A Clear Look at a Tamed River

VOYAGE OF A SUMMER SUN: CANOEING THE COLUMBIA RIVER by Robin Cody (Alfred A. Knopf, $23, maps).

Right at the Canadian border, where the Pend Oreille river hits the Columbia, Robin Cody fell overboard and was swept through the Waneta Rapids and into the United States while holding on to the back of his canoe. “Which,” writes Cody with typical deadpan, “was really interesting.”

Cody’s splashdown is a rare moment of drama in a straightforward account of a 2 1/2-month canoe trip from the river’s source in Canada to its mouth at the Pacific Ocean. His take on this journey is refreshing. “Voyage” is neither an environmental treatise (800 miles of the river are backed up behind 14 dams) nor a search for his own soul. It’s about the taming of a river and, from water level, what that taming has meant.

Cody was once a writer for the Bonneville Power Administration, the bureaucracy that sells the river’s electric power, and he’s intrigued by dams. Sometimes the forces of man rival the forces of nature. He understands that the Northwest’s prosperity is based upon dam-backed energy and irrigation systems. But he’s no apologist. His eulogy to the death of the river’s salmon and salmon-dependent Native American cultures is heartfelt. “Change a big river,” he writes, “and you’ve changed the world.”

Cody is a clear writer with strong descriptive powers. A bear, watching him paddle by one day, “bolted up the bank with startling big grace, like a cat-quick sofa.” His self-deprecating style and outward focus tend to disguise the magnitude of his journey. Let’s give him some credit: The guy did paddle a 16-foot canoe 1,200 miles.

“Voyage” tells us a lot about the Columbia Basin’s history and geology but remarkably little about Cody. Only when he finally approaches Portland does some internal dam break, offering us a brief flood of personal feelings. The brevity is a blessing. Not that Cody isn’t interesting; it’s just that the river is much more so.

*

THE SMITHSONIAN GUIDES TO NATURAL AMERICA: THE PACIFIC: HAWAI’I, ALASKA, text by Steve Barth, photography by Richard A. Cooke III, Alaska text and photography by Kim Heacox (Smithsonian Books, $19.95, paper; maps and photos). THE SMITHSONIAN GUIDES TO NATURAL AMERICA: THE SOUTHWEST: NEW MEXICO, ARIZONA by Jake Page, photography by George H.H. Huey (Smithsonian books, $19.95, paper; maps and photos).

Photographers rightfully get equal credit in these guides. Everything looks great. Soft morning and evening light flatters the most barren plateaus. In a section about an area of southern Arizona called “The Arid Zone,” most photos show water.

There’s some information about human and geologic history, but the texts mostly discuss trails, gardens, parks, reserves and wilderness areas--usually in glowing terms. These are once-over-lightly guides that make you want to travel, not tell you how. There are no phone numbers or trail maps. Phoenix is just a point of orientation. You’ll find fiord in the Alaska index, not Fairbanks.

Coming up in this series: Northern New England, the Northern Rockies, the Pacific Northwest and the Atlantic Coast and Blue Ridge.

Quick trips:

ART IN FOCUS: PARIS by Linda Bolton (BulfinchPress, $12.95, paper). Here’s the setup: You want to hit the city’s artistic highlights, but you’ve got minimal time and maximal confusion. How does one choose from the enormous banquet of art in the City of Light? “Art in Focus” is supposedly the answer. Each city in this series (Paris, New York, London and Florence) gets just 106 pages to strut its stuff. And regardless of its magnitude, each artwork (painting, sculpture or building) is allotted one page with a black-and-white photo and an accompanying block of text. This is equality gone amok, a guide for the taste impaired. In the Paris version, as you’d expect, the Louvre tops the list with 29 works represented (in no particular order). There are no surprises. Of course.

BACKROADS OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA by Bob Howells (Gulf Publishing Co., $16.95, paper; maps and photos). Eighteen driving itineraries from the Santa Ynez Valley in the north to the Anza-Borrego Desert in the south. Not really back roads, these are just pleasant country drives. Most fall in the 75- to 150-mile range, though one, following pieces of old Route 66 out to Barstow and back, hits 270 miles. Each tour is allotted a few pages of description--a little history, a little about the locals. Nothing special.

THE WILD WEST: A TRAVELER’S GUIDE by Michael McCoy (The Globe Pequot Press, $16.95). The premise and the place is broad enough: 19th-Century stuff in 20 Western states (including Missouri). The stuff includes everything from festivals, rodeos and re-enactments to museums, historic sites and state parks to B&Bs;, ghost towns and cowboy poetry readings. Geography imposes some order on this all-inclusive listing, but it’s generally a jumble. Hey, it was the “wild” West.

*

Books to Go appears the second and fourth week of every month.