Chronicles the author's 140-mile canoe odyssey through New York's Adirondack wilderness, retracing the 1880s travels of outdoorsman George Washington Sears After visiting the Adirondack Museum in Blue Mountain Lake, New York, the author became intrigued with George Washington Sears (pen name Nessmuk), a late 19th-century outdoors writer who at age 61 made a 180-mile canoe trip in the Adirondacks. His canoe, the Sairy Gamp, was just nine feet long, weighed only 10.5 pounds, and was the object of attention along his route. Jerome decided to duplicate the canoe (hers became the Sairy Damp ) and with her husband retrace Sears's 1883 voyage. This book is the delightful tale of their month-long journey in 1990. Jerome blends information from Sears's diary entries and other writings with the history (cultural and natural) of specific lakes or lodges and accounts of people (often famous), creating a fascinating portrait of what has happened since Sears passed by. The result is an informative, readable adventure whose history and environmental lessons are taught well. Essential for regional collections and highly recommended for all other collections. - Nancy Moeckel, Miami Univ. Libs., Oxford, Ohio Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. In 1883, in a teeteringly light canoe, 61-year-old nature writer George Washington Sears made a 532-mile round-trip through almost the length of the Adirondacks. In 1990, editor and writer Jerome, no longer a girl herself and by no means seasoned to the rigors of outdoor life, set out to duplicate Sears' adventure in a Kevlar nine-footer modeled on Sears' Sairy Gamp . Her book is a chronicle of her trip--and also a history of American settlement of the Adirondacks, a synoptic biography of Sears, a comparison of the two, century-apart canoe journeys (which shows that the trips' environs have not changed all that much), and a miscellany of good advice to novice canoeists (e.g., "Donning dry clothes in the evening provides instant attitude adjustment"). HarperCollins touts the passage as a "voyage," but Jerome doesn't pretend it's much more than an excursion, for her husband (in a bigger canoe) accompanied her, and the riverside is lined with tourist cabins. Her honesty may lose her those readers who fantasize risking dismemberment in white water but gain her those looking for encouragement to try something exciting but within their own capacities. Roland Wulbert Nearly a hundred years after a 19th-century writer paddled and portaged 266 miles through the Adirondack wilderness in a nine- foot, ten-and-a-half-pound canoe, writer/editor Jerome, inspired by that very same canoe seen in a museum, makes and records a similar journey. In the summer of 1883, George Washington Sears (pen name Nessmuk), a leading contributor to Forest and Stream, a major New York sporting weekly of his day, traveled the length of the Adirondack river system in the canoe which he called the Sairy Gamp (after a Dickens character). Raquette Lake, Blue Mountain Lake, Long Lake, Upper Saranac Lake, Tupper Lake, Upper St. Regis Lake, Eagle Lake, Lake Placid: in those days, these waters were public highways and canoeists could travel hundreds of miles without impediment. Stagecoach lines, railroads, and steamers brought hordes of tourists to the large resort hotels that developed along these lake shores--the boom era of the Adirondack ``camp'' was in its heyday. In the latter part of the 1880's, however, the wealthy began to buy up the wilderness and restrict access to the public. The wilderness that Jerome paddles through on her 180-mile trip is in many ways the same and in many ways changed. Most of the original hotels have by now burned down, but development is still a heated issue in these parts. Jerome uses her adventure as an opportunity to ponder history and nature along her route. For instance, the drowning that was the basis of Theodore Dresiser's novel An American Tragedy took place in these waters. And at all times, she employs Sears' experience as a sort of spiritual pointer. Part journal, part biography and part historical account of an era when the great Adirondack wilderness camps were at their height, Jerome combines outdoor adventure, natural history and personal insight in a satisfying manner. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.