This retracing of Thoreau’s 1839 boat trip sounded promising, but I really didn’t enjoy it. If my copy had been a library book I would have returned it unfinished, but since I had received it as a gift (at my own request) I felt obligated to finish it. By the second chapter I was already sick of Leff’s monotonous repetition of the phrase “deep travel”, not to mention the wooden – and, I suspect, made up – dialog he stuck in the mouths of his traveling companions, who must have been terribly embarrassed by the way he portrayed them.