Episode 34: Ripples Through Time: River Travelers Take Us to the Mississippi’s Past and Present

In The Log of the Easy Way, John Mathews wrote about a honeymoon trip he and his wife took in 1900. No, they didn’t relax at an all-inclusive resort in Jamaica; they traveled a couple thousand miles down the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers in a homemade shantyboat.

Their book is just one of many written by people who have taken a long trip on the Mississippi, from Charles Lanman’s trip in 1841 straight to shantyboat travelers like Mathews and on to the present and the many books from long-distance paddlers on the Mississippi.

In this episode, I offer a few impressions about what these books have to say about the Mississippi, what it was like in the past and what it is today. While river travelers weren’t shy about detailing what they liked and what they didn’t, their stories go far beyond expressing simple preferences.

Stories from people who traveled the Mississippi at different points in time illuminate how we’ve changed the river’s world. Wildlife sightings are less common than they used to be, for one thing. They also highlight the transition from the wonder travelers felt at the river’s natural abundance to the days when we dumped anything and everything into the river to today when water quality is much better. The books document the increasing presence of engineers, especially from the Army Corps of Engineers, along the river, and the coincident decline in communities of people who lived off the river. The accounts of river travelers offer a peek inside those vanished river communities, along with unflinching descriptions of the deeply held prejudices toward African Americans and Native Americans, views that many of the travelers themselves shared.

Join me in this episode and let’s time travel along the Mississippi River!

In the Mississippi Minute, I suggest a few books from river travelers that I think you’ll enjoy.

Books mentioned in the Mississippi Minute:

• The Log of the Easy Way by John Mathews (1911)
• Where Goes the River by Albert Tousley (1927)
• Down the Mississippi with Stinky: Two Women, a Canoe, and a Kitten by Dorie Brunner (2000)
• Mississippi Solo by Eddy Harris (1988)

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34. River Travelers

Wed, Feb 14, 2024 12:26PM • 41:06

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

river, mississippi, travelers, water, wrote, paddled, boat, people, books, camped, living, hart, raven, bakula, traveling, places, trip, passed, paddlers, bodies

SPEAKERS

Dean Klinkenberg

Dean Klinkenberg 00:00

To most persons, the Mississippi is only another waterway. To me, it is a personality, a living force, a great physical and spiritual power.

Dean Klinkenberg 00:34

Welcome to the Mississippi Valley Traveler Podcast. I’m Dean Klinkenberg and I’ve been exploring the deep history and rich culture of the people in places along America’s greatest river, the Mississippi, since 2007. Join me as I go deep into the characters and places along the river and occasionally wander into other stories from the Midwest and other rivers. Read the episode show notes and get more information on the Mississippi at MississippiValleyTraveler.com. Let’s get going

Dean Klinkenberg 01:06

Welcome to Episode 34 of the Mississippi Valley Traveler Podcast. I recently just finished reading The Log of the Easy Way by John Mathews. It’s a book that describes a leisurely trip that he and his wife took floating down the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers. At a time when most Americans had left big rivers behind. Reading this book is kind of like opening a time capsule, just one with more stuff in it. I’ve read quite a few books that fit into the same mold, someone gets a boat of one kind or another and takes a trip on the Mississippi, maybe to see what’s there or for the personal challenge or maybe for some other reason. So in this solo episode, I’m gonna share a few impressions about these books and why I enjoy them. Well, why I enjoy most of them. The contemporary version of the story, the long distance paddle on the Mississippi, which gets turned into a book kind of gets repetitive. And frankly, many aren’t all that well written or really even that interesting, I tend to be a little bit more selective about which ones of the more recent books I read. Now, there are of course, some huge gaps in who gets to tell the stories. We rarely hear about the experiences of African Americans traveling on the river, especially until very recently. In fact, most of the books before the mid 20th century displayed white Americans deeply held prejudices toward African Americans and Native Americans. A few women wrote about their experiences, but not many. But it’s almost always men who write these books. And of course, most of the people who write these books were also well-off so they could afford to take the time to float leisurely down a river. Still, I think these accounts from river travelers describe the Mississippi and its world at different periods of time. So reading them feels like traveling through time. I like that.

Dean Klinkenberg 03:02

As usual, thanks to all of you who show me some love through Patreon. Your support keeps this podcast alive and breathing. If you want to join the Patreon community, go to patreon.com/DeanKlinkenberg. One of the benefits is you get these episodes a couple of days ahead of everybody else. If you don’t want to join through Patreon, you can show some love by buying me a coffee, go to MississippiValleyTraveler.com/podcast and you’ll find out how you can do that. And at that same address at MississippiValleyTraveler.com/podcast. You’ll also find the show notes for each episode. And now on with the show.

Dean Klinkenberg 03:41

In September 1990, John and Janet Mathews got married in Chicago, then stepped onto a homemade shanty boat that they rode for the next eight months down the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers to New Orleans. Their book, The Log of the Easy Way, is a breezy account of their months floating freely on two big rivers. There’s a whole collection of books about traveling on the Mississippi River. From the journals of early Europeans in the region to the travel logs of 19th century wealthy European social critics, to the stories of long distance paddlers of the 20th century into today.

Dean Klinkenberg 04:26

Why did people voluntarily spend weeks or months living and traveling on the Mississippi? For the earliest travelers, the trip was often about scouting out ways to make money. For Matt Bakula, who rowed a boat down the Mississippi in 1953, part of the reason for his trip was that the river had a pull on him. He wrote, “having spent quite a bit of time at one time or another on the river. It has a certain intriguing effect on me, beckoning to me whenever I get near it.” Some people like Albert Tousley did it out of curiosity to see, where it goes the river. Others take the trip for the adventure or personal challenge. A few take the trip to raise awareness for a cause such as plastic pollution. Whatever the reason, I feel like a time traveler when I’m reading these stories. These books offer snapshots of the river’s world at specific points in time, and a sense for how the river has changed. How we’ve changed it. Travelers chronicle the transition from Native American communities along the river to boats filled with personnel from the US Army Corps of Engineers sent to build dikes and dams.

Dean Klinkenberg 05:36

In the 19th century, a lot of people made a living from or on the Mississippi. As commercial traffic declined after the Civil War and into the 20th century, the people still living and working on the river were mostly folks of limited means. River travelers documented the experiences of many of these people who the middle classes generally considered outcasts. Traveling on the river for extended periods of time comes with many challenges, including what to eat and drink. These books illustrate how food options for river travelers changed across time. Early travelers foraged, fished and hunted, which they supplemented with whatever food they had brought with them. When Julius Chambers traveled by canoe in 1872, dinner was mostly a delicacy called a slug, what he described as “dough roughly torn into pieces and boiled in water with salt bacon. The product was tough as rubber and heavy as lead, but when one is hungry, slugs are highly edible.” Later travelers had a few more options and could stop for supplies in rivertowns. Albert Tousley regularly ate rye crisp or health bread what he called health bread with blackberry jam and milk, sometimes adding bologna or an apple as an extra treat. Rowland Raven-Hart also favored bread and jam to which he added potted meats, canned soups, or corned beef hash and chocolate. He would have preferred to add some cheese to his meals too, but he didn’t really like his options. He wrote, “Were not for the regrettable fact that the cheese obtainable in smaller places in America is practically always a factory product, a messed up paste, and to my mind uneatable we should of course have had cheese with this meal.” Dorie Brunner and Lou Germann enjoyed bisquick biscuits, canned meats like spam, canned and fresh veggies, fresh and dried fruit, powdered eggs, milk and potatoes. Paddlers today have it much better. Instead of slugs, we can add hot water to freeze dried lasagna. Fresh fruits and vegetables are abundant. And just maybe if we’re lucky, our river angel will pass us a freshly grilled hamburger dripping with ketchup. Let’s take a deeper dive now with what these books tell us about the river past and present.

Dean Klinkenberg 08:00

One of my first impressions is how travelers view the different sections of the river. There’s a lot more love for the upper part of the river than the lower half, which I think speaks more to travelers expectations than the river itself. The upper reaches of the Mississippi radiated beauty and charm which travelers universally noted. Frederick Marryat, who travelled the river in the 1830s described the Upper Mississippi as, “a beautiful clear blue stream intersected with verdant islands, very different in appearance from the Lower Mississippi.” Charles Lanman, who was part of a group that traveled up river on the Mississippi in 1847 wrote, “The moment that you pass the mouth of the Missouri on your way up the father of waters, you seem to be entering an entirely new world whose every feature is beautiful exceedingly. The shores now slope with their green verdu to the very margin of the water, which is now of a deep green color, perfectly clear and placid as the slumber of a babe”. In the 19th century, many Americans considered northern Minnesota a wilderness and the early river travelers treated it as such. It wasn’t a wilderness of course, Ojibwe and Dakota people have lived in the regions for hundreds of years, but in the 19th century, any place where the trees or prairies that white people hadn’t yet cleared, cut or plowed was considered wild. Julius Chambers a journalist accustomed to life in New York City was less fond of the upper reaches of the Mississippi around Lake Itasca. He wrote, “The loneliness of the entire landscape was appalling.” Still, the rivers world changed dramatically in a short period of time up north. By the time Albert Tousley paddled through northern Minnesota, he experienced the landscape of tree stumps and burnt fields from the logging era, sparsely populated towns, abandoned cabins and Ojibwe communities marked by debilitating poverty. While the bluffs and forests of the upper Missisippi stirred prosaic descriptions from travelers, the vast flat forests and water of the Lower Mississippi inspired indifference or even outright contempt. Frederick Marryat wrote that he “Could only regret the life was so short and the Mississippi so long.” Charles Lanman was more than a little pleased to leave the Lower Mississippi, “When I left the turbid and unruly bosom of the Lower Mississippi”, he wrote, “I felt towards it as a person would naturally feel towards an old tyrant who had vainly striven to destroy him in his savage wrath.” Charles Dickens took a steamboat up the Mississippi in 1841 and wasn’t shy about sharing his disdain for the river. He wrote, “But what words shall describe the Mississippi, great father of rivers who praise be to heaven has no young children like him. An enormous ditch, sometimes two or three miles wide, running liquid mud six miles an hour. It’s strong and frothy current choked and obstructed everywhere by huge logs and whole forest trees, now twining themselves together in great rafts from the interstices of which a sedgy lazy foam works up to float upon the waters top, now rolling past like monstrous bodies, their tangled roots showing like matted hair, now glancing singly by like giant leeches, and now writhing round and round in the vortex of some small whirlpool like wounded snakes, the banks low, the trees dwarfish, the marshes swarming with frogs, the wretched cabins few and far apart, their inmates hollow-cheeked and pale, the weather very hot, mosquitoes penetrating into every crack and crevice of the boat, mud and slime on everything. Nothing pleasant in its aspect, but the harmless lightning which flickers every night upon the dark horizon. Hour after hour, the changeless glare of the hot unwinking sky shone upon the same monotonous objects. Hour after hour, the river rolled along as wearily and slowly as the time itself.”

Dean Klinkenberg 12:13

Not everyone disliked the Lower Mississippi, of course. Rowland Raven-Hart paddled the Mississippi in a collapsible kayak in 1937. He’d been warned that the lower river would be dulled and muddy, but instead, he found, “A grandeur about those planes of water, which appealed to me more and more every day. It is no muddier than most of the beautiful Blue Danube and the scarcity of towns brings with it the intoxicating sense of freedom that to me was perhaps the chief charm of the cruise.” He liked to call his paddle a cruise. Even as travelers admired the river’s scenic beauty, we were degrading the rivers natural world. In 1802, John James Audubon traveled much of the Lower Mississippi. When he reached the Yazoo River, he called it, “A beautiful stream of transparent water, covered with 1000s of geese and ducks and filled with fish, the entrance low willows and cotton trees.” A few weeks later, he watched millions of golden plovers fly overhead from the northeast. When Matt Bakula rowed his way down the Mississippi in 1953, he saw swallows, “flying around like a swarm of bees, literally 10s of 1000s. Sight I won’t forget. Hundreds of birds each with a song of its own. I wished I’d had a recorder to capture all this. Instead, I listened for at least 10 minutes a veritable heaven on earth.”

Dean Klinkenberg 13:37

Other than birds, though, a trip along the river after the 19th century yielded few wildlife sightings., Dorie Brunner and Lou Germann canoed down the river in 1960. Dorie later wrote, “The further south we paddled, the less wildlife we saw. In the Upper Mississippi, wildlife was abundant. In the state of Mississippi, I once saw a small herd of white tailed deer. Other than that, I cannot recall seeing or hearing the croak of a frog or the quack of a duck, not so much as a turtle swimming or sunning itself on a sandbar.”

Dean Klinkenberg 14:14

One reason for the decline in wildlife was pollution. In the 19th century, river travelers took their water directly from the river. By the 20th century, travelers were far more cautious. For drinking water, Albert Tousley dug a hole in the sand a few feet from the river, then waited for it to fill. He’d bail out the water then repeat that process two more times before he filled his water bottle. After all that, he still squeezed a drop of iodine into every quart of water. His caution may have been inspired by what he’d seen at south St. Paul, even though he passed the city’s notorious slaughterhouses on a holiday. He wrote, “The shore near the plants was lined with blood and refuse. The great problem of engineers of tomorrow is not building bridges and dams, but sanitary engineering prevention of pollution of our inland waterways. We were told that the river purifies itself every 30 miles. But when sewage of large cities and packing plants is dumped into the streams in increasing quantities, this becomes impossible.” Pollution fouled much of the river. When Raven-Hart passed south of Alton, Illinois, he wrote, “The river was oily and filthy after Wood River came in, so that we had to take soap and water to get hull and paddles clean that evening. It was here that the Rogers Clark Expedition camped in their great western expedition of 1804. They wouldn’t want to camp here now.” Dorie Brunner and Lou Germann cooled down by squeezing sponges soaked with river water over their bodies, which Dorie wrote, “Nevermind the smell of the water or some of the assorted items we would see floating on the surface. We had passed small towns and cities near or on the river shore where raw sewage was piped directly into the river. You name it, we saw it floating in the river. There were times when it was not wise to cool off with river water.” Later in their trip, they paddled down a tributary stream in Mississippi, I think and were shocked by what they found. “We hadn’t gone but 20 yards and found ourselves in milky white water with a texture of soup. Not one live tree, bush weed or blade of grass was to be seen. Even the poison ivy was dead. Everything on either side of the creek for almost as far as we could see, was dead.” They turned around and went back to the Mississippi. And later they learned a nearby glass factory was dumping its waste into that stream. No doubt stories like these fueled fears in generations of people who assumed the Mississippi was dangerously polluted and always would be. But after Congress passed the Clean Water Act in 1973, the Mississippi got a lot cleaner again. The biggest contributors to foul in the river today are nitrogen and phosphorus from fertilizer runoff and plastic. Pollution poses the greatest threat to most river travelers, but it wasn’t the only one. Raven-Hart took quinine to prevent malaria. Something no one does today. Caving banks nearly swamped Mathew’s and Tousley’s boats, a danger that river travelers today still need to watch out for.

Dean Klinkenberg 17:30

Hey, Dean Klinkenberg here interrupting myself. Just wanted to remind you that if you’d like to know more about the Mississippi River, check out my books. I write the Mississippi Valley Traveler guide books for people who want to get to know the river better. I also write the Frank Dodge mystery series set in places along the Mississippi. Read those books to find out how many different ways my protagonist Frank Dodge can get into trouble. My newest book, Mississippi River Mayhem details some of the disasters and tragedies that happened to long Old Man River, find any of them wherever books are sold.

Dean Klinkenberg 18:05

Commercial traffic was sparse on the Mississippi after the Civil War. And really until the locks and dams were built on the Upper Mississippi, railroads carried goods instead of river boats. And because we hadn’t yet remade our country to accommodate cars, there weren’t a lot of bridges across the Mississippi. When Tousley paddled the river in 1925, he passed under just two bridges south of St. Louis; the rail bridges at Thebes, Illinois and Memphis. Where there were no bridges, ferries transferred railroad cars across the river. Still, our reengineering of the Mississippi was well underway. In these books the river engineers are nearly as ubiquitous as wildlife. River travelers documented surveyors, crews, building dikes and dredges. Encounters with levee camps were pretty common in the early travel books, and some travelers documented how engineering was already altering the river itself. Tousley noted that he lost the current for nearly 40 miles in southeast Iowa from Burlington to Keokuk. The completion of the power plant and dam at Keokuk in the early 1900s had been finished by that time and had dramatically altered the rivers world and in that part of the river. Tousley paddled around “Dead trees that stood gauntly out of the water”, and he fretted about running into tree stumps as he approached the dam. While Tousley didn’t pass many commercial boats, he did encounter a lot of Army Corps of Engineer boats, many of whom supplied Tousley with free food. Raven-Hart was probably the last long distance paddler to experience the free flowing Upper Mississippi. And he started at Hannibal. In 1937 he paddled past lock 22 which was under construction at the time, and he described as, “New and elaborate and flourishing a large American flag and a tall white and gold flagstaff.” Although much of the time he seemed enamored of the ambitious reengineering of the river. He wasn’t a full throated supporter of it. He wrote, “It seems a pity that this river of rivers must be damned. And I was hardly glad that my trip took place before any of the four dams that are eventually to spoil the run from Hannibal down was sufficiently completed to be an obstacle.” Paddlers today write about passing through locks as if this is just what one does on a river. But of course, it’s a recent phenomenon. The older books offer a peek at what it was like to move down a free flowing Mississippi.

Dean Klinkenberg 20:41

River travelers love to write about the people they encountered, the Mississippi River rats, and why not? The river has always attracted big characters. Living on the river was often cheaper than living anywhere else. Plus, you had access to food you could fish and hunt. River life was a libertarian paradise for folks who didn’t like to be told what they could and couldn’t do, who wanted to live free from regulation and rules and free from taxes. River communities often operated independently or nearly so from people on land and travelers were often amazed by how they worked. Albert Tousley described a river rat as someone “Who dwells on the river, living precariously by fishing, tending lights, making moonshine or means unknown. Along the banks of our own Mississippi are derelicts as marooned as those human off scorings of South Sea Islands picturesquely portrayed in the movies, we talked to many who because of wives, family or poverty, cannot return to places they hold fondly in their memories. Yet we saw dozens of houseboats where apparently happy families dwelt. Where the husband worked regularly, or cleanliness prevailed. And where bit by bit, bank accounts were growing, and the occupants are leading lives preferable to cramped crowded conditions in parts of cities, where the earning abilities of the men would force them to live.” Willard Glazier who paddled down the Mississippi in 1881 observed, “Every trade is represented on these floating dens. Cobblers, tinsmiths, agents and repairs of sewing machines, grocers, saloon keepers, barbers and others set afloat their establishments and ply their several trades at the small towns and villages on the riverbanks.” One of the people he met was J.P. Doremus, who ran a photography studio from his boat, and took 1000s of photos of the people in places along the river. The river house people who lived on long term as well as some who are only there for a short while. Raven-Hart encountered two men in a rowboat, migrating from St. Paul to New Orleans for the winter. After he left Vicksburg, he met a mother and her son rowing south looking for work. The two had all their worldly possessions in another boat they had tethered to the one they were rowing. They left Michigan after her husband died because her son wasn’t cut out for farming. “Ma here says I take after her side of the family, all river folks they were”, the young man told Raven-Hart. They had rode to Greenville, Mississippi, where he found work for a few weeks. When Raven-Hart met them they were going on to Baton Rouge to find work in the petroleum industries.

Dean Klinkenberg 23:25

When Tousley paddled the river 1925, he passed dozens of climbing boats and communities of people digging for mussels from Hastings, Minnesota to the Missouri River. He also encountered at Prairie Du Chien, French’s new sensation, a showboat, in the days before the internet and movie theaters. Showboats brought live entertainment to people in river towns. Not every encounter with river people was rosy, however. When Dorie Brunner and Lou Germann stopped at a logging camp south of Memphis looking for fresh water, a camp they had been advised to avoid, they were shocked by the squalor the African American workers lived in. Brunner wrote, “Most of the buildings were shacks looking as if they were ready to fall down. These included the living quarters for the men of the camp and their families, some shacks were missing doors. None had glass in the windows. As I walked past them, I could see that newspapers served as wallpaper. The living quarters were nothing more than one or two room hovels. Never in my life had I seen living conditions for humans as squalid as these. The women were poorly dressed, barefoot and in dire need of any small comforts a human should be expected to have. Children’s bodies were covered with welts from insect bites. Drinking water was tainted with gasoline.” Brunner and Germann didn’t stick around. As travelers reached the Lower Mississippi, conditions similar to this were common. Still most travelers accepted these conditions as the product of the fundamental inferiority of African Americans. Many of these books offer an unflinching look at the blatant disregard displayed for the lives and well being of African Americans and Native Americans. Even Tousley, who was generally more sympathetic in his views of people than other travelers, held attitudes about race typical for white people at that time. In Louisiana, an older African American couple took him in for the night. Tousley wrote about the experience, “It was interesting to get the point of view of these elderly Negroes who had lived most of their lives, and who had grandchildren growing up to face problems that will become more acute as time goes on, unless great wisdom is exercised. They had the wisdom of age and the philosophy of members of an inferior race, but they gave us bits of light on life that youth and white man seldom discovered.”

Dean Klinkenberg 25:57

Today, the towns and cities along the Mississippi are main attractions, scenic friendly communities that offer easy access to the river. It wasn’t always so. Willard Glazier wrote that “Many of these places do not possess even a local interest, and the eye soon wearies of the air of desolation and monotony that characterizes the majority of them.” Albert Tousley paddled by many river towns that were economically depressed. Although the places that were struggling in 1925 aren’t the same ones that have fallen on hard times today. He visited a Prairie du Chien in decline since Fort Crawford was abandoned in 1856. Once entrepot of the upper river, once scene of an army outpost, once terminus of a railroad, it is no place today for the person who cannot weave into yellow buildings crumbled foundations and atmosphere, the loves, labors, romance and heartaches of a bygone century.” In contrast, Tousley found thriving communities at Keokuk, Iowa and Cairo, Illinois, both places that suffered tremendous population losses after World War Two. Raven-Hart wrote of Vicksburg, “We crawled up whatever river it is,” he got confused about whether he was on the Yazoo or the Mississippi, “in a light rain past a riverfront with shanty boats and anchored nightclubs on both banks.” Many river towns that were thriving a century ago no longer are and vice versa. Travelers have documented the ebbs and flows of river town fortunes. Whether attractive or not one of the striking differences from the river of the past and the river today is how many communities are cut off from the river now, Tousley observed, “Before the levees reached their present proportions all settlers had skiffs and bateau. During floods they hunted, fished and visited waiting for the waters to recede. Today, a short distance behind the levees it’s a rare thing to find a boat.” Life on the river could be surprisingly isolated from life on land, even from life in the cities that border the river. Tousley noted the contrast between the moments when he was alone on the river and feeling isolated, only to walk a few feet over levee and discover whole communities. I’ve known this feeling myself. In 2015 I paddled with a small group of people from New Orleans to the Gulf of Mexico. One night we camped on a narrow spit of land thick with vegetation. I had to stomp down some damp coastal grasses to make a flat spot to pitch my tent on while swatting away mosquitoes. We sat around the campfire that evening, just as people had for centuries before us. Meanwhile, directly across the river in Venice, Louisiana, people sat in their living rooms watching TV in climate controlled houses while motorboats made their way back into the marina. It was a very odd feeling.

Dean Klinkenberg 28:53

In spite of the obvious changes across time, some things have remained constant. Paddling across Lake Winnibigoshish, “Big Winni” to many folks in the area, is and always has been a difficult crossing that can scare the hardiest of adventurers. Glazier wrote, “I shall not soon forget the peculiar sensations experienced when I realized that I was in a frail canoe in a heavy sea two or three miles from land.” Tousley was among the folks who set out to cross Big Winni. Fooled by calm water when he started, “This treacherous lake the sycophant had tricked us. We believe now in its putative cruelty, the water spirits were angry. Two of the most harassing hours we had ever endured followed. Hours that try it our bodies and our confidence. Not only were muscles strained, but the determined ceaseless poundings of the wind tested our belief in one another and in ourselves. The waves grew so high that as we rose on the crest of a comer we could observe on all sides white capped churning seas. Dropping into the trough we can only see water surrounding us above us like the sword of Damocles.”

Dean Klinkenberg 30:14

Everyone though, paddlers especially, can’t praise the river sandbars enough, Tousley wrote, “That first sandbar night under the open sky was a revelation. We were alone, none near us, no noises to disturb us, nothing but the wide spreading bar, the talking river with its voice pitched in a low key, the star strewn heavens over us.” Raven-Hart was especially enthusiastic “We camped on a sandbar. Heaven be thanked for them. Nowhere in the world have I camped in such comfort, a gently sloping beach in which to ground and take the boat out. Sand so soft that we rarely needed to dig the usual little hip holes. Since a mere wiggle of the body prepared a couch molded to our shapes, no vegetation to encourage mosquitoes. Perfect swimming in gently sloping sand bottom depths, and of course not a soul in sight to force us to wear hampering clothes.”

Dean Klinkenberg 31:14

Many travelers also noted the challenges of navigating the Mississippi. Matt Bakula captured the frustrations of shifting winds, “The wind having changed and now was against me. Of course in the twists and turns in the river, you are never sure whether wind will be favorable or not.” Bakula also wrote about the difficulties of rowing around eddies at point 646 to 643.7. “I ran into the biggest eddy yet. I didn’t know at times whether I was coming or going, what a turmoil.” Most though felt like Raven-Hart that the threats posed by eddies were greatly exaggerated. Raven-Hart wrote, “I had received urgent warnings of whirlpools and currents where the rivers met the Mississippi and Missouri, but found nothing worth mentioning. This may have been due to low water in both rivers, but I find that nine out of 10 dangerous spots of which I am insistently warned or non existent and the 10th greatly exaggerated.” One risk that is not overstated, however, is the rivers infamous pension to rise and fall dramatically overnight. After passing by Baton Rouge back to the road “After lying down, saying my night prayers, the thought came to me to secure my boat. I had just pulled it up high and dry, but drove no stake into the ground and tied it. So fortunately I did. For the next morning the boat and stake were both in the water hadn’t done so. Lady Itasca (his boat) would have taken off without me. And then that would have been another story.” Other travelers have been less fortunate and woke up to find a rising river had washed their boat away.

Dean Klinkenberg 33:01

Even with the pollution, squalid living conditions for some people, the eddies and dams, every traveler time and again experiences moments of inspirational beauty. Tousley wrote, “For continuous beauty, no river compares with the father of waters between St. Paul and Davenport. The valley widens to from three to five miles between the bluffs. The river leisurely swings from one to the other, between wide lowlands studded with beautiful islands green clad, mysterious, inviting.” Matt Bakula wrote, “Oh Lord, I love the beauty of thy house. And is there living a man with soul so dead that doesn’t glory in the things created by the hand of God, I pity him. Such beauty all around. Why go abroad when we have such scenery right here at home.” Mark Twain wrote movingly about the glory of watching the sunrise over the Mississippi River, and sunsets on the river still inspire folks to pull up a chair and watch. But even after dark, the river doesn’t disappoint. Even for Frederick Marryat. He wrote, “I did not expect that the muddy Mississippi would be able to reflect the silver light of the moon. Yet it did, and the effect was very beautiful. Truly it may be said of this river, as it is of many ladies, that it is a candlelight beauty.” Maybe a bit of a backhanded compliment, but I appreciate the sentiment.

Dean Klinkenberg 34:30

There is one final lesson from these travelers. Time along the Mississippi changes people. Changes the way we see the world around us and each other. Abraham Lincoln took a flatboat down the Mississippi from Illinois to New Orleans twice as a young man. Those trips almost certainly helped shape his views on slavery. Albert Tousley wrote, “To most persons the Mississippi is only another waterway. To me, it is a personality, a living force, a great physical and spiritual power. I know the ecstasy of solitude at daybreak, the beauty of awaking city, the solemnity of nightfall, the heat of noonday suns, the gripping fear of an unexpected world, cutting banks the thrill of breasting waves that threatened to crush our craft. I know the pain that comes from red sunsets too exquisite to discuss or even understand, and the perfect rhythm of bodies ceaselessly swinging as paddles bend to their tasks. I learned that the greatest force in America is this river. And that within oneself, there is freedom from practically everything. One who has taken this journey, need never bicker over creeds and sex. The river becomes to him part of religion, an apostle itself of God.” Matt Bakula wrote that “Out here, the thoughts really come to you, and a real spot for meditation. how insignificant one is in this vastness.” Dorie Brunner who wrote her book 40 years after her trip reflected, “We had an experience and adventure few people will know and one I’ll never forget. To this day, 40 years later, whenever I see the great river, I can still visualize a little red canoe, a kitten on the bow and two paddlers. Memories, many fond and some not so fond come flooding back.”

Dean Klinkenberg 36:31

Every river traveler praised the generosity of people all along the Mississippi. Glazier and Tousley knocked on strangers doors, asking for a place to sleep and rarely got turned down. Time and again river people lent a helping hand to strangers passing through, even if they have little for themselves. John Fogerty was right, “People on the river are happy to give.”

Dean Klinkenberg 36:58

I’ve been lucky enough to travel on the Mississippi many times and see it from different perspectives. Every time out I marvel at the variety of life that the river makes possible. I worry these days that the changes we’ve made, the extensive and expensive reengineering of the Mississippi, are making it harder and harder for that life to survive. But I’m hopeful that we’ll turn this around soon. Why? Because more of us are reconnecting with the Mississippi. And time along the river changes us, deepens our spirituality, broadens our generosity, and fuses us with wonder. My wish for you is that you become a river traveler this year. Spend some time along the Mississippi, then some more, get on the water. Look around, feel the river underneath you. And look for all the ways this river sustains life. This year, let the river change you too.

Dean Klinkenberg 37:54

And now it’s time for the Mississippi Minute. In this episode, I talked about a number of books from river travelers that I think shed light on the river’s world. If you’re interested in this genre of books, here are a few books that I consider essential reads. The Log of the Easy Way by John Mathews, which I mentioned quite a bit in this episode was originally published in 1911. One of the things I like about that book is that there are a lot of descriptions of the people that they met along the way. Where Goes the River by Albert Tousley, published in 1927. It’s the first contemporary account of a long distance paddler. And Tousley has a lot of observations about the river and the people that he met. And I think it’s a really interesting piece for capturing that particular period of time when there was very little commercial traffic on the Mississippi. And there were still a lot of people who were living on the river. Down the Mississippi with Stinky: Two Women, a Canoe, and a Kitten by Dorie Brunner. Stinky is a kitten that Dorie and Lou Germann adopted on their long distance paddle down the Mississippi. This book is interesting, in part because it was published 40 years after their trip, but it’s also one of a handful of narratives written by women. And I think you’ll find their perspective on traveling the river, a little different from the men who have done the trip. But they also have some really interesting observations about the river at that period of time. And finally, a classic in the field, maybe the classic, Mississippi Solo by Eddy Harris, published in 1988. Harris goes deep into some of his personal struggles at the time and views a lot of the experience of paddling the river through his identity as an African American man. Very different view of things than some other folks who’ve taken this trip. Very well written I really I enjoyed this book quite a bit. And if you’re going to read this genre, he should definitely be on your shortlist.

Dean Klinkenberg 40:06

Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to the series on your favorite podcast app so you don’t miss out on future episodes. I offer the podcast for free but when you support the show with a few bucks through Patreon you help keep the program going. Just go to patreon.com/DeanKlinkenberg. If you want to know more about the Mississippi River, check out my books. I write the Mississippi Valley Traveler guide books for people who want to get to know the Mississippi better. I also write the Frank Dodge mystery series set at certain places along the river. Find them wherever books are sold. The Mississippi Valley Traveler Podcast is written and produced by me, Dean Klinkenberg. Original Music by Noah Fence. See you next time.