In 1975, my Granny bought a seventeen foot aluminum Grumman canoe from an outdoors store in Lafayette, Louisiana called Pack & Paddle. The store was new then; it had just opened a year prior, in 1974. The owners lived in the house out back and the store sat on what used to be their front […]

Flooding, record flow, broken damns and swamped levees. I’m following the news; don’t think I underestimate the power of the river. I am not ignoring the warning signs. I’m taking them as that: warning signs. Reminders to be cautious, stay sharp. Don’t think either that just because I paddled the Missouri River, some two hundred […]

When I arrived at the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers in St. Louis on October 3rd 2017, I had no desire to take a right hand turn and head south on the Mississippi towards salt water. The next bend opened up in two directions. For the last one hundred days, I had been […]

Dear Reader,   I sit now in a van. It is late at night, and I have lit candles because I like the softer light and the single flames move and flicker enough to give the illusion of life aside from myself inside this little home. A space heater breathes steadily in the corner because […]

July 30: Day 35 The next day, my body hurt. I was mostly not asleep at 7, and hung out with Tom as he opened the marina. Coffee helped everyone. I spent the morning lounging around in and around the marina with my computer, writing and eating breakfast and catching up on the world. I […]

July 22: Day 27 I had gone to sleep that night with my alarm set for 2:30am. I did this because I figured it would take around 7 hours to paddle to Tobacco Gardens and the wind was forecasted to be 3 knots in the morning, rising to 12 knots by 10:00, and 17 knots […]

July 13: Day 18   I accidentally slept in, and woke up later in a hurry. The wind was already beginning to pick up, and I had one goal today and one goal only: To cross the lake. The marina I was planning to head for to ask for a portage was on the west […]

July 08: Day 13 I woke up tired. On top of making camp late last night, I had a lot of camp chores to do, most notably making cooking dinner and lunch. I usually either make enough dinner to have leftovers, or just make something for lunch. I had to cook a lot to fill […]

July 03: Day 8 Jim came to pick me up promptly at 8:00. I was ready. When I’m camping, I tend to wake up earlier. Jim was wearing a shirt that had a picture of an aerobatic airplane on it that he had gotten from some air show in the 80’s. Jim had gotten his […]

June 26: Day 1 Then it was time. No time like the present. It was strange to me how real everything was, because it felt like I was dreaming. I had been planning for this moment for months, and here, here I am. I got clumsily into the kayak, paddle in hand, and Chad gave […]