Still nothing in my inbox, North Shore Reading Roundup readers. I even checked my spam. I was hoping for a stray note that had simply taken a wrong turn, maybe wedged between phishing attempts and newsletters I swear I never signed up for. No luck.
I even hoped the missing column in the last edition might spark a small literary uprising. Nothing dramatic. Just a little Lord of the Flies energy in the grocery aisles or a Fahrenheit 451 protest outside the library, minus the fire.
But the North Shore has stayed calm. Not a single missing book column-related riot to report. No one marching down the street with Pride and Prejudice held overhead. No quiet sit-in of readers clutching The Outsiders. Not even one determined soul waving Where the Crawdads Sing in gentle defiance.
So, again, you’re stuck with me and what I’ve been reading. Luckily for adventure lovers, I have a great recommendation.
Last week the North Shore Journal featured Where the Green Light Shines: A Fifty-Year Odyssey from the Boundary Waters to the Far North, and I talked with Duluth author Ryan Rodgers for that story. The book follows Minnesota canoeist Bob O’Hara through five decades of far-north travel, the kind of bold, remote journeys most of us only hear about in passing. Rodgers pieces those routes together through old journals, maps, and the memories of more than a hundred paddlers who traveled with O’Hara over the years. It’s part history, part exploration, part portrait of a man who built his life around one long northern trip after another.
I was halfway through the book when we spoke, which isn’t how I usually like to do things. I prefer to finish a book before I sit down with the person who wrote it. But reading the second half after hearing him describe the research, the old journals, and the sheer amount of digging it took to reconstruct O’Hara’s routes changed how I saw the rest of the story.
I liked the book a lot. It’s careful in a way that shows. Rodgers doesn’t just tell you O’Hara paddled remote rivers. He shows you the work behind understanding those rivers, the maps, the archives, the people who kept notebooks from trips taken fifty years ago. Once I knew how much material he sifted through, I started noticing the choices he made, the way he balanced history with narrative, the way he let the landscape speak without turning it into something sentimental.
The book has a steady, matter-of-fact tone that fits O’Hara himself. It’s full of big journeys, but it never tries to inflate them. It lets the facts carry the weight.
Finishing it after the interview made me appreciate that quiet confidence even more. You can feel the respect Rodgers has for the paddlers who shared their stories, and you can feel the respect he has for the places they traveled. It’s a book built on curiosity and patience, and I found myself liking it more with every chapter.
I’ve started on a book by another local author, which I will share more about in the near future.
In the meantime, I’m still hoping the inbox shows a little life. It has been awfully quiet. Too quiet. The kind of quiet where you start to wonder if everyone has simply wandered off into the woods with a paperback and forgotten to return.
If you’ve been reading something lately and feel like sharing a thought, you can reach me at sarahwritesnsj@yahoo.com. It doesn’t have to be long. It doesn’t have to be polished. It doesn’t even have to be a book you loved. I just enjoy hearing what’s moving through the North Shore these days, what’s stacked on coffee tables, what’s tucked into backpacks, and what’s keeping people company on these cooler evenings.
I’ll keep checking the inbox. Even the spam folder. One of these days, I’m convinced something will be waiting there.
