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Fully aware that his mythical home-place might have vanished forever into memory (or at least into sad disrepair), Gary Geddes set out to discover his roots in a 31-foot British sailing sloop, christened the Groais. Those tangled roots wound their way up British Columbia's famed Inside Passage, an ancient sea route of nearly one thousand miles, an often turbulent waterscape where Geddes discovers a vibrant history, livelihoods come and gone, dramatic scenery, and ghosts of the past.
The result of that search is SAILING HOME, a wonderful meditative literary journey that is both a poignant personal memoir and a crow's nest view of the west coast's rich 10,000-year cultural, social and economic heritage.
Despite his seafaring background-Geddes' grandfather was a fisherman who drowned mysteriously off Point Atkinson and his father was a deep sea diver, shipbuilder and salmon fisherman-he knows he is navigationally challenged with nautical experience anchored by raw fear, mechanical ineptness and bouts of seasickness. Setting out with the latest in technology (along with indecipherable charts, an adventure library, and the writings of George Vancouver and Charles Darwin), he soon finds himself at the mercy of a willful boat and an even more headstrong sea. But as he sails through unexpected storms and cotton wool fogs, he discovers that his own past is becoming a strong current in the shifting tides of coastal history.
Lyrical and evocative, this is a book for all those embarking on their own personal journeys, whether they be by water, land or the flight paths of the imagination.
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Kingdom of Ten Thousand Things
FOR THIRTY YEARS, Gary Geddes has lived with his shadow self, an obscure 5th-century Buddhist monk named Huishen, whose legend shanghaied his vivid imagination. Huishen, originally from Kabul, Afghanistan, reportedly sailed from China to Vancouver Island, continuing southward to Mexico. In a...
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Kingdom of Ten Thousand Things
Inspired by the legend of a 5th-century Buddhist monk who crossed the Pacific and visited the Americas, Gary Geddes set out on a journey that took him from Kingdom of Ten Thousand Things takes its title from a Chinese term for the scope and wonders of life—full of adventure, philosophy and...
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