Rafting down the Mississippi: Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin to Dubuque, Iowa, summer 1970.
Prairie du Chien. Prairie of the Dogs. Did those early French explorers mean coyotes? From Wisconsin, the three of us were going to paddle all the way to New Orleans. Michael had already written the mayor of New Orleans informing him of our journey. When we got there, we would sell all our gear, board a Greyhound Bus and come back via Chicago to Milwaukee. Dan was an expert cameraman. Maybe with some good shots and Michael’s journalism, we could sell the trip to National Geographic?
We were all about 20 years old, and had just finished working at a Milwaukee Boy’s Club summer camp. Dan was small and had suffered polio but he was wiry. Michael, from Boston, was the only one who knew how to sail. Our craft was a rubber survival raft. We had water, tents, and river maps compiled by the Army Corps of Engineers). It was a lovely late summer’s afternoon when we waved goodbye to Michael’s concerned father. We paddled slowly out to the middle of the river. We estimated we mainly had to steer; the current would do the rest! We had visions of easily doing 100 miles per day. Already visions of Spanish moss, alligators and big levees filled our minds.
After several hours of exhausting paddling, we had only gone a few miles and had to beach on a sandbar. We pitched tents and lit a fire. Bullfrogs croaked in the night; there were a few dying fireflies. Now and then, a huge fish splashed on the moonlit surface. The river was calm. There was an omen: a huge garfish lay dead on the sandbar. Michael had never seen one. I showed him its long jaws and sharp teeth. ‘Multiply this big fish by ten and you get the size of a good southern Alligator Gar. Just imagine an alligator becoming a fish.’ He swore with his Boston vowels that he wouldn’t go swimming in Louisiana!
The next day was much the same. We sat in the current and waited for the river to propel us. Old Man River had other ideas. The big river had been thoroughly tamed by years of wing dams and a system of locks that had slowed the river to a crawl. Well, we would go as far as we could in two weeks: Illinois, Missouri, maybe even Arkansas or Tennessee. Memphis would do but we would even settle for St. Louis!
Michael quickly got the flu so Dan and I did all the paddling. We argued, we sulked, and we retreated into our own shells. The irritants were maybe over food preparation, whose turn to do the chores and so on. We put ashore in Cassville, which Michael insisted on calling Crassville to the natives.
Like all journeys, there we some lovely scenes and memories: the sound of Canada Geese flying south in their exquisite V patterns; learning to avoid the massive river barges, learning to read the river a bit; being on the river at dawn when the water was pink or red in the sunrise.
Leaving Cassville back to our campsite, Michael rigged up a bed sheet and taught us to sail against the wind. We got back in minutes rather than the hours paddling we expected. We talked about politics and our plans for the future. Michael would be a politician or journalist or both, Dan would be a photographer. I had no real goals beyond university but had always thought of travel and writing.
One dawn, a Great Blue Heron caught fish right in front of our fire.
We took turns swimming in the river, even in the deepest current. The huge bluffs of Iowa loomed overhead like natural skyscrapers. We got into a rhythm. Michael felt better. We were all leaner and more tanned. We joked about New Orleans and imagined Mardi Gras. We talked about Huck Finn and Jim and felt their presence around our campfire at night. The weather was good.
On our final day on the river, the sky turned a ghastly grey-green. The wind picked up. We were frightened for the first time. We always stuck to the middle of the broad river (more than a mile wide in places) and feared the waves and wind would keep us from getting ashore. Then we saw it, miles away down a straight channel, a tornado making its way north! Somehow, we managed to get to shore and tie all our gear down, weighing it down with rocks.
The tornado roared like a runaway freight train, heading in the direction we had just paddled from. We spent the night hungry, huddled in the brick toilet block of a camping site. We then walked into the nearest town and phoned Michael’s dad. He fetched us in a few hours: the same distance we had covered in two weeks! The journey ended far short of our goals and dreams but we were safe and could soon laugh about it. Later, we only remembered the highlights.
That was 53 years ago! We kept in touch for some months then went our separate ways. I have not been able to re-establish any contact with Dan or Michael, even via the internet. I have no photographs, only memories. However, I can’t read Huck Finn without a sense of poignancy and nostalgia. The song “Moon River” can bring tears to my eyes although I am probably really crying for my lost youth and freedom. The river carried us for two magical weeks on a journey done by French explorers and Jesuit missionaries three hundred years earlier. In a sense, I am still paddling down that mighty river, under a full moon: young, lean and free.