Inside Passage: Living With Killer Whales, Bald Eagles, and Kwakiutl Indians

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Summary: A Thing of Beauty
Review: My favorite place in the whole world is the Inside Passage to Alaska and I've now found the best book describing what it is like to live there in the wild heart of it all. Michael Modzelewski has crafted a masterpiece!

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Summary: Inspiration
Review: What a story !! This mans an inspiration. Thanks Michael Modzelewski. Stephen, Seattle

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Summary: A Life Enhancing Adventure
Review: When I first read INSIDE PASSAGE it touched my heart. After reading it cover to cover I sat and stared at it for over an hour -- then read it again. The book felt very personal -- I didn't think I'd ever share it with anyone. Even when my best friend came to town a few days later. We talked about INSIDE PASSAGE but I wouldn't give him the book. Shortly after that Bill's grandfather was put in the hospital. I spent several long weeks in the ICU with Grandpa (14 years of friendship earns family status) fulfilling my promise not to leave him alone. When I ran out of things to reminise about I began to read INSIDE PASSAGE to him. For over a week the doctors had been telling me Grandpa was unaware of anything and incapable of any response. He responded to this book. Despite the respirator, heart monitors, IV's, etc. he heard every word. He would open his eyes, sometimes reach over and take my hand and try to smile. I wouldn't trade those hours for anything. Grandpa died less than an hour after I finished reading him INSIDE PASSAGE. I know his last hours were spent sharing a great adventure; not dwelling on the pain and fear of dying. He slipped away after a squeeze of my arm -- he had tears in his eyes. We buried him -- with a copy of INSIDE PASSAGE and the well-worn copy of ILLUSIONS that he gave me 14 years ago. In it he had highlighted the lines: "The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each others life. Rarely do the members of one family grow up under the same roof." What INSIDE PASSAGE gave Grandpa and me will be cherished; and the author has made himself a member of this family forever.

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Summary: It changed many things in my life
Review: When I read this book, I was so fascinated by this vivid, ambitinous,sensitive writing.When I read, it minimated all my problems in daily life, and I felt so near to the earth, to the animals, described here.
I have been in Alaska, and I could feel everything what is written in this book-you can experience a trip into your soul.There are so many fine things in nature, we can learn from the native people, the animals.This book is more than a guide to learn about this, its a start for a new thinking in your life.I will not miss it.

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Summary: Follow Your Bliss
Review: When the great mythologist Joseph Campbell was asked how to lead a successful and happy life, he responded: "Follow Your Bliss!" That's exactly what Michael Modzelewski does with INSIDE PASSAGE. His passion for nature and wildlife literally shines off the page. Like the northern wilderness, itself, his writing is multi-dimensional, encompassing natural history, scientific fact, myth, fascinating personalities and inspirational thought. This book will stand the test of time: A classic in the tradition of Transcendentalist writers like Emerson and Thoreau.

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Summary: A Poet At Work Here!
Review: While visiting in Vancouver and wanting to move from Aspen, his "false Shangri-la," Michael Modzelewski met Will Malloff and was invited to visit his island in the Inside Passage, the spectacular waterway between Seattle and Alaska. "Come up and see it," Malloff said - "It's two hundred miles north and about a hundred years back." These words cast a spell on Modzelewski. The next day he hopped on a northbound ferry and eventually made his way to Swanson Island, where he stayed for 18 months. Modzelewski discovers that Malloff is a "human brontosarus, the type of man who went extinct a long time ago," and decides to study him. His apprenticeship includes lessons in woodworking, chiropractic, blacksmithing, music, hypnotism, boat building, and philosophy. When winter comes Malloff leaves Modzelewski as the island's caretaker and the lessons get tested; challenges met as the author merges with his environment and learns the ways of killer whales, giant octopus, salmon, bald eagles, bears, wolves, deer, and cougar who share the island and surrounding waters. With spring, Modzelewski finds a challenge in the return of human visitors. Local fishermen, Kwakiutl Indians, yachtsmen from the south and kayakers from the north stop at Swanson to visit or barter. George Dyson, made famous by Kenneth Brower in "The Starship and The Canoe," comes from Alaska in his baidarka kayak en route to Vancouver. Dyson's philosophy is that "If a wave or wind does you in, it just might be your fault. You may have been living in such a manner that the Harmony was broken." Thus Modzelewski's search for harmony in relationship to people, wildlife and nature becomes a second "inside passage" that the reader tours directly with him. The hardest relationship for him is to balance that of his urban self vs. his "savage" self. The author writes, "On a wilderness island, to a great extent you relinquish control. Nature rules. It forms the questions that you must answer to survive." Modzelewski writes with the disciplined pen of a poet yet occasionally runs wild with the enthusiasm of a lover finding the Eden of his dreams. "Inside Passage" provides the reader with life-changing, multilayered adventures. A must-read!

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Summary: A New John Muir
Review: With words of heartfelt passion and exuberance the author brings the Inside Passage to Alaska totally alive. Not since the soaring prose of John Muir have we had a man to match these mountains, ocean, northern lights. And Modzelewski goes just as deep as Muir, realizing that it is Nature that gives life form; and both authors fill those forms with spirit as magnificent and inspiring as a multi-hued, prismatic glacier! I gush over very few books, but this is definitely one deserving of sky-high praise.