Aboard a handmade boat, McKinney set out to rediscover the Columbia River of his youth. Combining the river's storied history, rich personal memories, and observations gleaned from the deck of the 16-foot Gander, this record of his voyage offers an intimate view of the great river and of the people who have lived and worked along its shores.

Another Way the River Has collects Robin Cody's finest nonfiction writings, many appearing for the first time in print. Cody's prose rings with a sense of place. He is a native speaker who probes the streams and woods and salmon that run to the heart of what it means to live and love, to work and play, in Oregon. His characters--from loggers to fishers to cowboys to the kids on his school bus--are smart and curious, often offbeat, always vivid. Cody brings the ear of a novelist and the eye of a reporter to the people and places that make the Northwest, and Northwest literature, distinctive.

The story is the Columbia River, not the canoe and me, but I ve learned that friends can t hear me tell about the river until they know why I was out there. This is not an adventure story, though some adventure was unavoidable, and I didn t set out to find myself if I could help it. Nor did I launch the trip with a large point to prove. It was a voyage of discovery, and its telling is the uncovering of surprise on a river I thought I knew Robin Cody, from the prologue
On a June morning in 1990, high up in the Canadian Rockies, Robin Cody pushed his sixteen-foot Kevlar canoe through tall...