The Memphis Flyer • December 7, 2000
river rat
John Ruskey brings adventure tourism to theMississippi
by Gary Bridgman
EVEN though I could see the line of immense standing wavesfrom a distance — looking like the vertebrae of some impossibly large skeletonrising from the Mississippi River's bed — I was still literally stunned whenour aluminum canoe veered out of the trough and up the face of the first wave.
One minute we were riding the Mississippi's smooth currentpast a tugboat laboring upstream behind several acres of iron ore piled atopits barges. The next, we willingly point our canoe across the tug's5,600-horsepower wake into the frothy, 8-foot high, chocolate milk waves.
Blue sky ...
muddy water ...
blue sky ...
muddy water ...
Those are the only clear images I can take in as we smackinto the troughs and careen over the crests.I half expect to see Anthony Sherrod, the guide at the front of the canoe,stand up with a harpoon, ready to gig a whale. Instead, the Clarksdale HighSchool sophomore clamps his hands to the gunwales and lets fly with analtogether appropriate roller-coaster scream.
river rat
John Ruskey brings adventure tourism to theMississippi
by Gary Bridgman
EVEN though I could see the line of immense standing wavesfrom a distance — looking like the vertebrae of some impossibly large skeletonrising from the Mississippi River's bed — I was still literally stunned whenour aluminum canoe veered out of the trough and up the face of the first wave.
One minute we were riding the Mississippi's smooth currentpast a tugboat laboring upstream behind several acres of iron ore piled atopits barges. The next, we willingly point our canoe across the tug's5,600-horsepower wake into the frothy, 8-foot high, chocolate milk waves.
Blue sky ...
muddy water ...
blue sky ...
muddy water ...
Those are the only clear images I can take in as we smackinto the troughs and careen over the crests.I half expect to see Anthony Sherrod, the guide at the front of the canoe,stand up with a harpoon, ready to gig a whale. Instead, the Clarksdale HighSchool sophomore clamps his hands to the gunwales and lets fly with analtogether appropriate roller-coaster scream.
I was distracted from thisadrenaline circus by a conversation taking place several hundred yards behindus. John Ruskey, steering in the back of the canoe, had turned up the volume onthe VHF walkie-talkie strapped to his life jacket in order to hear some chatterbetween the tug pilots we had just passed.
"Didyou know the life expectancy of a tugboat pilot is about 55?" one captainsays.
"Naw,I didn't," replies the other, in the kicked-bucket drawl common to thetrade. The two sound oblivious to the plight of three men in a canoe, bobbingin their wake like cast-off bait.
"Yeah,the incidence of heart attacks is about 10 times the national average! Justtake a look around ... you don't see anyone over 55 out here."
"Yeah,I need to do some exercise, too."
John Ruskey has beengiving tours on the Mississippi River since 1998, operating Quapaw CanoeCompany from his home in Clarksdale. His most popular guided expeditions coverthe isolated stretches of the river between Mhoon Landing (remember SplashCasino?) and Rosedale, Mississippi.
The Mississippi Delta hasalways had its share of eccentrics, but you've got to hand it to a man who willshow up on the Oxford Square on a Friday night wearing both a coonskin cap anda straight face. Canoe outfitters tend to be individualists, but most guidesdon't take you down major waterways in a homemade cypress canoe. He'll swim inany water not covered in ice, and he's less likely to wear shoes in the winterthan even Prince Mongo. Unusual, sure, but he has a knack for sharing hisadventurous life with others.
"Didyou know the life expectancy of a tugboat pilot is about 55?" one captainsays.
"Naw,I didn't," replies the other, in the kicked-bucket drawl common to thetrade. The two sound oblivious to the plight of three men in a canoe, bobbingin their wake like cast-off bait.
"Yeah,the incidence of heart attacks is about 10 times the national average! Justtake a look around ... you don't see anyone over 55 out here."
"Yeah,I need to do some exercise, too."
John Ruskey has beengiving tours on the Mississippi River since 1998, operating Quapaw CanoeCompany from his home in Clarksdale. His most popular guided expeditions coverthe isolated stretches of the river between Mhoon Landing (remember SplashCasino?) and Rosedale, Mississippi.
The Mississippi Delta hasalways had its share of eccentrics, but you've got to hand it to a man who willshow up on the Oxford Square on a Friday night wearing both a coonskin cap anda straight face. Canoe outfitters tend to be individualists, but most guidesdon't take you down major waterways in a homemade cypress canoe. He'll swim inany water not covered in ice, and he's less likely to wear shoes in the winterthan even Prince Mongo. Unusual, sure, but he has a knack for sharing hisadventurous life with others.
Anthony Sherrod, river guide and guitarist, 2000
While Ruskey's clientshave come from Europe, Asia, and South America, his most pleasantly surprisedpaddlers are usually from the Mid-South. "They are amazed by the size ofthe sandbars — which are like ocean beaches — and the expanse of thewilderness," Ruskey says. "There are some beautiful places along theMississippi to drag the canoe ashore and explore, or to work on an 'islandtan.' "The largest contiguous expanse of bottomland hardwood forest inAmerica is at Big Island," Ruskey continues, "opposite Rosedale atthe mouth of the Arkansas River. I've made a lot of camps on the sand downthere ... good hiking."
Good stories, too.
Everything between theRockies and the Appalachians that isn't nailed down seems to work its way intothe Mississippi River, and Ruskey himself is no exception. It wasn't the smellof camp coffee and bacon or the diesel-tinged adrenaline rush of barge-wakesurfing that lured Ruskey to the Mississippi River from his native Denver. Itwas the quieter passages from a book written 125 years ago, like the onedescribing the river just before sunrise:
The first thing to see, looking away over the water,was a kind of dull line — that was the woods on t'other side; you couldn't makenothing else out; then a pale place in the sky; then more paleness spreadingaround; then the river softened up away off, and warn't black any more, butgray; you could see little dark spots drifting along ever so far away — tradingscows, and such things; and long black streaks—rafts; sometimes you could heara sweep screaking; or jumbled up voices, it was so still, and sounds come sofar ....
The Adventures ofHuckleberry Finn hooked him on theidea of floating the river when he was still in high school. "I didn'tknow anything about the Mississippi. All's I knew is that Huck and Jim floatedit," he says. "They built a raft, and I wanted to build a raft, too.We decided we were not going to college."
Ruskey and his fellowcollege-evader, Sean Rowe, did build a raft, in Wisconsin in late 1982. Theyfloated as far as the TVA power lines that cross the river south of PresidentsIsland. By then, it was February 1983 and the temperature was below freezing.Rowe and Ruskey were too engrossed in a game of chess to notice that they wereabout to collide with a concrete and steel tower.
"That was where thetrip ended," says Ruskey. "It's a wonder we weren't run over by a tugor rendered hypothermic. We had to stay in the water several hours,mid-channel." The pair then hitchhiked to New Orleans and got jobs [asporters] on the Mississippi Queen. Ruskey went back West and settled down longenough to earn a bachelor's degree in philosophy and mathematics at St. John'sCollege in Santa Fe. Rowe eventually became a reporter for the Miami Herald.
Good stories, too.
Everything between theRockies and the Appalachians that isn't nailed down seems to work its way intothe Mississippi River, and Ruskey himself is no exception. It wasn't the smellof camp coffee and bacon or the diesel-tinged adrenaline rush of barge-wakesurfing that lured Ruskey to the Mississippi River from his native Denver. Itwas the quieter passages from a book written 125 years ago, like the onedescribing the river just before sunrise:
The first thing to see, looking away over the water,was a kind of dull line — that was the woods on t'other side; you couldn't makenothing else out; then a pale place in the sky; then more paleness spreadingaround; then the river softened up away off, and warn't black any more, butgray; you could see little dark spots drifting along ever so far away — tradingscows, and such things; and long black streaks—rafts; sometimes you could heara sweep screaking; or jumbled up voices, it was so still, and sounds come sofar ....
The Adventures ofHuckleberry Finn hooked him on theidea of floating the river when he was still in high school. "I didn'tknow anything about the Mississippi. All's I knew is that Huck and Jim floatedit," he says. "They built a raft, and I wanted to build a raft, too.We decided we were not going to college."
Ruskey and his fellowcollege-evader, Sean Rowe, did build a raft, in Wisconsin in late 1982. Theyfloated as far as the TVA power lines that cross the river south of PresidentsIsland. By then, it was February 1983 and the temperature was below freezing.Rowe and Ruskey were too engrossed in a game of chess to notice that they wereabout to collide with a concrete and steel tower.
"That was where thetrip ended," says Ruskey. "It's a wonder we weren't run over by a tugor rendered hypothermic. We had to stay in the water several hours,mid-channel." The pair then hitchhiked to New Orleans and got jobs [asporters] on the Mississippi Queen. Ruskey went back West and settled down longenough to earn a bachelor's degree in philosophy and mathematics at St. John'sCollege in Santa Fe. Rowe eventually became a reporter for the Miami Herald.
John Ruskey, 2000
It would be another 10years before Ruskey would come back to the area, in part to be near the Deltablues culture, which he helped to preserve as the curator of Clarksdale's DeltaBlues Museum and as director of the Delta Blues Education Program. He begancanoeing alone to release the pressures of his job at the museum, then hestarted to make his living taking other people along. By the time he finishedhandbuilding the Ladybug, his26-foot cypress canoe, Ruskey had completed the transition from chroniclinghistory to actually living in it.
Ask Ruskey's friendEstella Houston when he got interested in the river, and she'll tell you itstarted before he could read a book. "His mother told me that when Johnwas about three, he would want to go play in the duck pond across the street.They had to keep him fenced in the backyard so he couldn't get in thepond," she recounts, "but they would often run water from a hosethrough the grass for him to play in. He was content to be in the water. Hedidn't just start this water thing; it's been there all the time ... water andno shoes!"
The Mississippi River is alot bigger "thing" than water from a hose, but those who woulddismiss it as a big, dull barge canal, more trouble than it's worth forrecreation, stand to lose that debate with Ruskey.
"In Western riversyou can't get away from outfitters, and the sandbars are all crowded withrafters and paddlers," Ruskey says. "The Mississippi is just theopposite: You don't meet anyone, even though it's the biggest river in NorthAmerica.
You see a lot of tugboats,but you don't see a lot of recreational boats." When he does meet fellowpaddlers on the river, the encounters often become part of Ruskey's body ofstories. "Mark Twain talked about the strange coincidences that occur onthe Mississippi," he says, "and I've certainly had my share of them:odd chance meetings with kayakers and canoeists who are floating the length of theriver or repeatedly running into the same floaters under unbelievablecircumstances. One time a couple of guys in a tandem canoe doing the riverscrewed up and got caught in some snags in the chaotic mess of whirlpools atModoc Crevasse. I was in my solo kayak and just happened to be at that sameenormous bend on the same day, at that same time. I saw them get back into thecurrent and get impaled on a snag — a dangerous position on any river, on theMississippi even more deadly.
"I've been inwilderness areas in the Rocky Mountains that seem a lot more secure andpredictable than the Mississippi River. Access is difficult on this river. Ifyou happen to capsize or have an emergency situation where you have to walkout, it's a difficult prospect on the river. You're going to do a long hike andit may take days to reach civilization."
Ruskey compares his tripsto mountain climbing. "The commitment you have to make to the environmentyou are entering and the logistics involved in getting on the river, even ifit's just a day float, are similar to getting on a big mountain.
You are quite exposed,there is little opportunity for easy outs until you reach your destination, andit's just big in all proportions. You're not going to fall 10 feet on the bigmountain; you're going to fall thousands of feet. On the river, if you drown,it's not going to be on a shallow bar but in hundreds of feet of water, andyour body might not wash up for hundreds of miles downstream."
Ask Ruskey's friendEstella Houston when he got interested in the river, and she'll tell you itstarted before he could read a book. "His mother told me that when Johnwas about three, he would want to go play in the duck pond across the street.They had to keep him fenced in the backyard so he couldn't get in thepond," she recounts, "but they would often run water from a hosethrough the grass for him to play in. He was content to be in the water. Hedidn't just start this water thing; it's been there all the time ... water andno shoes!"
The Mississippi River is alot bigger "thing" than water from a hose, but those who woulddismiss it as a big, dull barge canal, more trouble than it's worth forrecreation, stand to lose that debate with Ruskey.
"In Western riversyou can't get away from outfitters, and the sandbars are all crowded withrafters and paddlers," Ruskey says. "The Mississippi is just theopposite: You don't meet anyone, even though it's the biggest river in NorthAmerica.
You see a lot of tugboats,but you don't see a lot of recreational boats." When he does meet fellowpaddlers on the river, the encounters often become part of Ruskey's body ofstories. "Mark Twain talked about the strange coincidences that occur onthe Mississippi," he says, "and I've certainly had my share of them:odd chance meetings with kayakers and canoeists who are floating the length of theriver or repeatedly running into the same floaters under unbelievablecircumstances. One time a couple of guys in a tandem canoe doing the riverscrewed up and got caught in some snags in the chaotic mess of whirlpools atModoc Crevasse. I was in my solo kayak and just happened to be at that sameenormous bend on the same day, at that same time. I saw them get back into thecurrent and get impaled on a snag — a dangerous position on any river, on theMississippi even more deadly.
"I've been inwilderness areas in the Rocky Mountains that seem a lot more secure andpredictable than the Mississippi River. Access is difficult on this river. Ifyou happen to capsize or have an emergency situation where you have to walkout, it's a difficult prospect on the river. You're going to do a long hike andit may take days to reach civilization."
Ruskey compares his tripsto mountain climbing. "The commitment you have to make to the environmentyou are entering and the logistics involved in getting on the river, even ifit's just a day float, are similar to getting on a big mountain.
You are quite exposed,there is little opportunity for easy outs until you reach your destination, andit's just big in all proportions. You're not going to fall 10 feet on the bigmountain; you're going to fall thousands of feet. On the river, if you drown,it's not going to be on a shallow bar but in hundreds of feet of water, andyour body might not wash up for hundreds of miles downstream."
Great Blue Heron
Despite the various riverput-ins in close proximity to Memphis, Ruskey warns against assumptions thathis trips are quick and easy.
"You might as wellleave your watches at home. I warn all clients that while on the river there isno time but river time and that each float is different. It would be adifficult river to have a set itinerary on, and when we do, it's subject toriver level and storms."
Some of Ruskey's tripseven involve paddling the big canoe upstream for short stretches, which isn'talways as hard as it sounds.
"Sometimes you cancatch eddies and you don't have to do much work at all. A lot of places youhave to do some real hard paddling; sometimes you have to pole off the bottomof the river. Sometimes the current is just too strong and you have to get outwith a rope and walk up the bank and pull the canoe up through that section,and sometimes you have to portage."
Actually, muscling a canoeupstream can be educational. "You don't really get to know the river untilyou've spent some time paddling upstream," Ruskey explains. "That'swhen you understand how the currents work. You also get to know the bank. Whenyou float with the river, you can be hundreds of yards away from the bank andyou have no idea what's there, what the life is, what the birds are."
While John Ruskey travelsthe Mississippi River in the old way, he doesn't necessarily regret not beingable to see what the river looked like in Mark Twain's time. Even today, theriver is a magnificent force with or without the inconveniences brought on bythe Industrial Revolution.
"The river just rulesthis landscape so completely," Ruskey said. "Back in the days beforerevetments, whole forests would be swallowed by the river in one gulp. Today,the Corps of Engineers can make it do this and that in little ways, but eventuallythe river is going to do what it wants to do and go where it wants to go.
"It'slike trying to tame the wind." ☠
John Ruskey, 2000
John Ruskey with a towboat and barge in the background.
John Ruskey and Anthony Sherrod in the Mississippi River, 2000
Tallahatchie River bridge, near Holly Springs, Mississippi
Beaver and Raccoon tracks in river sand.
River gauge
Mississippi River sandbars make great campsites or picnic spots. There is often an unlimited supply of driftwood for fires.
A Floatable Feast
Quapaw Canoe Companyproprietor John Ruskey puts almost as much emphasis on cooking as he does onnavigation when exploring the lower Mississippi.
"As far as food goes,I don't like hungry paddlers. A hungry paddler is not a good paddler. Anunhappy paddler is a dangerous thing to have on a windy day, and hunger is justone step away from mutiny."
Ruskey found a coconut inthe river on one of his tours, and he cooked it with some chicken stew. Onanother occasion, he collaborated on a sandbar cookout with a German chef whilea writer from the German equivalent of Food & Wine took notes and photographs.
"One of my favoritethings to do is cook steaks over a willow fire," Ruskey says. "Willowsmoke has a beautiful odor, no matter how you cut it. To make a grill, we cutthe green branches and lay them crosshatch-style over coals. It makes abeautiful way to grill the steak with roast potatoes, corn, onions, and garlic.The onions, potatoes, and garlic you have to bury, though. You move the fire,bury them in the sand, then move the fire back over them."
Other common Quapaw menuitems include rabbit gumbo, Spanish garlic chicken, shish kabob, and evenfajitas.
Overnight trips call for ahearty breakfast of Ruskey's signature "raft potatoes," eggs,pancakes, bacon, sausage, coffee, and orange juice. "Whatever it is,"Ruskey says, "we always make a lot of it."
QuapawRaft Potatoes
cornoil
4medium potatoes, roughly diced
halfan onion, chopped
3cloves of garlic, chopped
4eggs
1/2cup sliced pepper jack and/or cheddar cheese
Coals of a campfire are preferred to cooking at home, but whencooking at home set the burner to a high heat. Cover bottom of skillet with1/8-inch corn oil. Sauté potatoes with onions and garlic until potatoes aresoft and onions and garlic are caramelized. Crack eggs over potatoes and mixthoroughly; stir occasionally till eggs are cooked. Add cheese to top ofmixture, cover skillet and wait till cheese melts. The raft potatoes are readyto eat when cheese is melted. The preferred garnish is cayenne pepper orFrank's Original Red Hot Cayenne Pepper Sauce.
Ruskey and his high schoolbuddy, Sean Rowe, concocted this rib-sticking dish in 1982 while floating downthe length of the Mississippi on a homemade log raft. The raft sank when theycollided with a TVA tower south of Presidents Island, but the recipe hassurvived.
Quapaw Canoe Companyproprietor John Ruskey puts almost as much emphasis on cooking as he does onnavigation when exploring the lower Mississippi.
"As far as food goes,I don't like hungry paddlers. A hungry paddler is not a good paddler. Anunhappy paddler is a dangerous thing to have on a windy day, and hunger is justone step away from mutiny."
Ruskey found a coconut inthe river on one of his tours, and he cooked it with some chicken stew. Onanother occasion, he collaborated on a sandbar cookout with a German chef whilea writer from the German equivalent of Food & Wine took notes and photographs.
"One of my favoritethings to do is cook steaks over a willow fire," Ruskey says. "Willowsmoke has a beautiful odor, no matter how you cut it. To make a grill, we cutthe green branches and lay them crosshatch-style over coals. It makes abeautiful way to grill the steak with roast potatoes, corn, onions, and garlic.The onions, potatoes, and garlic you have to bury, though. You move the fire,bury them in the sand, then move the fire back over them."
Other common Quapaw menuitems include rabbit gumbo, Spanish garlic chicken, shish kabob, and evenfajitas.
Overnight trips call for ahearty breakfast of Ruskey's signature "raft potatoes," eggs,pancakes, bacon, sausage, coffee, and orange juice. "Whatever it is,"Ruskey says, "we always make a lot of it."
QuapawRaft Potatoes
cornoil
4medium potatoes, roughly diced
halfan onion, chopped
3cloves of garlic, chopped
4eggs
1/2cup sliced pepper jack and/or cheddar cheese
Coals of a campfire are preferred to cooking at home, but whencooking at home set the burner to a high heat. Cover bottom of skillet with1/8-inch corn oil. Sauté potatoes with onions and garlic until potatoes aresoft and onions and garlic are caramelized. Crack eggs over potatoes and mixthoroughly; stir occasionally till eggs are cooked. Add cheese to top ofmixture, cover skillet and wait till cheese melts. The raft potatoes are readyto eat when cheese is melted. The preferred garnish is cayenne pepper orFrank's Original Red Hot Cayenne Pepper Sauce.
Ruskey and his high schoolbuddy, Sean Rowe, concocted this rib-sticking dish in 1982 while floating downthe length of the Mississippi on a homemade log raft. The raft sank when theycollided with a TVA tower south of Presidents Island, but the recipe hassurvived.
Grill prep on a Mississippi River sandbar.
Past-Perfect Storm
JohnRuskey's own account of some Delta sound and fury, signifying humility.
On the lower Mississippi Ihave come to understand the God of the Old Testament: vengeful, wrathful, andfull of contradiction. William Faulkner bemoaned the cutting of the Deltaforests because it was the wilderness that taught a man humility.
I was especially humbled by the riveronce, having fun on the edge of a tornado on a solo float. It was the spring of'98, I think, or maybe '97, and I was returning downstream from acircumnavigation of Island 63 [near Clarksdale]. The willow forests weregroaning under the weight of the wind and the leaves were showing theirundersides. I was in the lee of Island 63 on the way upstream, so it wasactually quite enjoyable — all of the wind and commotion, the leaves torn fromthe trees, the rush of the air through the willows and mad clattering of thecottonwoods. I was kayaking upstream under the shelter of the island, but allof that changed on the return trip.
Really,in hindsight, I should have returned downstream the way I'd come; in the backchannel there was little flow. However, being a good river rat I wanted to letthe main channel carry me downstream. It's something like the reward you get inthe downhill after climbing the mountain. I cut through a pass at the top endof 63 that's only accessible during high water and entered the fray.
Withthe fury of a storm that was still in the making, the channel was a mess — allfrothy and wind-whipped, foam being sprayed off of each wave and whisked inwind-beaten lines eastward. You could see sand storms upstream on the bar ofIsland 62, which indicated gale-force winds, and vision was down to a couple ofmiles. The chop was not normal — waves rolling in parallel lines from onedirection — but chaotic, water beating and crashing from all directions, wavesclimaxing on waves, waves hitting the revetment and bouncing back to besuperimposed upon by other waves, haystacks leaping upward.
Eachstroke of the kayak blade was like paddling upstream in a Rocky Mountain rapid,each stroke necessary just to stay in the current and to stay upright. It'ssomething like walking a tightrope, where your kayak blade becomes your balancepole.
Downstreama tugboat captain was having problems of his own. The onslaught of the stormfront had forced his starboard edge onto the revetment and rocks above me alongIsland 63. Later I learned that they lost two barges.
Meanwhile,the sky to the west was darkening from grays and blues into a thick atmospherethat seemed to press down on my shoulders. At one point the clouds close to thehorizon became consumed in a vertical blackness — you could see the forests ofIsland 62, but above that nothing but striated blackness. Then lightningflashes illuminated the blackness and my adrenaline started to rush when I sawthe forest on the Mississippi side get bent over by an unseen hand. The windintensified into a loud roar and the trees began thrashing back and forth likewheat in a Kansas field — and there I was midstream with no cover, so I beattail for the shore, which was fortunately downwind.
Butwhat to do once I got there? There was a lightness entering the sky — agreenish-blue light — and hail began to spatter the water. There were a fewtrees in the water at the shore, and big rolling waves were crashing throughthem. I managed to get out of the kayak without flipping, pulled it ashore,hail pelting my skin. I was afraid the wind would blow my kayak away it wasroaring so loudly and hard, so I removed my knife belt and strapped the kayakwith the belt to some low-lying osage orange in a low place on the bank. Icrawled back down to the water's edge because I was afraid to stand with thewind roaring so hard. Then I immersed myself in the river like a scared possum.
Gettingin the water solved the problem of the hail, even though I was riding the wavesas they came crashing into shore — the river actually felt warm after the wind.One of the trees I was floating among pitched over. It wasn't a violentcollapse. The sycamore trunk just ruptured, exposing the gleaming bonywhiteness of the wood inside. It made no sound as it fell; I suppose becausethe wind was so loud.
Sonow a twisted mass of sycamore branches, twigs, and leaves was riding therollers with me and I was wondering why I hadn't stayed at home. By and by, alightness began to creep under the billowing clouds to the west, and then acalm fell.
Onceagain, I set off downstream along Island 63, feeling very scrubbed and muchsobered. I'd always hoped some day to witness a tornado, but in the face of oneI felt small. I certainly would never impose these kinds of weather conditionson fellow paddlers. In fact I have stayed at camp for several days with clientsawaiting the passage of severe weather, but at the same time, powerful stormsand their effect on the river are fascinating to watch.
Text and photography by GaryBridgman
© 2000 Contemporary Media, allrights reserved
JohnRuskey's own account of some Delta sound and fury, signifying humility.
On the lower Mississippi Ihave come to understand the God of the Old Testament: vengeful, wrathful, andfull of contradiction. William Faulkner bemoaned the cutting of the Deltaforests because it was the wilderness that taught a man humility.
I was especially humbled by the riveronce, having fun on the edge of a tornado on a solo float. It was the spring of'98, I think, or maybe '97, and I was returning downstream from acircumnavigation of Island 63 [near Clarksdale]. The willow forests weregroaning under the weight of the wind and the leaves were showing theirundersides. I was in the lee of Island 63 on the way upstream, so it wasactually quite enjoyable — all of the wind and commotion, the leaves torn fromthe trees, the rush of the air through the willows and mad clattering of thecottonwoods. I was kayaking upstream under the shelter of the island, but allof that changed on the return trip.
Really,in hindsight, I should have returned downstream the way I'd come; in the backchannel there was little flow. However, being a good river rat I wanted to letthe main channel carry me downstream. It's something like the reward you get inthe downhill after climbing the mountain. I cut through a pass at the top endof 63 that's only accessible during high water and entered the fray.
Withthe fury of a storm that was still in the making, the channel was a mess — allfrothy and wind-whipped, foam being sprayed off of each wave and whisked inwind-beaten lines eastward. You could see sand storms upstream on the bar ofIsland 62, which indicated gale-force winds, and vision was down to a couple ofmiles. The chop was not normal — waves rolling in parallel lines from onedirection — but chaotic, water beating and crashing from all directions, wavesclimaxing on waves, waves hitting the revetment and bouncing back to besuperimposed upon by other waves, haystacks leaping upward.
Eachstroke of the kayak blade was like paddling upstream in a Rocky Mountain rapid,each stroke necessary just to stay in the current and to stay upright. It'ssomething like walking a tightrope, where your kayak blade becomes your balancepole.
Downstreama tugboat captain was having problems of his own. The onslaught of the stormfront had forced his starboard edge onto the revetment and rocks above me alongIsland 63. Later I learned that they lost two barges.
Meanwhile,the sky to the west was darkening from grays and blues into a thick atmospherethat seemed to press down on my shoulders. At one point the clouds close to thehorizon became consumed in a vertical blackness — you could see the forests ofIsland 62, but above that nothing but striated blackness. Then lightningflashes illuminated the blackness and my adrenaline started to rush when I sawthe forest on the Mississippi side get bent over by an unseen hand. The windintensified into a loud roar and the trees began thrashing back and forth likewheat in a Kansas field — and there I was midstream with no cover, so I beattail for the shore, which was fortunately downwind.
Butwhat to do once I got there? There was a lightness entering the sky — agreenish-blue light — and hail began to spatter the water. There were a fewtrees in the water at the shore, and big rolling waves were crashing throughthem. I managed to get out of the kayak without flipping, pulled it ashore,hail pelting my skin. I was afraid the wind would blow my kayak away it wasroaring so loudly and hard, so I removed my knife belt and strapped the kayakwith the belt to some low-lying osage orange in a low place on the bank. Icrawled back down to the water's edge because I was afraid to stand with thewind roaring so hard. Then I immersed myself in the river like a scared possum.
Gettingin the water solved the problem of the hail, even though I was riding the wavesas they came crashing into shore — the river actually felt warm after the wind.One of the trees I was floating among pitched over. It wasn't a violentcollapse. The sycamore trunk just ruptured, exposing the gleaming bonywhiteness of the wood inside. It made no sound as it fell; I suppose becausethe wind was so loud.
Sonow a twisted mass of sycamore branches, twigs, and leaves was riding therollers with me and I was wondering why I hadn't stayed at home. By and by, alightness began to creep under the billowing clouds to the west, and then acalm fell.
Onceagain, I set off downstream along Island 63, feeling very scrubbed and muchsobered. I'd always hoped some day to witness a tornado, but in the face of oneI felt small. I certainly would never impose these kinds of weather conditionson fellow paddlers. In fact I have stayed at camp for several days with clientsawaiting the passage of severe weather, but at the same time, powerful stormsand their effect on the river are fascinating to watch.
Text and photography by GaryBridgman
© 2000 Contemporary Media, allrights reserved
River ball series, 2011.
"Day Divides the Night"...downtown Memphis viewed from across the Mississippi River on the Hernando DeSoto Bridge (I-40).
