“I don’t think a person can endure the physical hardship of 2,552 miles of river paddling and not return as a more self-confident person. A solo traveler could not survive the day after day, endless hours of uninterrupted thinking and not return with a more open mind. One cannot witness the natural beauty of the river and feel its timelessness, and not return with a greater sense of wonder. Being on a journey changes a person. It is inevitable.” ~ from One Good Story

When Ron Severs was a boy, his parents managed a marina in East Peoria. He and his brother saved enough money for a little boat and a motor and, writes Severs, “…our summer days were spent exploring the Illinois River, going as far around each bend as the old 15-horse Evinrude and five gallons of gas would take us.”

Nearly 35 years later, Severs’s love of river travel launched him down the Mississippi on a 2,552-mile kayak journey from Lake Itasca to the Gulf of Mexico. He traveled alone, and what he discovered about himself, the river, and the people who live from, on, and along it are the subjects of his new book, One Good Story, published by Minneapolis’s Nodin Press.

Severs, a forester-land manager for the University of Minnesota’s College of Natural Resources, writes engagingly about spending 10 hours a day in the seat of a kayak. He encounters beaver dams, fights dehydration and crosscurrents, and meets an extraordinary bunch of kind and easygoing people.

Severs shares his interior travels as well and imbues his writing with the joy, honesty, and curiosity of a man eager for any discovery about himself and the world.

One Good Story reminds the reader that in the days of jet travel and the Internet, there are still pearl divers and river pilots in our country, and that the mighty Mississippi remains a force to be reckoned with.

Get more info One Good Story is published by Nodin Press (Minneapolis) and is available at local bookstores.