River of Wonder

Day 1 - 3, Lake Itasca to Ironbridge Canoe Landing. Waxing crescent to half moon

We head north, my parents and I driving up, slowed by heavy winds that threaten to push the canoe from its position. Slowly but surely. This will become my mantra.

We arrive at Lake Itasca State Park in northern Minnesota and look out on the small body of water. I laugh, like I tend to do when I look at something that defies logic. Explorations dating back nearly 200 years have determined that this is the beginning of the Mississippi River, the giant pulsing monster that flows past my hometown, measuring nearly a mile wide. My eyes tell me that this is impossible.

Of course, as U.S. explorers spent great effort and expense searching for the origin of the Mississippi - the place that formed the northwest boundary of the country after the Revolutionary War's end - the Ojibwe People were baffled. They'd called the place home for centuries and even millennia. For them, the river's presence, not its exact starting point, was what mattered.

Besides, what about the seeps and springs that feed Itasca? Or the regional rains and snows? Or the water exuded from neighboring trees? Or the clouds that produce the rains? Or the winds that feed the rains? We can no more identify the source of the Mississippi than we can identify the source of God.

And yet, here I go. Somewhere near where it all begins. In a welcome surprise, my mom decides to join me for the first mile or two. My dad will pick us up at a spot where the road crosses over the river.¹

We load up and paddle from the dock in Lake Itasca to a place where a sign states:
"Here 1475 feet above the ocean
The mighty Mississippi begins to flow
On its winding way
2552 miles to the Gulf of Mexico."

We get our photos and then hoist the canoe around the rocks that separate lake from river. Children play here as adults step carefully across. A man offers to help us carry the canoe, asking if we were taking the boardwalk back to the parking lot. We tell him the actual answer and the headwaters become a press pool. A crowd gathers to take photos and pepper us with questions.

How long will it take?
What will you do for food?
Is it dangerous?
What made you want to do it?

4 months.
Re-supply in towns every week or so.

Looking for something wild near the place that I grew up. Looking closely at something I thought I knew.

Within minutes, it's clear that I do not know the Mississippi. Definitely not this Mississippi. The river runs quickly left then sprints back right. It becomes so low that I must hop out and guide the canoe through the rocks, where it would be generous to call the waterway a creek. Then so high in places that I could dive down and not touch bottom, where it would be most apt to call a marsh.

Mostly, it's narrow. We round a bend and are pushed into the reeds. We move past a logjam and must lay flat to avoid the low-hanging branches. My mom is up front so that I can do more of the steering, but the 16-foot canoe handles the narrow channels like, well, a 16-foot canoe. After the third or sixth time in which she has to fight through branches, I also let her in on a secret: I'm not very good.

At one point, the vegetation - in what can best be termed a bog or swamp - is so thick that we lose our way. At another point, a log jam has created a dam with a five-foot drop in water level. After a brief portage, we're back in a narrow channel and see my dad waiting for us, longer than expected. We say our goodbyes and I'm relieved to see that my mom still has a smile on her face. She tells me later that she slept very well that night.

I meander on, camping a few miles downriver. The first 53 miles of the river are largely like this, just on a grander scale, making it more manageable for my canoe. And I'm getting a little better at getting the canoe to go where I'd like it to.

I pass through serpentine, often 180-degree bends in the river. I navigate labyrinths of watery fields I find places where the current picks up and I must traverse across boulder and log jams and beaver dams. Through it all, I'm struck by the wildness of this stretch of river. In each of my first three days, I pass just two houses. The roads I hear are rare and a world apart. And the animals I get to see leave me in awe.

I see a beaver slap the water with a loud THWACK before disappearing.² I round a bend in a beaver dam and watch as a bald eagle takes off just 15 feet from me. And I see enough ducks, red-winged blackbirds, and great blue herons to start predicting their behavior.

As one example, mama ducks will have their ducklings hide in the reeds and then stir up my attention away from them. Once these mama ducks feel comfortable with my distance away, they'll leave the water, flying further away before circling back around behind me to meet their ducklings. Once, a baby duckling in hiding emerged when my canoe was just feet away. It panicked and quickly plunged underwater. Still learning.

I start noticing other things. The way the water after a beaver dam is clearer. The way the clouds coalesce and move across the sky. The way the wind moves across the water. And the movement of water. I find myself mesmerized by the movement of water.

I get better at deciphering what ripples on the surface of the water mean in terms of the obstructions beneath. In one section on my second day, the appearance of a large boulder in the middle of the water signaled a maze of these boulders ahead. During this time, I worked to perfect a new paddle stroke known as the "OH NO, PLEASE STOP" stroke. This involves completely stopping my momentum by using the end of my wooden paddle to push off from a rock in front of my path.

I start noticing what paddle strokes work best and what line to take in order to stay in the current. This is useful in the serpentine sections of river, which can last for miles. If making a 180-degree turn bqk to my right, I move to the left bank, the outside of the approaching bend, and then cut hard to the right toward the inside bank known as the point bar. I then brake by putting my paddle in the water on the inside, to my right, pushing water forward. If all goes well, I then switch to make a few hard paddles on my left side and am floating parallel to the left bank, but now around the bend.³

All this happens incredibly slowly, especially in these early sections. Even when I feel like I'm paddling smoothly and the current is moving quickly, I'm lucky to go three miles in an hour and these miles are never in a straight line. The drive from Davenport to Itasca would typically take around 9 hours. My trip back by canoe will take around 6 weeks if I average 20 miles per day. This is what I wanted out here but still sometimes an adjustment.

Slowly but surely. Everything will pass. Some things, I cannot wait to pass. Setting up my tent in a storm of mosquitoes.⁴ Walking briefly through tall grass and finding multiple ticks on me. Paddling into a headwind. But mostly, I find myself wanting to stay in this stubbornly beautiful place.

We drove up to the headwaters on highways that cleaved the landscape in two. The landscape that has been almost entirely razed and subdivided by commercial farms, with satellite images showing a grid of carefully planted rows of the same two crops, perhaps broken up by hog confinements. The small towns dying out. The larger cities sprawling strip malls and manicured lawns. Fast food and fast fashion dominating. I shouldn't reduce it all like this; it's just that this reduction from complexity to efficiency is nearly all I've ever known. Anything wild or lacking clear categorization gets cast out.

Such a contrast to this place. I wish I could bottle the way I feel here, an elixir to drink on days when I feel listless or agitated by the machinations of the overcivilized world. But as I lay back in my canoe and let my self drift with the river, I'm content to be here now. In this land of cattails and dragonflies.