NONFICTION - June 18, 1995

KAYAKING THE VERMILION SEA: Eight Hundred Miles Down the Baja by Jonathan Waterman (Simon & Schuster: $22; 223 pp.). When Cortez and the conquistadors arrived in the New World in 1519, the Maya would later write, “everything fell apart. They brought fear, and they came to wither the flowers.” To wither the flowers-- it’s a blood-chilling description of the Spanish invasion of Mexico, and the best line in a travel book that seems otherwise short on material. It’s tempting to say that Jonathan Waterman, a mountain climber and author of numerous books about Alaska, resembles a fish out of water while describing a two-month, two-kayak trip down the Sea of Cortez, but that’s not the case; the bigger problem is that Waterman’s 1-year-old marriage to his traveling companion is falling apart. He hopes the journey will “cure” his over-encumbered life and rocky partnership, but it doesn’t, naturally. Waterman is good on the history of Baja, on the sea life encountered--the dolphins shot through the head by net fishermen, the jumping needlefish whose teeth easily sever monofilament line--but much of the book is devoted to wary, fragmentary, too-personal rumination. After a while the narrative simply grows tiresome, as does Waterman’s account of the journey proper, for the natural scenery seems to vary only slightly from day to day. If “Kayaking the Vermilion Sea” doesn’t leave much of an impression, it’s due more to the author’s emotional turmoil and choice of subject matter than his literary skills.