Steven Faulkner and his 16-year-old son Justin are paddling and portaging their way along the 1000-mile, 1673, Mississippi discovery route of French explorers Marquette and Joliet. Tired, hungry, lost, lonely, fogbound, canoe-wrecked, unable to make their way in the darkness, they are having an excellent time�??paddling 300 miles along Lake Michigan�??s shore to Green Bay, Wisconsin, then 300 miles up the storm-flooded Fox River, down the Wisconsin River, then turning south for 400 miles down the mighty Mississippi to St. Louis. Waterwalk is a triple journey: a journey into the heart of this continent 300 years ago�??as depicted in Marquette�??s own journal (a translation of which Faulkner found in the basement of a University of Kansas library), a modern exploration of the quiet waterways that weave their way through busy, rush-around America, and a voyage through the heart of a father-son relationship.�??Something in us,�?� says Faulkner, �??longs to go the way of the river, to lie down on those silken currents and swing away from the bank and move along mile after mile. There�??s something there that�??s wild and strong and asleep in mystery . . .And all the while, rivers spoke to us in unfamiliar languages, the winds warned us of unheeded perils, statues came alive and shared their stories, and a father and son tried to learn the language of friend