Still Upright & Headed Downstream

If adventure is activity on one's personal frontiers, then John Lane has spent his life on those frontiers. He enters them through rivers rapid and meandering: through prose, poetry, teaching, and social justice. He takes us off waterfalls in Mexico, down his beloved Chattooga River, on urban creeks renewed by communities, in swamps capturing alligators, and in wounded landscapes through which piedmont rivers flow, cleansing themselves and all who travel them. His message is clear: you can go home again into nature to rediscover what has been lost and found repeatedly. -Gordon Grant, Director of Education, North Carolina Outward Bound School

John Lane combines the prose and poetry of a gifted writer with the insights of a dedicated teacher and environmentalist, and the love of being on the water of a lifetime paddling enthusiast. His writing exhibits his love of being on the water whether in a kayak on a class IV/V river, poling or route finding in a tandem wooden canoe on a low-water river, exploring the suburban rivers around his Spartanburg, SC, home, or catching alligators by hand from the bow of a canoe at night. Serious paddlers will recognize John as one of their tribe. -Payson Kennedy, pioneer paddler and founder of the Nantahala Outdoor Center

If any author comes close to cracking the code to the enigma of why folks are drawn to the black-rock dangers and white magic of fast, free-flowing water, it is John Lane. -Richard Bangs, founder of Sobek Expeditions

"A writer who would obviously paddle first and theorize later, Lane prefers the river speak for itself." -The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Lane artfully applies his poetic sensibility to the river itself. -Publisher's Weekly

From the viewpoint of both whitewater paddler and poet...mastering the tricky intersection of water and rock. -Wall Street Journal