On a frigid day in March, Kathryn “Kaki” Burruss, 77, and her husband, Billy, 80, snuggled inside their tent and reminisced about their more than half a century’s worth of adventures canoeing all over the United States. The couple was on a reunion camping and hiking trip with Kaki’s three sisters, Jackie Cole, Marvine Cole,…

Nainoa Thompson did not set out to rewrite history. He just wanted to go for an adventure. But he accomplished both. Decades later, he’s now the most famous person in Hawaii and an icon to seafaring people around the world. Along the way, he learned a few things: Intense preparation surmounts risk. The riskiest action…

Using a paddle to guide my canoe through the rapids of the Allagash River in northern Maine, I thought of those who had passed through that area of unspoiled nature before me. The indigenous Penobscot tribe gave the 65-mile waterway its name, which means “bark stream.” In the 1840s dams were built to facilitate shipping…

State Archaeologists on Nov. 2 dredged up the oldest water vessel in Wisconsin history from the bottom of Lake Mendota. A dugout canoe carved from a single tree was found remarkably well preserved under 30 feet of water. The boat was first located in June 2021, and this month, archaeologists from the Wisconsin Historical Society…

A relic from America’s colonial past was recently pulled up from the Chattooga River in South Carolina earlier this summer. The remnants of a dugout canoe, possibly of Native American origin, is the second such boat of that age to be found in the river—the first was 17 years ago in 2004. The canoe could…

TOKYO—Benjamin Savsek won Slovenia’s first gold medal in the men’s canoe slalom on Monday after barreling down the white-water course in Tokyo almost four seconds ahead of his nearest rival. Lukas Rohan from the Czech Republic took silver with Germany’s Sideris Tasiadis, who finished runner-up in 2012, getting bronze. Savsek paddled through the difficult course…