Would you fly all the way to Sweden, build a 7,000-pound raft out of logs, and spend three days floating down a foreign river—all just to grab a nostalgic bit of the California dream? That’s exactly what writer Chris Colin did, along with his wife and two thoroughly San Franciscan kids. The family’s experience, captured in Colin’s “Why Not Live Like This?” in Alta Journal’s Issue 33, is both inspiring and surprising, if not a little bit terrifying. Colin joins Alta Live to regale us with his family adventure, detail the beauty of life aboard the SS Rosie, and explain what floating down a Swedish river has to do with life in California. Don’t miss this one!

About the guest

Chris Colin’s work has appeared in The Best American Science and Nature Writing. He produces the podcast Longer Tables with José Andrés.

Here are some notable quotes from the event:

  • On how this trip came to be: “Years ago, this Danish friend of mine, Henrik, he just mentioned in passing, ‘Oh, there’s this cool thing that they do in Sweden.’ He said it as though everyone knew this. You go to this river, the Klarälven—the longest river in Sweden—and they kind of turn you loose with a bunch of logs. You build your own raft, and then you live on it for a little while. My brain just kind of leaked out of my ear. It was like I just needed to do that. I made a note to wait until the moment in life where my kids were old enough that it seemed quasi-plausible, and I just filed it away. When we reached that age and it seemed slightly less insane, I started looking into it.”
  • On the raft fantasy: “There’s a lot of us who have a raft fantasy. I don’t know what it is—I spent a lot of time trying to figure this out. Some of it obviously has to do with Huck Finn. Some of us came of age hearing about Kon-Tiki and Thor Heyerdahl, but I think it’s even more primal than that. That’s my hunch. I think there’s something about floating on something that you made on a river, away from civilization, sort of at the whims of the current, that sort of grabs people at some core level.”
  • On slowing down: “I still think if you can get out on a river, get yourself out on a river. Borrow a canoe from a friend or something. The Russian River is one of our closest rivers [in the Bay Area], and it’s not hard to change your reality and your pace pretty quickly on a river.”

Check out these links to some of the topics brought up this week.