Where the Falcon Flies

Looking out his porch window one spring morning, Adam Shoalts spotted a majestic peregrine falcon flying across the neighbouring fields near Lake Erie. Falcons migrate annually from southernmost Canada on the Great Lakes to remote arctic mountains. Grabbing his backpack and canoe, Shoalts resolved to follow the falcon's route north on an astonishing 3,400-kilometre journey from Lake Erie to the Arctic. Along the way, he faces a huge variety of challenges and obstacles, including storms on the Great Lakes, finding campsites in the urban wilderness of Toronto and Montreal, avoiding busy commercial freighter traffic, gale force winds, massive hydro electric dams, bushwhacking without trails, dealing with hunger, multiple bear encounters, and navigating white-water rapids on icy northern rivers far from any help. In his signature style, Shoalts roams as much across space as he does time, winding his way through a stunning diversity of landscapes ranging from lush Carolinian forests to lon