Mississippi River Days 68 to 76 (End)

Vicksburg, MS to The Gulf of Mexico (Burns Point Park, LA)

273 Miles (2,112 Total)

We were stopped on a sandbar, the last one for us on the Mississippi River, eating lunch under a canopy of scattered clouds and intense sunshine. It was Day 72 for us, and although we were only at Lower River Mile 304, the Gulf was only 150 miles away, down another river called the Atchafalaya.

Just downstream of the sandbar we could see our exit to the Atch. Or, what we thought was our exit. A large revetment with riprap straddled a human made embankment. It was lined with trees that made the appearance there was an outlet over there, just beyond it on the other side. An outlet that would take us away from the barges, away from the wind, and into a much more pleasurable paddling landscape.

It was exciting. We were finally going to be rid of Big Muddy! We were going to leave it behind for good and let it meander its own way south without us, past the harbors of Baton Rouge and New Orleans, past the refineries and petrochemical plants, their tall towers of boiling chemicals and oil, steam and fire and smoke, reflecting off the muddy blank surface of the river; past all the barges and soon to be present ocean liners and sea-faring ships, the likes of which make a 7×6 barge look like an ant.

All the aggravation would continue to float on without us, down a river that, as I learned gradually over time, exists purely for commercial use, to ship grain and coal and oil up and down stream, back and forth, forever.

The US Army Corp of engineers makes sure this happens. They exist to manipulate the river, to keep it deep, to make sure it flows the way they want it to flow. The river today is by many accounts an engineering marvel.

But the river doesn’t want to flow the way the engineers want it to. If it did, there would be no use for them. Instead, the river wants to go west between miles 316 and 312, out to the Atchafalaya through three main outlets. A third of the Mississippi water volume goes that way anyway, and if it were up to the river, the majority of the water would go that way too. And in another thousand years, which is the norm, the river would likely pick a new course. The natural flow to the Gulf is ever changing.

But the river can’t change. We won’t let it. It would be devastating for the ports of Baton Rouge and New Orleans because the river there would dry up. All the ships would get stuck in the mud with nowhere to go. Coal that needs to go up to St. Louis would be relegated to a life in the south. Grain from Memphis wouldn’t be able to make it to New Orleans. It would be a civil disaster.

To combat this, huge control structures block multiple outlets where the Mississippi River wants to exit towards the Atch. We saw them as we paddled by. Large steel dams block the flow, divert it away from its natural course to continue on its man-made journey. The eddies at these junctions create large whirlpools and turbulent water, the likes of which would be unfavorable if your small watercraft happened to find itself in the crossfire. Large warning signs tell you to stay away, so we hugged the left descending bank, until we were clear of them.

Eating lunch, we saw one of our last large barges pass. It was 6 wide and 7 deep, 42 total in the flotilla, the largest that we have been seeing. A standard barge is 195 feet long and 35 feet wide and can carry up to 1500 tons, so a 7×6 is slightly larger than 4 football fields carrying a fleet of over 10,000 African adult elephants.

They’re massive.

We watched the barge pass us slowly, the hum of its V16 diesel engine drowning out the wind and any other sounds. Once it passed, waves from its wake rolled into shore, slapped the canoes, throwing up water and getting things all wet. I wouldn’t be missing these giants, I thought.

After lunch was finished, we paddled into the channel after initially missing the exit, which offered us our very first experience of paddling upriver, something I hope to never do again. A small lock greeted us shortly after, the gateway to Old River, a 7 mile canal that would connect us to the main channel of the Atchafalaya.

It was odd being on the other side of that lock. We were used to the wide expanse of the Mississippi River, it’s gusty wind and its swift flowing water. But in the canal, there was non of that. The water was still and flat and didn’t move. The canal was only a fraction the width of the Mississippi, and it felt as if we had been transported back in time two months prior, back to the river up in Minnesota.

We meandered around a bend, and a small fishing boat pulled up behind us. I couldn’t remember when we had last seen a small fishing boat on the big river.

“Where ya’ll goin’?” they curiously asked.

“The Gulf,” Qball said. “We started at the headwaters in Minnesota.”

“Well I’ll be damned,” one of them said, shaking his head. “I’m sure that’s been quite a trip.”

“Are there ‘gators in these waters?” asked Qball.

“Oh, sure,” they said, matter of fact, the two of them nodding their heads simultaneously. “Lots of ‘gators here.”

One of the guys pointed to a shallow bank right in front of his boat, indicating that they see some usually in that spot.

“But they might be hibernatin’ by now,” he continued. “Water too cold for them ‘gators this time of year.”

It took us almost two hours to paddle the current-less 7 miles of the canal to the main channel of the Atch, but once we intersected it, the flow picked back up again.

It was clear that the Atch was not the Mississippi, and this thrilled me. It was a beautiful river, with calm, serene water, and virtually no boat traffic. The Atchafalaya basin comprises a puzzle-like network of lakes, bayous and hardwood swamps, one that rivals the Everglades in size, and is the largest protected wilderness habitat of this type in the United States. Scraggly trees with overgrown moss line the mostly muddy banks of the main channel. The forest is dense and overgrown here, but it is different than anything we’ve seen so far, and in that aspect, it comes off as beautiful and mystical, yet sorrowful and glum, all at the same time. Wetness hangs in the air and fills this strange forest with moisture. Spiderwebs drip with dew and stretch over pointed branches that look like crooked, corpse-like fingers. It’s a place that certainly makes you feel something.

The next day we arrived at our last town stop in Melville. The Gulf was only about 100 river miles from here. A bright, blue-eyed man, 50, with sparkling bleach-white teeth, and a smile that stretched across his entire face as if it were the only facial expression he owned, greeted us at his home on the right descending bank of the Atch.

“Welcome! Welcome!” he said, enthusiastically. “Danny Majors,” he said to each of us as he shook our hands.

Danny owned a large, beautiful piece of property on the river, with a main home and a guest annex, and a small cabin tucked away near the tree line on the opposite end. He had two cows and two calfs, two goats, three cats (that we saw, at least, there may have been more), and a cotton ball-white Pyrenees named Toga.

“How long y’all fixin’ to stay,” he asked us. “There ain’t no time commitment. Y’all are welcome to stay as long as you want. Please, treat this like your home.”

“Just one night,” Qball said.

“Okay,” Danny said, smiling again. “We’ll see about that!”

Danny showed us around the property, telling us stories along the way. That was the kind of person he was. One minute he’d be telling us about his calfs, how one of them is too skinny and won’t eat, and then the next minute he’d be talking about fiber optics, about million dollar deals back in the late eighties and early 90s. He rambled poetically, bridging the gap between stream of conscious and fact, but never droning, and certainly never with any disinterest. He was smart, articulate, and kind, someone that was easy to listen to, all of his stories and musings interesting and never ending.

“So, what is it y’all need to do in town?” He asked.

“Just some grocery shopping,” Beardoh said.

“All right,” Danny said. “I have to go notarize something shortly, but there is a black car out in the driveway. The keys are inside. Dinner will be at 6:00 if that’s all right with you. I made up some chicken and sausage gumbo.”

We spent the evening eating gumbo (some of the best I’ve ever had), watched Danny milk the cows, and tooled around on the 4-wheelers up on the levee looking for gators (upon Danny’s insistence).

“You’ll see them best up on the levee,” Danny said. “Most of ’em are in the pond right back there. We have to get rid of them sometimes.”

He took out his phone and flipped through his pictures.

“This one here,” he said, showing us the photo, “was a 14 foot gator we killed this summer.”

The thing was massive. Danny’s friend stood above it triumphantly after it was dead, grinning as he held his rifle.

“Sometimes when you shoot these gators in the pond,” Danny continued, “they sink to the bottom.”

“How do you know they’re dead?” we asked.

Danny answered, “You go in the pond and feel around for it with your boots!”

We left the next morning on our final stretch to the Gulf. It was humid and hot, the same weather as the past few days. The heat brought along a new hatching of mosquitoes, some of the most aggressive I’ve ever encountered. The buzzing they made at night just outside the tent was like electricity crackling through a wire.

The final days were filled with foggy mornings. The fog was so thick it was hard to see either bank of the river if you were in the center of the channel. It was disorienting, like being in a dream, and blinding, like you wanted to close your eyes. Sounds bounced through the fog in all directions, and it was hard to figure out where boats were coming from. It was probably dumb to be out there. There were still barges on the Atch, but only small ones, 1×1’s, but they were still barges. We crept up on several that were grounded to the side of the river. We couldn’t even see them until we were literally on them.

The final day was one of he prettiest and interesting of the entire trip. We departed the Atchafalaya on a bayou and headed straight to the Gulf. The forest slowly turned to wetland as we breached the inter coastal habitat. We paddled by groves of bald cypress trees, beautiful conifers that grow in the low lying water of the marsh, sticking up like sentinels, their light brown “knees”, the bending part of the tree, just above the roots, forming a network of interconnected channels and paths before the trunk. The knees help in bringing oxygen to the roots, and help it outcompete other trees in similar habitat.

Eventually the cypress groves ended and we were only in the reeds and marsh. Small alligators bathed in muddy banks and slipped into the bayou when they spotted us. We saw them scurry through the water too, their tiny heads looking no more like floating branches, trailing water behind them. They’d duck under the water and swim beneath the canoe when we got too close, something that would have been unnerving if the alligators were bigger, but they were only small little guys, no more than 4 feet.

Roseate spoonbills walked through the mud, pecking into the muck, searching for food. They were beautiful birds, pink rose colored avians, as their name suggests. They’d flap their wings and fly away when we approached. Everything seemed to be scared of us.

We could smell the salt water about a mile from the Gulf. It was sticky and humid, clinging to our shirts. We paddled on, wanting nothing more than to see the wide open ocean, to see the end of this thing. And after rounding the last bend, there it was, the open Gulf, fading into a thin blue line on the horizon. We drifted into sea, the water full of salt and mud, the wind blowing gently into our tired eyes and arms.

And then? And then that was it. 

We paddled a mile west through the open ocean along the shore to arrive at Burns Point Park.

We took out the canoes, shook hands, gave each other a hug. All that paddling just to arrive somewhere else downstream. All that hard work to arrive at the ocean, after starting at the source of the Mississippi River 76 days ago. It was another finish. Another thing brought to completion. Another moment to hang onto at the end, feeling slightly unsure of what it meant, what it should mean, if it should mean anything at all, wanting it to mean at least something, wanting it to feel different than it did in that moment.

“Was this a successful trip?” I asked Beardoh, as we sat at a picnic table at the park eating lunch.

“I’ve been thinking about that for the past week,” he said.

He didn’t have an answer.

Success is measured in different ways. Finishing something doesn’t necessarily mean it was successful. Was canoeing the length of Mississippi River a good use of one’s time? Did we learn something new? Did we grow as individuals? Did we enjoy ourselves? Was this a worthwhile adventure? These are the subjective questions that one has to hold themselves accountable for.

They are questions, too, for any pursuit in life.

And the answers are hard to come by.

They change with time, shift with your mood, the weather outside, something someone said. They linger in the mind. They are weak and frail, subject to romanticism, remembering things for what you wanted them to be rather than what they were. Memories are dangerous this way, and time tries to protect us from these things, protect us from all the bad things; protect us from all the good things too. The good things grow bigger in the mind, they grow over the bad things. Give it enough time, and you start to not remember any of the bad stuff.

That wasn’t so bad, you start to think. And a month later, that was pretty great. And a year from now, I’d really like to do that again.

And its all about time again, isn’t it? 

No.

I can’t accept that.

It’s all about specific moments in time, not time itself. It’s the days when the weather was perfect, having lunch on a sandbar, with a gentle breeze cooling your skin. It’s bald eagles soaring beautifully overhead. It’s clean and clear water. It’s quiet moments. It’s the stars on a clear night. It’s the clouds, how the sun shines through them, how it lights up the world as it submerges and rises across the horizon. It’s wide open spaces. It’s the beauty of the natural world. It’s the people you meet, the stories they tell, and then the stories you get to re-tell.

It’s all about when time stops. It’s all about when you forget about time.

Yeah.

That’s what it’s all about.

That’s got to be it.

It has to. 

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Thank you for reading. I hope you enjoyed these short stories about my trip down the Mississippi River. I certainly enjoyed writing about them.
Thanks to Beardoh and Sweetpea and Qball. Thanks to all the River Angels that opened up their homes and hearts. Thanks to Carolyn, my wife, for supporting this craziness. I love you so much.

And this seems to be it for awhile now (well, maybe we have one more small trip up our sleeve). It’s been a crazy 20 months. For those that have followed along all this way, or for bits of it, I really appreciate it.

This blog format has evolved over time, and I’m really happy where it’s at. I love writing just as much as I enjoy going on all these trips. And I love capturing the images that bring more context to these stories. It’s turned into one big passion project, and I hope to continue doing it.

So, what can you expect in the next few months? There’s lots of video to go through, so more short films. And there’s lots of photographs to edit, so galleries of some of the best images I was able to capture. I thought about making a 2018 calendar, so maybe that. And there’s still lots to write about- maybe I can get something published, who knows?

I’ll be writing a few more objective articles, too, some gear reviews, some more thoughts about the Mississippi River, planning and logistics and a GPS guide, that sort of thing.

But, the heart is in these creative writing efforts. I hope I was able to inspire at least one person, not that I’m very inspiring, but all the places I’ve visited are, and all the people I’ve met along these travels are too.

Really, life’s just too damn short. I struggle with this a lot. I think often about how I can maximize the enjoyment of my time. I want people to believe that they can too. It takes some work, but it’s possible. Anything is. 

I hear a lot of people all the time tell me, “I wish I could do something like that.” And it pains me to hear this. You can. You certainly can.

Take action on your desire, no matter what it is. Don’t be afraid. Please don’t be afraid. The world is not a scary place. It’s beautiful. It’s so damn beautiful.

Take time and make it your own. 

-Domonick