Voyageur Skies

VOYAGEUR SKIES chronicles spring, summer, fall, and winter in Voyageurs National Park through Don Breneman's stunning photographs, while University of Minnesota meteorologist/climatologist Dr. Mark Seeley explains the effects of weather and climate on the shaping of the park's pristine landscape. How has the climate in Voyageurs National Park changed in recent years and what does this mean going forward? Climate change is already impacting Minnesota's water resources. While celebrating the speactacular beauty to be found in Minnesota's only national park, VOYAGEUR SKIES facilitates wider discussion and understanding of implications for the future if the quality of the state's water resources is to be preserved. Written for general readers and also for classroom use, this book will be the centerpiece for educational programs to be offered jointly by the University of Minnesota Water Rescources Center and Extension.

"Steeped in the history of the French-Canadian voyageur journeys in the early 1800s in North America, Waters Like the Sky is a story of a well-educated teen boy who despises his fancy schooling and longs for a more adventurous life. Andrae's fate changes when a letter with a royal seal arrives. He discovers he has French noble blood. He is part of a family in France, has a brother he's never met, and an enemy who wants him dead. Determined to locate his brother and set things right, Andrae sets out to search for Denis in the only way open to him--becoming a voyageur. Unaccustomed to the hard voyageur life, Andrae uses his only advantage--his education. He fights to earn the respect of his fellow voyageurs and gains many life lessons on his quest to track down his brother. Will he be able to reach Denis before the evil one the natives call the windigo finds him first?"--Page 4 of cover.

Nute's best-selling book portrays the indefatigable French-Canadian canoemen, whose labors were vital to the fur trade and whose influence reaches us through the colorful songs, place names, customs, and legends they left behind.

Boatman's Quarterly review: "It will keep you on the edge of your easy chair. You'll want to read this Amos Burg book by Vince Welch more than once, that's for sure." CLICK HERE to download the first 45 pages from, The Last Voyageur (Provide us with a little information and we'll send your download directly to your inbox) “What is this thing in me that enables me to leave comforts and a wide variety of entertainments and feel a strange satisfaction wandering down a cheerless and indifferent river, enduring hardships and eating very little and exposed to all sorts of weather . . . tonight even as I sit shivering and listening to the patter of the rain, I see myself in many places all over the world, wandering like a gull on the winds, working with the ideals of Truth and Beauty as part of my vision to bring these things back with me for other people to see.” -- Amos Burg, Yukon River, July 1928 * Amos Burg ran all the major rivers of the West when they still flowed freely and potential danger was just around the next bend * Part early 20th-century history, part adventure, part biography of the West’s first commercial outdoor guide Amos Burg (1901--1986), a native of Portland, Oregon, was the first to complete transits of the free-flowing, undammed Snake and Columbia Rivers by canoe, and in 1938 he became the first to navigate the length of the Colorado River in a rubber raft. In his daring explorations of waterways from the Southwest up through Canada and into Alaska, Burg is considered to be the only person known to have run all major Western rivers from source to mouth. In The Last Voyageur: Amos Burg and the Rivers of the West author Vince Welch, himself a river guide, weaves a passionate and well-researched narrative using extensive material from Burg’s own rich archives. History buffs, paddlers, and adventure readers alike will delight in this remarkable regional history of the larger-than-life Burg, a quintessential man of the American West and one of the last “voyageurs” of North America’s great waterways.

Through a detailed analysis of their unique occupational culture, Making the Voyageur World reexamines the French Canadian workers who dominated the fur trade industry and became iconic images of North American lore.