Nebraska Press).

Kayaking Alone is Barenti’s account of his two-month, 900- mile solo kayak journey from Idaho’s Salmon River to the Pacific Ocean. Barenti intertwines the narrative of his adventure navigating several rivers in the Columbia Basin with the ecology, history, and politics of the Pacific salmon.

The stories of the river guides, rangers, biologists, ranchers, American Indians, and dam workers that Barenti meets during his trip reveals their different views of the economy, the environment, the breaching of dams on the river, and of salmon.

Hood River was one of Barenti’s stops during his kayaking journey.