Читать книгу Canoeing with Jose онлайн

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I was irritated by this insight, but I also knew that Kocher was right. He and I had been on enough expeditions to understand the screaming agony long-distance canoeing produces in the mind and body, and the overwhelming impulse to quit. I had to get far enough away so that José wouldn’t have a lot of choices when he inevitably realized that paddling 35 to 40 miles a day was truly torturous.

Back at Midwest Canoe, Hal cleared paperwork from his desk and scribbled out my invoice. Then—after I had explained the situation with José, my insane itinerary, and my inability to come to terms with a starting point for the expedition—he set me straight. “You’re not Sevareid,” he spat. “You’re not some teenage kid with nothing else to do. Who are you anyway?”

When I told him I was a graduate student at the University of Minnesota, Hal unleashed a tirade on the state of modern literature. It was “self-indulgent,” he complained, and only reflected “the failure of our society to create original thinkers.” I was astonished that this grumpy man who built and repaired canoes was so passionate about literature.