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I'm looking for some suggestions for a good book to take up on an upcoming solo trip to the park. Looking for something outdoorsy, adventurous, etc.
I'm thinking of this (The Revenant):
The movie looks pretty good and the story of Hugh Glass is certainly an interesting one (at least to me).
Any other suggestions for something to read in a cozy tent by the crackling wood stove?
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Honestly...
Joe Lavally & The Paleface in Algonquin Park (by Bernard Wicksteed) is an excellent read. You'll love it even more cause you know all the places and routes they talk of, while tripping. And its a fun read.
other than that, I also really like Algonquin Story (by Audrey Saunders Miller). What a fantastic book. Just a bunch of Algonquin stories, told in chronological order.. again, especially fun cause you know of all the places they speak of.
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The Incomplete Anglers
A semi-fictional tripping story written by the author while wind-bound for days on Dickson Lk.
As per the above suggestions, familiar places and locations, and makes me desperately want to trip to "the forks" someday!
Going to check out the other suggestions! Anyone read "The Last Guide"? Been trying to track that one down.
"Along the Trail" by Ralph Bice would be another great read to have along.
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Get some Jack London short stories. Nothing beats reading about the old Yukon while toasty in your hot tent.
As he turned to go on, he spat speculatively. There was a sharp, explosive crackle that startled him. He spat again. And again, in the air, before it could fall to the snow, the spittle crackled. He knew that at fifty below spittle crackled on the snow, but this spittle had crackled in the air. Undoubtedly it was colder than fifty below— how much colder he did not know.
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Dangerous River by R M Patterson
about his adventures on the Nahanni 90-100 years ago.
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I read the Last Guide recently. I think I ordered it from someone here. Or that may have been the Incomplete Angler and I got LG from Amazon.
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Canoe with the Cree is a good one
Any of the Grey Owl books.
Hap Wilson's The Cabin.
Along the Trail with Ralph Bice
Wolf Country - John Theberge - Algonquin wolf study
All of Aldo Leopold and John Muir
Fire in the Bones about Bill Mason
Devil in Deerskins
Tom Thomson Artist of the North
The Wild Truth
A Walk in the Woods
Walden and others by Thoreau
I tend to read books subject specific prior to and during trips, on my iPhone. Hiking before hiking trips, Algonquin before Algonquin, etc. It seems to deepen the connection to the place or the event.
Last edited by My Self Reliance (11/09/2015 7:08 pm)
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Great ideas so far guys, thanks!
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Most will have already read Sigurd Olson who wrote during the fifties and sixties IIRC... the mystique and attraction of wild places in The Lonely Land, The Singing Wilderness and others.
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There is magic in the feel of a paddle and the movement of a canoe, a magic compounded of distance, adventure, solitude, and peace. The way of a canoe is the way of the wilderness and of a freedom almost forgotten. It is an antidote to insecurity, the open door to waterways of ages past and a way of life with profound and abiding satisfactions. When a man is part of his canoe, he is part of all that canoes have ever known.
Sigurd F. Olson
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A Nineteenth-Century Algonquin Adventure
by James Dickson
How would it have been, can you imagine, canoeing through what is now Algonquin Park back in the 1880s?
James Dickson, who knew the Algonquin highlands better than anyone, first published this now-classic book in 1886 under the title Camping in the Muskoka Region. His account describes a canoe trip from Lake of Bays up Oxtongue River then through the chains of lakes now plied each year by thousands of Algonquin Park adventurers. Writing in a charmingly quaint style, Dickson provides vivid descriptions of wild scenery and abundant wildlife, rounded out with detailed instructions for paddling birchbark canoes and cooking meals in the manner of the 19th-century bush camp.
Between 1878 and 1885 the author had explored the Algonquin highlands extensively as a surveyor for the Ontario government and while these surveys were an intended prelude to agricultural settlement, Dickson and others recognized the real potential of the region was recreation. Indeed, James Dickson is considered one of the “fathers” of Algonquin Park because of his central role in establishing Ontario’s most famous park in 1893.
Much of the territory Dickson travelled was part of the last remaining island of virgin wilderness on the Algonquin highlands. Just a few years later lumbermen moved in — notably the Gilmour company, as recounted in When Giants Fall: The Gilmour Quest for Algonquin Pine. Dickson’s narrative is historically all the more valuable because it portrays this pristine natural setting as it existed prior to logging.
Last edited by Barbara (11/10/2015 10:36 am)
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Looks like I have some books to buy to pass the winter..! 
Any of Kevin Callans books are a good read as well.
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Barbara, thanks for the link to Muskoka Books. I've already added several to my cart!
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