a) Our second great river

THE MISSISSIPPI

After the Danube we began to consider another river venture, this time without language difficulties and the hassle of political problems. The Mississippi seemed an idea challenge and so we settled down to more than a year of preparation and correspondence.

We made an initial approach to the departments of tourism in the ten states through or beside which we should pass and similar bodies in the major cities along the way. Their reactions varied from sheer disbelief and pity to the occasional expression of admiration and envy. On the whole they didn’t seem to take us very seriously. “In the unlikely event of you actually reaching Tennessee …” began one letter from that State, while another from Minnesota asked if we were aware that the Mississippi “is a violent and unpredictable body of water”?

The apprehension from which I was beginning to suffer was vastly increased after reading Jonathan Raban’s Old Glory. He had travelled most of the river in a small power boat and his book might have been written for the deliberate purpose of deterring others from doing anything similar. Actually we were to learn that, while each year the river attracts a number of eccentrics in various vessels from rafts to rubber boats, relatively few travel it by canoe. There is a wealth of lesser waterways more attractive than the ‘Big Muddy’ (incidentally, the title chosen by my wife Sylvie for the book which she was to write about our adventure).

But among the those who were not so discouraging was Mike Cichanowsky, a leading American canoeist and canoe manufacturer, who kindly offered us on loan one of his best touring models. And so towards the end of May, with a slim red 18-foot We-no-nah canoe atop our rented car, we headed north from Minneapolis, driving almost to the Canadian border.

Lake Itasca, set in a bowl fringed by forests of pine and spruce, is generally accepted as the true source of the Mississippi. It emerges quietly from its eastern shore at a place where many are photographed crossing it on stepping stones. Besides this trickle, a sign states that from here the Mississippi winds 2,552 miles to the Gulf of Mexico. In fact, it is a couple of hundred miles shorter as the river engineers cut out a few of its extravagant curves until they found this increased the current and was detrimental to the riverside communities in times of flood. A short distance below the sign, we launched our boat into the water on the first day of our long journey.

The headwaters of the Mississippi form an extensive wilderness area through which in the first four long and quite strenuous days we paddled only 65 miles. There were a few stretches of fast and stimulating travel through minor rapids, but more often we were crossing reedy plains where the sluggish river meandered in a most infuriating fashion round countless bends of 180 degrees or more. Far more delaying were the beaver dams which spanned the river with tedious regularity and brought our journey to a complete if temporary halt. They were sturdy structures, sometimes 3 ft. high over which we had laboriously to haul our loaded canoe.

But it was the wealth of wild life that provided us the greatest pleasure in those early days. In our first hours of paddling, an osprey just ahead of us briefly hovered before plunging for its prey; on our last day we disturbed a bald eagle which rose above our bows almost dropping its catch into the boat. Muskrat frequently swam the river, and turtles, which come in a variety of sizes, flopped off logs at almost every corner. And at one of our camps, coyotes howled long into the night. One of our camps we shared with four Americans in two canoes whose method of breaching the beaver dams was to hurled themselves at them at the greatest possible speed, then see-saw themselves over to the other side: not a technique we dared try with our heavy loads. When we finally admitted we were going all the way to the Gulf of Mexico, they were beside themselves with envy.

We had earlier decided to canoe only a token section of the headwaters, Actually because of some unavoidable delays in Minneapolis, we put in some distance below the city, half way down Lake Pepin. It’s not really a lake but a widening of the river where, for 20 miles or more, it is three miles or so across, bounded by limestone bluffs. It was here that we were first to encounter a delaying factor, and a potential hazard that was to bedevil many of our days. It occurred on our second day of travel. After heading against a gentle breeze, we turned a headland to meet the full force of a wind that was lashing the lake into a fury of big waves and white caps. We promptly knelt to keep the weight low and slowly battled across a mile or so of open water to the shelter of Lake City’s Marina. It was hardly less settled the next day, but we hugged the shore for the remaining miles of the lake.

In the 670 miles between Minneapolis and St. Louis, there are 29 locks and dams built to provide a minimum 9 ft. channel for commercial vessels. The dams, along with their associated dykes, hold back the water to form a series of great pools several miles across, usually studded with numerous islands. In the high winds, from which we suffered frequently, we sought their shelter, scuttling, sometimes rather fearfully, from one island to the other.

On the down-river side of the dams there were extensive areas of sloughs. These thread through the Mississippi bottomlands, a lace-like network of minor channels winding in the most involved manner through forests of cottonwood and silver maple, oak and willow. To enter the maze we usually had to portage over a dyke. It was always worth the effort for, once afloat on the other side, we were in a tranquil silent world – silence, that is, except for the sounds of the wild life. In places the trees closed in around and above so we paddled through a green tunnel obstructed here and there by low branches and fallen trees. It was like an assault course, and difficult to believe that this was all part of the mighty Mississippi.

I seem to have a particular propensity for visiting a country in what is described as the worst summer (or winter or whatever) within living memory. This visit was no exception. We were already aware that the river was unusually high: up to 10 feet above the usual level we were told. No one in the Midwest, it seemed, could remember a June (and July) when the winds were so strong, the rain so heavy, the floods so frequent, the tornadoes so fearsome. Every day our pocket radio crackled out grave news or warnings of disaster. We had earlier been advised about storms which we were assured would be short and sharp. “If the sky looks strange,” they said, “get off that river.” Sharp they storms certainly were, but they were rarely short. They went on more than half the night (the worst were at night) with unbelievable violence, the storm centre seemingly poised stationary, or gently circulating, right above our camp. Dazzled by continuous lightning, deafened by the thunder, we cowered in our 6 ft. square tent, feeling vulnerable. For only one of the storms did we learn of its measurements. In our camp just north of Lansing in Iowa, 5½” of rain fell in 3½ hours, and it was certainly not the longest or heaviest of our storms.

In Lansing we experienced a spontaneous act of kindness that we were to learn was typical of the river people. After the violence of the storm, we needed a rest from camping. The only motel was some distance out of town. “No problem,” said the young lady at the marina. “Take my car, keep it as long as you like.” What remarkable faith in complete strangers, we thought. But, of course, we were not really strangers. She already knew about us, was no doubt expecting us and waiting to welcome us, as so many were further down the river. It seemed everyone was looking out for the two Brits. in the red canoe.

Nothing much happens in the small towns of the Midwest. There is little crime, violence is rare. The most insignificant event – someone has a party, the sheriff catches a big fish – merits a headline in the local paper. When two British – middle-aged no less – arrived by canoe, now that was really something meriting the full media treatment. Even the lockmasters were looking out for us to telephone ahead the news of our approach. To find ourselves received and fêted as minor celebrities was for us a novel experience but, we must confess, mightily good for the ego. More important, it helped us to make some very good friends.

In comparison with the barge traffic we encountered on the Danube, that of the Mississippi was gigantic. They are called tows but, in fact, they are quite the reverse. The barges, each carrying the load of 60 large lorries, are lashed together and nudged forward by an immensely powerful square-fronted push-boat. On the upper river, they are three barges wide to permit entry into locks, but they are about a quarter-mile in length. Below St. Louis, they are very much bigger. We were invariably asked how we coped with their considerable wash.

In dealing with tows, there are two essential rules, and to ignore either would cause certain disaster. Never be anywhere near their front; it takes them a mile or more to stop. No one ever goes under a tow and comes up again the other side alive. Equally, avoid the stern where the propellers (two or three of them) cause a chaos of churned-up water that forms a trail for a mile to the rear. Keep to the side is the drill. Oh yes, there is still a considerable wash, but it is more like an ocean swell: the waves although big are well-spaced and a canoe nosing into them can ride them with ease.

By observing the proper drill the locks were no problem; only patience was sometimes required. At one lock early in the journey we waited seven hours while three tows were double-locked through. It was an unnecessary wait. Astonishingly they will hold up a 15-barge tow with 22,500 tons of grain while they lock through an 18-ft. canoe that arrives a minute earlier. Once within the walls of the lock chamber we felt absurdly small and it seemed remarkable that all this massive machinery could be put into operation just for our benefit.

But locks could sometimes give us a nasty surprise; we never quite knew what was waiting for us on the other side. On two occasions it was the wedge-shaped end of barges almost blocking the exit, leaving what seemed a perilously narrow gap through which we paddled, anxious lest the undertow drew us beneath them: a slim chance no doubt, but we had been warned too often about undertows to be completely confident. On another unforgettable occasion, at Lock No. 14 just before Davenport, it was turbulence. We had entered unconcerned in deceptively placid waters, but when the lower gates opened it was another story. Through an open sluice next to the lock an immense rush of water fanned out, forcing a procession of waves laterally across our path to crash against the guide wall, rebounding back to meet the next onslaught. It was really rough water and I still marvel that we did not capsize. A houseboat heading for the lock saw our bobbing canoe and promptly turned back.

The unusually high water brought both a benefit and a problem. There was a swifter current and to take full advantage of this we kept between the buoys of the navigation channel, when the wind permitted; otherwise we were forced to seek the comparative shelter of islands and sloughs, or hug one shore or the other according to the wind’s direction.

The problem came when we wanted to camp. The sand bars, which we had been assured were plentiful and would provide idyllic camp sites, had all disappeared and even the few official camp sites were mostly under water. These had been created by the U.S. Corps of Engineers, the body concerned with flood control and the maintenance of the river as a commercial artery. With a few exceptions their facilities were basic, providing only a few tables and benches and a couple of toilets. It was at one of these that we suffered a night of extreme discomfort. We reached it after a particularly long, hot and tiring day to find all but a few square yards were either swamp or glutinous mud. We had no choice but to pitch our tent on this patch of moderately dry land. All would have been reasonably well – if you exclude humidity and mosquitoes – but soon after dusk one of the longest and most violent of our many storms broke over our heads,. Very soon a river was running under the tent, and we spent the remainder of the night in the women’s primitive loo surrounded by all our sodden gear.

But if there were such times of discomfort and even occasional fear and if some days were just a weary, slow slog with a wind that perversely blew always against us, or others seemed an ordeal of heat and humidity, all this was only part of the story, and the part we would quickly forget. The rewards far exceeded the penalties. The weather could be kind and our camp sites idyllic; often we didn’t have to camp at all. Our British accents, together with our unusual venture provided the passport to better things. Sometimes we were urged off the river by complete strangers to be guests in some private home. With the prospects of baths and air-conditioning, we were easily persuaded. And if initially the various tourist departments hadn’t taken us or our venture very seriously, now that we were actually on the river and seemed likely to be so for some time they received us with enormous enthusiasm. Very few British visited these river towns of the Midwest, though some of them have made a place in history. For example there was Nauvoo, the historic centre for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, more familiar as the Mormons; and there was Hannibal, childhood home of Mark Twain. And so we loitered or travelled, rarely staying anywhere more than two nights, never exceeding 30 miles in a day – often much less – until on July 24^th we reached the confluence with the Mississippi of the even mightier Missouri. The next day, in a current now much quickened, we were carried along the waterfront and beneath the soaring Gateway Arch of St. Louis. We had reached the half-way point: the end of the Midwest and the beginning of the steamy South.

The Mississippi south of St. Louis could almost be a different river, so changed is its character. Carrying more than twice its earlier bulk of water, the river now runs fast and free, unhindered by further locks and dams. It also becomes a very lonely river. But of more immediate significance to us, this was where for a few days we were to enjoy a temporary change of transport. In order to experience a further aspect of river life, we became guests on a tow boat.

The Gulf of Mexico was still 1133 miles to the south, but we covered the first 400 on the M/V Robert Crown, pushing 35,000 tons of grain bound for New Orleans. We felt highly privileged and it was a wonderful experience to sit in the wheelhouse and watch Captain Kenny Dae or his pilot manoeuvring this substantial acreage of barges round countless bends of between 90 and 180 degrees. As in the days of Mark Twain, these men are still the aristocrats of the river.

Following this relaxed interlude, we had a couple more comfortable days in Memphis with its Beale Street ‘Blues’ and Presley preoccupations. It was here, incidentally, that a rosy-faced TV interviewer asked if I didn’t consider myself too old to canoe the Mississippi, and on that night’s TV news we were described as “that elderly British couple”! Well, we did feel rather elderly when we left Memphis. For some hours we battled against a head wind in rather choppy waters; it was strenuous work and we made very few miles on that first day on the lower river.

It was indeed now a very different river, a more lonely river. Though earlier we might well have wandered for hours lost in a maze of sloughs, a string of small towns was never very far away. They lay below the bluffs each side of the river, as did the roads and, for much of the way, the two freight lines, the Burlington Northern and the Milwaukee Road. The rumbling and wailing of these trains had disturbed us at many camps. Now we were re-embarked on a river where there was rarely less than 100 miles from one town to the next, and between towns only a primeval wilderness, seemingly devoid of human life or habitation.

This is the so-called Delta lands (not of course the real Delta), much of it a fertile plain of cotton and soya-bean, but none of it visible from the river. The plantations lay far back, perhaps several miles behind the levees, their front line of defence of times of flood. Between us and the levees, it was forest – jungle more like – swamp and oxbow lakes, the haunt of only the occasional hunter or fisherman. The only human links were the tow boats, now much larger and more numerous.

It was also a more meandering river and among new features were the sand bars which stretched far out from the inner shore of the bends, each like a mini-Sahara. They served us well as camp sites, otherwise they were an inconvenience for it required much time and effort to round them, so shallow and still was the water. On the outside of the bend, the river raced and we would often cross to take advantage of the current. But you don’t cross a river like the Mississippi with gay abandon. To be out there in the middle and find something in area like two football pitches, say 50 or 60 barges, bearing down on us was a situation we were anxious to avoid.

And then out of there in the middle, something most curious sometimes happened to the water. It developed additionally an unexpected vertical movement: it welled up in great ‘boils’ or sank down in whirlpools. The combination of movement laterally and vertically caused the surface of the water to take on an ever-changing pattern. When we hit one of these ‘boils’ we might be slung outwards, either into another ‘boil’ or drawn into a whirlpool where the water spun round in ever-decreasing circles. Our puny paddle strokes gave us little control and we felt rather helpless in the grip of some powerful elemental force. After our first experiences of these, though frightening, we learned that the danger was more apparent than actual, and we became more confident.

But the lower river did provide a more real hazard. This was the system of dykes or wing dams, built by the Corps of Engineers to increase the flow in the navigation channel. They were long piles of rock built far out into the water, a bit like a dry-stone wall, but of more massive thickness. If submerged by high water as they were above St. Louis, they posed no threat; we could paddle safely over them. Now they were only partially submerged. They lay like a long line of jagged teeth which, if we were to hit them at speed, would rip open the bottom of the canoe or tip us or do both. Usually we heard the rush of water through the rocks before we could see any turbulence, and it was sometimes a battle between our strenuous effort to paddle out and up river, and the current’s strength drawing us all the time closer to the rocks.

A greater trial in the “Deep South” which reduced much of our enjoyment and pace of travel was the combination of heat and humidity. A daily average temperature somewhere in the upper 90s F is not excessive by the standards of many countries, but when it is combined with a relative humidity of 95% or more, then the climate is distinctly uncomfortable. Long before midday we were enormously dehydrated and drained of energy. We had to seek some shade which was not always easy for often the forest lay far across the sandbar. The nights gave little relief except on the occasions when we had some monumental storms, for with the setting of the sun came the mosquitoes. We were forced to seal ourselves up in the tent and lie listless, as if in a sauna. It was utterly debilitating and we thought longingly of the next town where we could briefly wallow in air-conditioning and overwhelming southern hospitality. However these were few and far between.

In the 500 miles between Memphis and Baton Rouge there are only four riverside towns – Helena, Greenville, Vicksburg and Natchez – but reach took us to their hearts. At each we were most warmly welcomed and lavishly entertained. At each town we were taken to meet interesting people and on sightseeing tours. Civil War battlefields and ante-bellum plantation houses were the chief attractions, and when they talk about “the war” in these parts, which they do as if it ended last year (and still regret losing it), they are not of course referring to any wars of the 20^th century.

After a couple of days enjoying this big-hearted southern hospitality, we would return to the river refreshed and re-provisioned with food and water for another four days. Inevitably the heat and humidity would soon sap our strength but the rewards were enough to make it well worth the discomfort. Occasionally a gentle evening breeze would freshen the air and, with the sun low and the light soft, our sand bar camps would take on a most magical quality. Our tiny tent, with the canoe drawn up on the sand bar close by, formed a small pocket of human life in a world dominated by nature and the river. The heat made sleep difficult and for a long time we would lie awake, listening to the various noises in the night and watching the throbbing dark shapes of the passing tows, their searchlights sweeping across the river. And every morning the complex and varied patterns in the surrounding sand confirmed we had not been alone.

If nature dominated the scene from Memphis, then industry would do so south of Baton Rouge. We already knew from our map that it was an almost continuous chain of oil refineries, chemical plants, grain depots and ship terminals. To escape this industrial drear and the much increased river traffic, we now chose to leave the main river and conclude our journey to the Gulf down one of the old distributaries of the Delta.

Kind friends in Baton Rouge took us and the canoe a few miles to the head of Bayou Lafourche. This is a narrow waterway running to the Gulf through the totally contrasting Cajun country. The Cajuns – shrimpers, deep sea fishermen, growers of sugar cane – are large descendants of the Acadians unkindly expelled by the British in the 1750s from Nova Scotia. Many of the older generation still spoke an archaic form of French. The Bayou, sometimes known as the world’s longest high street, was bounded on each side by a road through a narrow strip of habitation, light industry and cultivation, extending almost unbroken all the way to the sea. At times we were obliged to ask if we could pitch our tent in someone’s back yard. But beyond the cultivation lay a soggy wilderness of minor waterways, floating marsh and cypress swamp penetrated only by the odd fisherman and alligator hunter. One day we went into the swamp with a remarkable lady who called the alligators to her boat and fed them with chicken.

Because it is such a swamp-dominated land, the Cajuns have developed their own canoe-type vessel. It is called a pirogue and originally was hollowed out from a tree. These intensely boat-minded people greeted us with enormous enthusiasm. Few outsiders had ever canoed the Bayou, certainly no British, and they waved and shouted at us from the banks; it was like a royal parade. “Where y’all come from?” they yelled. “From Minnesota,” we shouted back, but they just laughed and thought we were joking. “Where y’all going?” “To the Gulf,” we replied, and now for the first time we could say it with confidence.

After some days of Cajun hospitality, we were transported to New Orleans. It was there beside someone’s Cadillac in the hotel garage of the Royal Sonesta, that we “moored” our canoe for the last time. It was September 20^th, the last of our 77 camps – and undoubtedly the most comfortable.