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The Bowron Lakes - British Columbia's Wilderness Canoe Circuit

A Lifetime Journey - by Chris Harris

Review by Harold Rhenisch

Master outdoorsman Chris Harris has spent a lifetime as adventurer, guide, and photographer. What began thirty-five years ago as a canoe trip into the British Columbia wilderness, has become a journey into the heart of what it means to be human. The list of master outdoorsmen is small. The list of those who have turned their adventures into art is smaller yet. This select group, our guides into our relationship with the earth, includes Sir Richard Burton at the source of the Nile, Lewis and Clark on the Columbia River, Peter Matthieson in the Himalayas, Bruce Chatwin in Patagonia, Roderick Haig Brown on the steelhead rivers of Vancouver Island, and now Chris Harris in the Bowron Lakes.

Few people have known the Bowron Lakes as Harris has. None have ever photographed it like this. Here is a photographic record of a man's discovery of his self in the deepest wilderness. Out of the physical and emotional challenges of more than 100 trips through the Bowron Lakes and the wilderness around them, alone, in the company of close friends, with large groups of clients, and even on skis in winter, Chris Harris has redefined his relationship to wilderness and photography. The Bowron Lakes: A Lifetime Journey will change yours. Its transformative combination of images and shared thoughts and stories is a gift brought from long exploration and deep reflection and contemplation. Land, water, light, animals, and the journey itself, are presented here as none have done before.

Each of Chris Harris' trips into the Bowron Lakes has been the first, because each one was made with new eyes and new heart. Chris Harris' passion has been to share the beauty, harmony, and splendour of the Bowron Lakes. His photographs capture that passionate and inquisitive mind at moments of discovery, reflection, and wonder. The Bowron Lakes: A Lifetime Journey does for canoeing what Isaac Walton did for fly-fishing: it makes it into art.

"The land we call British Columbia takes the breath away. It hits us so powerfully that words and pictures can't do the experience justice. They can only point the way. After thirty years of trying to paint the history of this land in words, I picked up The Bowron Lakes: A Lifetime Journey, and found images that do more than point the way. They are there."

Harold Rhenisch, author of Out of the Interior: the Lost Country.