Mississippi Adventure, Chapter VIII
Eric's Lesson.
by Eric
We all woke
the following morning at dawn.
I made oatmeal again and Leo worked the Molita coffee filter. We brought
instant
coffee and that was good enough for everyone except Leo, whose only apparent
vice is good coffee. Everyone in the crew had a good attitude the whole
time (no matter how bad things were to get later) but Leo seemed especially
implacable. This might not have been the case without the Molita. The Molita
is a gold coffee filter that sits in a cone with a handle on it. You put
the coffee grinds in the filter, hold the cone over a coffee pot, and pour
hot water into the filter. Ideally you drip the water in like a real coffee
maker but usually you end up pouring water in until the filter is full
then wait for the water to go down then fill it again. It is time consuming
but Leo patiently attended to it almost every morning (I would attend to
it the next morning, under special circumstances as to be described in
the next part).
We packed groggily but steadily
and left between 7 and 8am. The early start probably had more to say about
the difficult campsite than our energy or enthusiasm. [Katy: The mosquitos
that night had been terrible (camped as we were in a swamp). It was the
first night I was to experience the maddening (in the most complete sense
of that word) buzzing of the cruel, sadistic, little buggers. A necessary
middle-of-the-night bathroom call had brought a torrent of them back into
the into the tent with me. I tried just swatting them away but eventually
turned the flashlight on and declared war. They were slow and relatively
easy to kill, sated as they were with Bob's and my blood. The morning light
revealed the night's battle splattered on the inside of Bob's tent and
welted on my face and arms.] Whatever the reason, it was a good thing.
Two days before it took us forever to find the Mississippi River. The day
before it took us forever to find Natchez. Now we had the distinct sense
that we were behind schedule. Also, we had observed that the sun out on
the river between 1pm and 5pm is ruthlessly blistering. We hoped to stop
and find some shade during the mid-afternoon today.
The sky was crystal blue and the
sun still low when I played Scotland the Brave on the adventure horn and
we floated away from our temporary swamp home. Then we had a beer and a
cigar -- very likely setting a record for the earliest beer and cigar ever.
Bob had given me a large wooden cigar box of huge stogies that all of us
enjoyed except Joan (who had none) and perhaps Mark (who had some but doesn't
particularly like cigars). I kept the box in a zip-lock bag at my feet
along with my lunch box, squirt gun, rubber ducky, and whatever drink I
was having. The space in the bottom of the canoe around my feet would collect
more and more stuff all week.
We paddled
more than we floated in the morning,
taking advantage of the cooler air. I was watching out for the cutoff that
showed in all are maps. I was not too concerned about missing it because
it appeared to be very large. In fact, it has a name, the Glasscock Cutoff
(which we didn't find out til later. It turns out the area is part of a
15,000-acre "hunters'
paradise.") It would be on the left and it would be very wide. If we
missed it, we would have to follow the main channel, which according to
our map made a big loop before going south again. It looked like going
on the main channel would take us perhaps 2-3 hours out of our way.
But I was beginning to believe that
somehow we had missed it. My own vague internal calculations of space and
time had dead-reckoned that we must have passed it (well call the clue
#1) when a huge channel appeared on the left. We were near the center of
the river (albeit at a narrower spot) and had to paddle hard to make it
to the left bank before being swept past the entrance to the channel (call
this clue #2).
We stopped among some trees at the
head of the 'island' for a little while to rest and reconnoiter. There
was a gas well on the island and an old, overgrown, partly flooded, dirt
road leading to it (clue #3). The well kept making this weird tuk-a-tuk-tuk
rhythm that sounded like an exotic drumming. We saw a motorboat with two
fishermen head in and we yelled to them, but they just waved and motored
on. Later we really regretted the missed chance to talk to them about the
channel. We discussed for awhile whether or not this was the actual cutoff.
I was convinced based on the shear size of the channel that it was. The
channel was as large as the Allegheny river in Pittsburgh and had much
greater volume of flow. I figured that even if it wasn't the cutoff we
were looking for, it must return to the river somehow.
We started paddling down the channel
around 11am, paying close attention to which way it was going. First east
(Joan insists that it flowed north here) then south. I was reassured when
eventually the channel made the bend to the south. All of the inadequate
maps we had indicated it should have gone south immediately (clue #4) but
it seemed possible it might swing east at the top. After all, these maps
were not especially reliable.
[JOAN: well I figured we were
going south, and when we took the channel, we went east for just a few
tens of yards, and then swung due left (north) so the Mississippi was parallel
to us, only on our left. I call that north. Call me crazy. Then the channel
meandered more and eventually seemed to go south.]
It was mostly forested on both sides
but at times the trees on the left broke and we could see over enormous
areas of flooded fields that looked more like sprawling shallow lakes.
We separated a little here. Katy and Bob hung back some. They more than
anyone else feared we were in the wrong place. We didn't hear any loud
complaints up front. I played a few songs on the horn.
We floated and paddled for about
hour when we got to another Y (clue #5). The apparent main branch continued
south but another branch headed off to the east. Also the main branch got
distinctly smaller as the flow was divided roughly in half. In fact, the
channel had been narrowing steadily but very gradually since we entered.
We noticed places where the water mysteriously flowed into the woods on
our right (clue #6). But I clung to the hope that anything with as much
flow as this channel still had, must return to the river eventually even
though it was now perhaps one third as wide as when we entered
We went another half hour before
we reached the final indisputable clue that this was not the Glasscock
cutoff but just a very convincing false channel: A log jam blocked the
route all the way across (clue #6).
We actually
managed to go around the jam
through the flooded forest on the right side but we were
immediately met by another log jam. Also the current had greatly reduced
as the water spread out in all directions through the woods. It was clear
we had reached a dead end. This meant no lazy afternoon in the shade, no
getting back on schedule. Instead, at the hottest part of the day, we would
have as much as four hours of paddling upstream just to get back to where
we were at 11am.
I had only one thing to say: "F---."
([JOAN: and Eric rarely swears.]
Then I said something like, "I learned
a good lesson here today." Hence forth this event has been known as Eric's
Lesson.
I felt terrible. Turning around
is hateful anyway but the difficulty of paddling up stream for several
hours was dreadful. Mostly I felt bad for dragging everyone else along.
But if anyone else felt as bad as I did, they certainly didn't show it,
which made me feel a little better. Mark was the best of all. "We didn't
lose any time!" he said, "We just gained four more hours of adventure!"
Later Kate would say that if she was ever in a ship that was going down,
she wanted to have Mark there to make her last few minutes fun. She also
forbade us from saying "upstream." Henceforth we referred to it as "that
other direction."
Bob
pulled out his lunch box and played Muddy Waters, and just now someone
came up with the great idea of having lunch. We had sandwiches (of cold
cuts and cheese) that we made as we floated among the trees. Mark got out
his handheld spirograph, which I still regret not playing with. Leo said
his only concern was that now when we passed the real Glasscock cutoff,
we would assume it was another false channel and ignore it.
There were some ideas of trying
to cut through the trees back to the Mississippi but I never had much hope
for that. We would likely have gotten totally lost and I didn't even know
which way to begin looking for the river. Joan and I did paddle a little
ways into the trees looking for some hopeful sign that the river was nearby.
Once we were 50 yards away Bob yelled to us over and over again to make
sure we weren't lost.
[Katy: This is the only time
on the trip that I saw Bob ruffled at all. I don't think he trusted Joan
not to get herself and Eric lost in the Bayou. He kept remembering our
cousin Conan's comment that Joan's lack of fear rock climbing had "...scared
me." I think he figured that with Eric napping in the front of the canoe,
Joan's venturing out of sight of the rest of us was a bit risky in an already
bad situation.
Currently we were in the uncomfortable
position of having to paddle upstream for a long time. Getting lost would
have degraded our position to hazardous. [JOAN: Leo talked about climbing
a tree to see if we could see a way out, but it was so gunky in the sunken
forest that none of us actually felt like touching a tree let alone climbing
one. Plus we were a little worried that with their bases underwater for
so long, they might be too weak to support our weight.]
So we turned around after lunch
and started back up the false channel (later I found out it is called Washout
Bayou and it probably flows into the Mississippi at low water). We learned
to paddle in the eddy behind trees and generally to search for places with
less current. At times we paddled hard for every foot. At other times we
moved forward without much resistance at all. We stopped once or twice
and tied up among the trees to rest. A fishing boat with two men in it
passed us and Mark yelled, 'How about a tow?' They probably didn't hear
him over the motor. They just smiled and waved and kept going. Something
about there smiles said they knew what had happened to us. [JOAN: we
wondered if they were the same boat we had seen on the way in.]
Just as the current lessened as
we went down the false channel, it generally increased as we went up. The
point where it meets the Mississippi it was the strongest. Leo and Mark
recognized that near this point, the current would be lighter on the far
bank (the right hand side of the channel). In fact, they were in such a
huge eddy that Mark swears they 'shipped oars' 100 yards before reaching
the river.
[JOAN: this was our first hint
at how good Leo and Mark were at picking currents. After Eric and I struggled
with the current on the left hand side of the channel for awhile, we followed
Leo and Mark to the far bank, found the eddy, and made it to the point
with relative ease. Then we all sat back and watched Bob and Kate. Bob
had decided to take the shortest distance--up the left hand side of the
channel and then left onto the Mississippi. Thus he and Katy did battle
with the strongest current. We sat and watched them paddling furiously,
like cartoon characters, and barely moving thus settling the question,
'Less Distance or Less Current' in favor of less current. We have a lovely
photo of this too. Then Mark and Leo and Eric and I paddled out into the
Mississippi, and pulled onto the left hand bank just past the channel,
where Bob and Kate were trying to go. They finally arrived. We were at
the same point with the rhythmic old gas well we had stopped at hours before.]
It turned out the upstream paddle,
while very hard at times, didn't take as long as we thought; only two-and-a-half
hours. Bob got out into the water and drank a beer and explained to us
how he realized it would have been easier going up the far bank, but once
he had taken the near bank, "I just decided to tough it out." Katy, who
was cooling off in the water said, "and you didn't tell me? Your mule?"
We swam and talked for a while in
the shade and cool water of the point. After more swimming and talking
and a round of beers and cigars we felt pretty good. I was excited, and
I think everyone else was too, about our new plan.
KATY up to her neck, BOB explaining, MARK drinking
At lunch I believe it was Mark who
first suggested it. Before Eric's lesson, we were about a half day behind
the planned schedule. After the lesson, we were almost a day behind with
only 2 and a half days to go. While we could make this up with hard paddling
all day, including the scorching afternoons, that wasn't very appealing.
The plan was this: to float all night and all the next morning, sleeping
in shifts, then stop and camp in the afternoon.
The night float appealed to everyone's
imagination. It didn't seem dangerous because the only hazards during the
day were the barges and they were not much of a hazard at all. We could
see them and hear them long before they got near us. They moved very slowly
and were small compared to the size of the river. Logs and debris were
not a problem since they were going basically the same speed as us. We
would just have to stay close. We planned to tie together all night long
and float down as a flotilla.
So we felt great when we started
down the Mississippi again after Eric's lesson. Joan tied a life jacket
to the watermelon and we towed it in the water to cool it off for later.
We never did see the Glasscock cutoff and I surmised that the entire river
now flowed through the cutoff. (When we got back, I found out this was
correct. Where we entered the Washout Bayou is two miles south of where
the cutoff started when it was a cutoff. The long bend we were trying to
avoid is now an oxbow lake.)
About an hour before sunset, we
stopped at a nice spot (it had hard ground and a small beach) on the east
bank where the river makes a bend to the west. The sun set directly over
the river. Even though it was so close to sunset, the sun was still scorching.
It's hard to imagine a hot sunset but that's what it was. It fe
lt
every bit as hot as a 2pm sun on a hot August day in Pittsburgh. Bob was
so hot he picked up a lawn chair and held it in front of him to keep off
the nearly horizontal rays of the sun. Kate spent most of the evening stop
sitting in water up to her neck. [Katy: At this point in the trip my need
for relief from the sun totally over shadowed any squeamishness I had about
the water quality of Big Muddy.] Bob had the ironic job of starting a fire
for the hot dogs. A recently fallen tree had branches perfect for hot dog
sticks. Mark, the amazing caterer at out wedding, sliced the Watermelon
faster than a Romanian butchering a pig.
We feasted on hot dogs and watermelon
as we watched the sun set over the river. Later we referred to this as
the Pre-near-death weenie roast. At the time however, we were abuzz with
anticipation.
Stay tuned for Chapter
IX, The Night Float (or Mark's Folly)
Mississippi Main Page 
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