Disappearing Destinations

Informationen zum Autor Kimberly Lisagor and Heather Hansen Foreword by Pico Iyer Klappentext A beautiful and memorable look at some of the most gorgeous endangered places on the planet. Machu Picchu is a mesmerizing! ancient Incan city tucked away in the mountains of Peru! but it is rapidly being worn down by the thousands of feet treading across its stones. Glacier National Park is a destination long known for the stunning beauty of its ice floes! but in our lifetimes it will have no glaciers due to global warming. In the biobays of Puerto Rico swimmers can float in a sea shimmering with bioluminescent life! but sediment being churned up by development is killing the dinoflagellates that produce the eerie and beautiful glow. And in the Congo Basin of Africa! where great apes roam freely in lush! verdant rainforests! logging is quickly destroying the vast life-giving canopies. These places-along with many others across the globe-are changing as we speak due to global warming! environmental degradation! overuse! and natural causes. From the Boreal Forests in Finland to the Yangtze River Valley in China! 37 Places to See Before They Disappear is a treasure trove of geographic wonder! and a guide to these threatened destinations and what is being done to save them. NORTH AMERICA   United States   Appalachia   Summer was clinging to southern West Virginia halfway through September. It was still warm, but the really stagnant days had passed. There was a breeze, and the hardwood trees along the Coal River's banks had already begun their autumn show. Bill Currey and his buddies were moving their five kayaks slowly downriver on an eight-mile stretch in the Kanawha Valley. Beneath a baby-blue sky they bobbed and weaved through some light white water, occasionally pulling over to fish in some of the deep pools that form behind bedrock boulders. Currey, now with a snowy beard, has been plying the Coal River and its tributaries since his boyhood days in St. Albans, thirteen miles from the capital, Charleston. As president of the Coal River Group, a nonprofit focused on cleaning up and promoting the river, he is so thrilled to unveil his river that he's willing to divulge some of its secrets. But not too many. "That's a great fishing float. On an eight-mile trip we were catching, on any given day, about a fish per mile," he says. They reeled in a smallmouth bass, a walleye, and some Kentucky spotted bass. ("When you catch one, they get up on their tails and dance," says Currey.) "I can't be saying any more about fishing there or my buddies'll shoot me."   The Coal is made up of three branches-the Big, Little, and Lower Coal rivers-each stretching more than thirty miles. The Big and Little legs have their headwaters up over three thousand feet in the sandstone ridges of the Coal River, Cherry Pond, Guyandotte, and Kayford mountains. The Coal River in all drains about eight hundred square miles of West Virginia's rugged, rolling mountains. When the tributaries from those peaks come together, the river is at first rough and narrow but then opens up into smooth water that would welcome any beginning paddler. All one hundred miles of the river are included on the Walhonde Water Trail. The Walhonde was recently designated as the only river trail entirely within the state boundaries of West Virginia. It's the result of four years of faith and backbreaking labor by the Coal River Group. There are nineteen marked put-in sites along the river, and no matter which section you pick, you're in for a taste of legendary Appalachia. "On the upper ends it's more like a creek where the trees practically envelop it. It's so shady and the water is clear," Currey says. The traffic on the river is so light, and some of the communities so isolated, that river-runners themselves will often become the attraction. "People don't walk outside their back door and see bright-colo...

Détails du produit

• Auteurs: Heather Hansen, Pico Iyer, Kimberly Lisagor
• Edition: Vintage USA
• Langues: Anglais
• Format d'édition: Livre Broché
• Sortie: 08.04.2008
• EAN: 9780307277367
• ISBN: 978-0-307-27736-7
• Pages: 400
• Dimensions: 129 mm x 203 mm x 23 mm
• Thèmes: Vintage Departures; Vintage Departures
• Catégorie: Voyage > Récits de voyage