Inspired by her own spirit of adventure, and the stories of her native coastal ancestors, Irene Skyriver celebrated her 40th year of life with a solo kayak voyage, paddling from Alaska to her home in Washington’s San Juan Islands.
Join Skyriver at Lopez Center on Saturday, Oct. 7 from 3–6 p.m. for a book launch party for “Paddling with Spirits: A Solo Kayak Journey.” She will read excerpts and sign copies of her book. Food, drinks, song and merriment will abound. All are welcome!
“Paddling with Spirits: A Solo Kayak Journey” interweaves the true account of her journey with generational stories handed down and vividly re-imagined. Beginning with her great-grandmother’s seduction of an Indian fighter turned trader, and following her ancestors on both sides through oil booms, orphanages, wartime romances, dance halls and cattle ranches, Paddling with Spirits dips like a paddle itself between the stories of those who inspired her, and Irene’s own journey down a lonely coast. As she encounters harsh weather, wolves, bears, whales, and the wild beauty of the coastal waters, she reflects on her own life and on the lives of the many people she meets along the way, before her final triumphant return home. Paddling with Spirits is a wild, brave, and thrillingly original adventure.
“In this book the long, restless boundary between ocean and land becomes a road of discovery for an intrepid paddler traversing the liminal space between present and past, between the visible world and the unseen resonance of her ancestry. With ‘every stroke of the paddle away from shore,’ Skyriver plunges deeper into telling the legacy of her familial links to this coast. Her account alternates between stages in her pilgrimage through the water, and fictionalized stories from her kin. In prose that sparkles with bold strokes, this story is told as the journey is taken: with every splash of Skyriver’s muscular observation, story, and thought, the reader glides forward over glittering waters,” said Kim Stafford, author of “Having Everything Right: Essays of Place.”
“The interweaving of the past and the present form a complex and beautiful fabric that carries this story beyond that of a simple family history,” said Steve Brown, past curator, Seattle Art Museum and Pacific NW Coast Native collection.
A Washington native, Skyriver was born in Port Townsend and raised in the country. She moved with her children and horses to Lopez Island in the San Juan Islands 38 years ago, where she lived off-the-grid and as a single parent, spent most of her early years growing a garden, and letting the outdoors and beaches be her family’s sanctuary, inspiration, and teacher. Skyriver organized parades for Earth Day, International Women’s Day and was one of the early founders and shapers of the Summer and Winter Solstice celebrations, as well as Passage Rites ceremonies for youth.
A poet, dancer, and a singer of traditional Earth Circle Songs, writing came later for her, mostly because one has to sit down to do it! Skyriver received a full fellowship to Fishtrap Writers Conference, based on a submission from “Paddling With Spirits.” This was followed by a grant to finish the work. In between involvement in community, her market garden, and milking goats, she plans to sit down and accomplish these new writing endeavors and is at work on her second book, a novel.
