“I take a stroke and lean back, gazing up into the jet skies, bejeweled by the moon and the galaxies of stars. The hull glides in silence and with such perfect balance as to report no motion. I sit up for another stroke, now looking down as the blades ignite swirling pairs of white constellations of phosphorescent plankton. Two opposing heavens. ‘Remember this,’ I think to myself.” Few people have ever considered the eastern United States to be an island, but when Nat Stone began tracing waterways in his new atlas at the age of ten he discovered that if one had a boat it was possible to use a combination of waterways to travel up the Hudson River, west across the barge canals and the Great Lakes, down the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico, and back up the eastern seaboard. Years later, still fascinated by the idea of the island, Stone read a biography of Howard Blackburn, a nineteenth-century Gloucester fisherman who had attempted to sail the same route a century before. Stone decided he would row rather than sail, and in April 1999 he launched a scull beneath the Brooklyn Bridge to see how far he could get. After ten months and some six thousand miles he arrived back at the Brooklyn Bridge, and continued rowing on to Eastport, Maine. Retracing Stone’s extraordinary voyage, On the Water is a marvelous portrait of the vibrant cultures inhabiting American shores and the magic of a traveler’s chance encounters. From Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where a rower at the local boathouse bequeaths him a pair of fabled oars, to Vanceburg, Kentucky, where he spends a day fishing with Ed Taylor—a man whose efficient simplicity recalls The Old Man and the Sea—Stone makes his way, stroke by stroke, chatting with tugboat operators and sleeping in his boat under the stars. He listens to the live strains of Dwight Yoakum on the banks of the Ohio while the world’s largest Superman statue guards the nearby town square, and winds his way through the Louisiana bayous, where he befriends Scoober, an old man who reminds him that the happiest people are those who’ve “got nothin’.” He briefly adopts a rowing companion—a kitten—along the west coast of Florida, and finds himself stuck in the tidal mudflats of Georgia. Along the way, he flavors his narrative with local history and lore and records the evolution of what started out as an adventure but became a lifestyle. An extraordinary literary debut in the lyrical, timeless style of William Least Heat-Moon and Henry David Thoreau, On the Water is a mariner’s tribute to childhood dreams, solitary journeys, and the transformative powers of America’s rivers, lakes, and coastlines.
The Mandate of Stone Jones - Never Give Up," is a compelling 2-part story chronicling his life. The content in Part I is secular in nature, and it focuses on his past from childhood in Philadelphia to the many years he lived in Europe. Stone also believes there is a connection between his tenacity to succeed and the countless obstacles that were placed in his path to derail his goals. It was during that search for spiritual truth that he found the peace, the strength, and the ability to overcome all odds by placing his trust in God. Once he allowed God to become the driving force in his life, everything else started to come together after that.
High up on the mountainside, the Great Stone Face looks down at the people who live in the valley. Some day, the story runs, a great man will come to the valley, and his face will look just like the Great Stone Face. When will this man come, and who will it be? Will it be the great soldier, the statesman, the man of commerce, or one of the other visitors to the valley? One person who wants to know the answer is Ernest, who has lived in the valley all his life. Year by year, Ernest has come to know the Great Stone Face as a friend. Now he is waiting for the end of the story. When that end comes, it is the one he least expects.
The Grand Canyon National Park has been called many things, but home isn't often one of them. Yet after years of traveling the globe, Nathaniel Brodie found his home there. Steel on Stone is Brodie's account of living in the canyon during the eight years he worked on a National Park Service trail crew, navigating a vast and unforgiving land. Embedded alongside Brodie and his crew, readers experience precipitous climbs to build trails, dangerous search-and-rescue missions, rockslides, spelunking expeditions, and rafting trips through the canyon on the Colorado River. From Brodie's chronicles of tracking cougars and dodging rampaging pack mules to adjusting to seasons spanning triple-digit heat and inaccessibility during the winter, we learn about the life cycle of this iconic park, whose complex ecosystems coexist with humans, each one seeking a deeply personal experience, and the subcultures and hierarchies that form deep within the canyon. Following in the steps of naturalists like John Wesley Powell and Edward Abbey, Brodie reveals the park’s nearly two million square miles. He deftly weaves histories and tall tales from canyon aficionados living and dead into his own story. Over time he comes to realize that home is not always a place on a map but instead is deeply defined by the people we encounter, including those who finally call us to move on. Steel on Stone is a love letter to the Grand Canyon and those who have given years of their lives to work its trails so that we may understand and enjoy it today as the transformative landscape we seek.
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