A Kayaker's Guide to Lake Champlain. Exploring the New York, Vermont & Quebec Shores
by Catherine L. Frank and Margaret D. Holden

Burlington Free Press, Aug 2, 2009
By Candace Page
Free Press Staff Writer

Authors Cathy Frank and Margy Holden are not thrilled with the constricting title of their new book, "A Kayaker's Guide to Lake Champlain," and they are right.

This is not a book for kayakers or canoeists or boaters alone. Anyone who lives in our lake-dominated landscape can enjoy and learn from Frank and Holden, two women who never ask an idle question -- "Hmm, wonder what kind of rocks those are?" or "Why are there concrete piers off the Bridport shore?" -- without tracking down the answer.

Rich with anecdote, history and keen observation, "A Kayaker's Guide" soars above standard guidebooks like a great blue heron rising from the lakeshore. The book's subtitle, "Exploring the New York, Vermont and Quebec Shores," comes a bit closer to capturing the authors' experience. Over the course of six years, the women paddled every inch of the Champlain shoreline. They recorded what they saw and what they later learned about what they saw.
Each of the book's 50 chapters describes one day's paddle; the two authors take turns at narration. Each chapter comes with an excellent navigational chart, a table of information about distances, a list of launch points and a brief route description. So yes, this is a practical guide to the physical geography of Lake Champlain.

But each chapter goes on to describe the authors' paddling trip, complete with scary weather, startling encounters with turtles, eagles and muskrats, and a consistent tone of joy in discovery.
This guidebook doesn't just tell you how and where to go -- it inspires you to get up and acquire some kind of water-based transportation to go out and see for yourself. I read the book for pleasure over several nights, dipping in as for a refreshing evening swim.

Frank's description of a paddle along the steep New York shore put it immediately on my must-do list:

"At the Palisades," Frank writes, "I drop back to see if I can get a picture of the entire rock face as Margy paddles towards it for scale. I have to move so far back that she becomes too small to photograph. She cools herself under a narrow waterfall easily 100 feet high ..."
And this from Holden's description of paddling the mouth of the Missisquoi River: "We are enclosed in a swampy, dreamy serenity of trees, reeds and water ... a watery world with uncertain definition between lake and shore. There is constant movement. Swaying tree branches overhang the reeds that are also in motion, rocked by the water and blown by the wind."

Frank, in particular, has a knack for visual imagery: A school of feeding fish "jump around us like popcorn in hot oil" while the reflection of evergreens in crystal-clear water "gives the illusion that the trees are covered with zebra mussels."

Rather than interrupt the narrative, the authors provide separate breakouts on the history and natural history of the lake. Their subjects range from oldtime smuggling and iron mining on the New York shore, to pithy summations of the lake's environmental problems -- problems made more vivid by their tales of paddling through a noxious algae bloom in Missisquoi Bay and spaghetti-like milfoil south of Crown Point.

I have lived on the Champlain shore most of my life; I've written at length about the lake as part of my job. So I'm embarrassed to admit how much I learned from Holden and Frank: the name (calcite) of the soft white rock sandwiched between the lake's ubiquitous layers of shale; a state park I've never heard of (Round Pond, on the South Hero shore) ; the place (Crab Island) where soldiers killed in the Battle of Plattsburgh were buried.

My guess is that other old Lake Champlain hands also will find as much entertainment and enlightenment in a "Kayaker's Guide to Lake Champlain."
Editor's note:
Page's coverage of Lake Champlain for the Free Press is cited in the book. Meet the authors Margaret Holden and Catherine Frank will be featured speakers and formally launch their book, "A Kayaker's Guide to Lake Champlain," at the Small Watercraft Festival in Ferrisburgh.