Paddling the Mississippi

            In five days, I will begin paddling a canoe down the Mississippi River.

I’ll start at Lake Itasca, Minnesota, which takes its name from being the true (ver-ITAS) head (CA-put) of the river, snake my way through a labyrinth of reeds and tall grass, traverse a series of enormous lakes, then wind down to the Twin Cities, where I once lived, by the end of June. Then to the Quad Cities, where I grew up, by the end of July. Then to Hannibal and St. Louis in August, to Memphis and Vicksburg in September, to Baton Rouge and New Orleans and finally into the Gulf of Mexico in October. Source to sea.

I will paddle an average of 15 miles per day in the upper section, known for its system of locks and dams, and 30 miles per day in the lower section, known for its fast water and high levees. I will primarily be alone in the canoe but will be joined by multiple friends and family members for up to a week each. I have a second seat open for anyone interested in joining me.

            In short, this is the what, the where, the when, the who, and the how. Which just leaves the why.

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            When I was little, as young as four or five, I disappeared. Not for long, of course, but it doesn’t take long for a small child to be gone before panic sets in.

My name was called. Hiding places were checked. Neighbors were contacted. Someone even prepared to call the police. This happened a few times before my parents figured out where they’d find me: up on the hill behind our house, just sitting and watching the cars pass on the busy street below.

            I don’t know why my four-year-old self snuck away like this, but I know why I do the same thing thirty years later. I do it because the constructed world that I inhabit feels false to me. This maze of pavement and cell towers—of stagnating wages and soaring stocks—confuses and upsets and exhausts me to the point that I need to escape it for a little while. To go somewhere quiet lest I be stuck in the noise. To go somewhere still lest I be stuck in perpetual motion. To go somewhere wild lest I forget such a place still exists.

            I’ve searched and found these places further and further from where I started. The ring of exploration growing from an hour on a hillside in Iowa to months in the woods of Montana. Nine-to-five in the East becoming seasonal in the West. Needs in society becoming luxuries in the desert. The well-trodden roads of obligation becoming unmarked trails of wonder.

I’ve taken this path in order to keep my self alive. so that I wouldn’t go numb to all that’s ugly in the modern, plastic world and all that’s beautiful in the ancient, natural one. I told myself that I would not watch time pass from a line of traffic or an office chair. I would not be dictated by an algorithm. I would not become part of the machine.

But, over time, this ever-churning, ever-questioning, ever-seeking attitude has blocked out all else. I’ve tried so hard to keep my individuality—to resist being swept along in the current of our culture—that I’ve come to resist entanglement entirely. I’ve become the lead actor, the subject, the driver of the plot, spending so much time learning my lines that I hear nothing else. I’ve failed to realize I’m just talking to myself.

            So I’m canoeing down the Mississippi River in an effort to listen. To the humans who live up and down its banks. To the non-humans that do the same. And to the river itself, that ancient, natural world that flowed within a couple miles of my house when I was born. The one I visited like a life-long friend before I first left town at age eighteen. That’s kept flowing when the human world has seemed to shatter and the natural world has seemed far away. That’s flowed through the Ojibwe and Cajuns and everyone in between. That flowed through this landscape long before the conception of any United States and that will continue flowing long past its dissolution.

            Since I was four years old, I’ve looked for a place to which I can steal away when the world seems a little mad. A place that’s quiet and still and wild. At thirty-four years old, I’ll look for that place again. Perhaps it’s never been too far.