The complete title is Border Country - The Northwoods Canoe Journals of Howard Greene, 1906-1916 by Martha Greene Phillips.

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I got this book from my sister this past Christmas.  She knows I’m paddler and she’s a kindred spirit in that respect, having done several Quetico trips with me.  I didn’t even know of this book and when she discovered it, she knew it was for me.  It is new and was just published in 2017.  The overall quality of the book itself is impressive – hard cover, cloth bound, heavy, acid free paper.  Each page has the feel of two or three regular book pages.  It is amazingly well done by the University of Minnesota Press.  They have also reprinted Sigurd Olson’s works, as a point of perspective. 

The book is a compilation of the journals Howard Greene kept in the early 1900’s of remote, extended canoe trips he took with his family and friends.  It is not a series of stories, but a historical account of canoe travel in northern Wisconsin, Minnesota and Ontario, several in the area we now call the Boundary Waters/Quetico.  It is a very personal and very real account of a very regular guy from Milwaukee – not the writings of some famed explorer or expeditionary and I think that is what makes it so easy to connect with Howard and ‘the gang’ – he’s just like any one of us canoe trippers today – minus the Kevlar.  It is easy to see oneself right there with ‘the gang’, especially when you’ve paddled some of the very same waters as they did.

Back in his day, there was no BWCAW, no Quetico and much of the areas were still inhabited by aboriginal peoples and logging and mining were common pursuits in the area.  This gives you look at how much of a wilderness this was not, at that time and before major conservation began.  It predates Olson, Muir, Oberholtzer and others like them that fought to preserve the areas like that.  Automobiles were a new novelty and most travel was by train and horse carriage. Just getting to their put in would be an adventure for us, but the common mode they thought nothing of. 

Their mode of water transportation was the wood/canvas canoe and they even purchased and paddled a birch bark canoe on one journey.  Of interest in modern technology of the day, one member had a ‘canoe in a bag’ folding canoe they dubbed ‘the tub’.  He only mentions the manufacturer of one canoe as a Kennebec, though those familiar, will recognize several Old Town canoes in the photographs. 

There are many pictures and maps that he made in his travels interspersed throughout the book.  Quality maps of the area did not exist at that time and route finding was as much discovery as it was navigation.  His camera gear, while quality for the day, is probably more than most of our outfits for an entire trip, taken on glass plate films and such.  Sleeping bags existed then, but were not in common use.  And their provisions – they would regularly bake bread!  In one journal, there is packing list of their outfit for Canadian Customs from 1911 that included 30 pounds of bacon and 50 pounds of Oleomargarine – that’s more than all the food I take for four on a 10-day trip! 

If you love paddling and canoe tripping, you owe it yourself to add this book to your paddling library.  The fact that the journals still exist and that one of his daughters recognized what a treasure they are and had the insight to share them with the world through this publication is an amazing gift you should take advantage of.  Spend some time reading this while it’s hard water season - you will be glad you did. 

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