Intro

“Go simple, go solo, go now” was Audrey Sutherland’s mantra, and the single mother of four lived by it, swimming the meagerly charted and rugged north coast of Molokai in 1962, towing a raft with supplies and sleeping at night on wild and empty beaches. Later, at age fifty-nine, she began a series of solo paddles through the waters of Alaska, returning to the north almost every summer, eventually covering more than eight thousand miles by the time she put away her boat at age eighty-two.

I don’t recall Sutherland’s rationale for going alone. My small collection of her books has passed into new hands so others might enjoy them, and my notes from them are sparse on the matter. I suspect she enjoyed her own company best. She was a determined woman, with strongly held beliefs (she famously kept a long list of skills children should learn by age sixteen), and she didn’t let a job or any other person stand between her and