In this episode, I interview long-time river guide and Sage of the Lower Mississippi, John Ruskey. John has been guiding and living on the Mississippi for nearly 30 years, so I start by letting him describe the Lower Mississippi River that he knows. We talk about some of the river’s characteristics that make it a special place, including its vastness, its extreme variations from high water to low water, and the diversity of life it supports. Still, John emphasizes that to get to know the river, to learn its language, we have to be willing to slow down and look at the details around us. He offers ideas on how we can encourage more people to connect with the river, overcome their fears about it, and grow into stewards. He also offers a few observations about how the river has changed over time. John closes out the interview by singing an original song inspired by the river he knows so well.
Show Notes
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Transcript
Sun, Oct 05, 2025 11:26AM • 1:12:48
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Mississippi River, John Ruskey, Lower Mississippi, river guide, Quapaw Canoe Company, Mighty Quapaw Apprenticeship Program, river stewards, river ecosystem, river conservation, river beauty, river experiences, river changes, river wildlife, river education, river music.
SPEAKERS
Dean Klinkenberg, John Ruskey
John Ruskey 00:00
The Mississippi, you have, it’s a kind of place that you got to slow down and look closer to see the spiral forms in a snail, for instance, or in the way a leaf curls as it dries, or in the way a flock of red winged blackbirds move across a landscape. And it’s not the kind of thing that’s going to like jump out at you and cause your eyes to pop out of your head. It’s the kind of thing that you got to sit still and, or be part of and, and then it permeates you like a in a way, and in a way that I think is deeper. Actually, I’m from Colorado, and I get a deeper feel from nature here in Mississippi than I do in my home state of Colorado.
Dean Klinkenberg 01:31
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 and 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.
Dean Klinkenberg 01:59
Let’s get going. Welcome to Episode 68 of the Mississippi Valley Traveler podcast. In this episode, I have the chance to interview and chat with longtime river guide and sage of the Lower Mississippi, John Ruskey. John has been guiding and living on the Mississippi for nearly 30 years, and I’ve been lucky enough to go on, no, I think probably four river trips with him that really changed the way I understood and felt about the Lower Mississippi. So I wanted to have a chance to go in depth and and help us see the river as John sees it. I start by asking John to describe the Lower Mississippi that he knows. From there, we talked some about the river’s characteristics that make it a special place, including its vastness, the extreme variations from high water to low water, and the diversity of life the river supports still. While John emphasizes that to really get to know the river, to learn its language, we have to be willing to slow down and look at the details around us. He offers some ideas on how we can encourage more people to connect with the river, overcome their fears about it, and maybe even grow into stewards. John also offers a few observations about how the river has changed over time. And then we finish out with a song. John is also a songwriter. He closes us out with an original song he’s recently written that was inspired by the river he knows so well.
Dean Klinkenberg 03:33
Thanks to all of you who continue to show me some love through Patreon. I deeply appreciate your support. You can join the community for as little as $1 a month, which gets you early access to all of these podcasts. To find out more, go to patreon.com/deanklinkenberg, and you can join the community there. Don’t want to do the Patreon thing, buy me a coffee. You can go to MississippiValleyTraveler. com/podcast, and from there, you can find out how to just throw a few bucks to support my caffeine habit at that same link at MississippiValleyTraveler.com/podcast. You’ll find a list of all the previous 67 episodes along with the show notes for each of those episodes, including the show notes for this one. So go there and check it out, look at a few pictures and and find out more about the the people that and places we talked about on this podcast. Let’s get on with the interview.
Dean Klinkenberg 04:40
John Ruskey is a musician, painter and writer who lives in Clarksdale and Gulfport, Mississippi. He founded the Quapaw Canoe Company in 1998 to provide guiding and outfitting to the raw, wild power and beauty of the Mississippi River between St Louis and the Gulf of Mexico. That same year, he founded the Mighty Quapaws Apprenticeship Program for the youth of the Mississippi Delta, most of whom come from severely distressed neighborhoods. In 2011 he founded the Lower Mississippi River Foundation for access education and the betterment of public outdoor recreation on the Middle and Lower Mississippi Rivers. John is the author of the “Wild Miles” and the “Rivergator: Paddlers Guide to the Lower Mississippi River.” He has floated and written about many of the major rivers of North America, including the Mississippi, the Colorado, Rio Grande, the Arkansas, Platte, Columbia, Missouri, and most recently, the Atchafalaya. His guiding philosophy come comes from Thoreau’s statement “In wilderness is the preservation of the world.” His dedication to the Mississippi River earned him the Noel Polk Lifetime Achievement Award from the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters and St John’s College Award of Merit for distinguished and meritorious service to the United States. John, it’s a pleasure to say, welcome to the podcast.
John Ruskey 05:59
Great to be here, especially with you, my friend.
Dean Klinkenberg 06:03
It’s always a pleasure to talk with you, John, even though we don’t get to do it nearly as often as I would like. So I appreciate you having some time today. I know you’re probably getting into your busy part of the year now, as the as the weather supposedly starts to cool, even though it hasn’t done much of that yet for us.
John Ruskey 06:20
Yeah, we’re out on the river more often than not. So if you’re going to find me or my team, Mark “River”, Ceili “Mayfly” and River Otter and and the rest of the team, you’re going to have to get out on the water.
Dean Klinkenberg 06:35
That sounds like an invitation that’s too good to pass up. So I think, you know, we all find a way to meet you out on the water somewhere. I thought maybe the place to start today would be for just to give you a chance to describe the Lower Mississippi River that you’ve come to know. I’ll just leave it open ended, however you want to do it, but I’d love to hear in your own words a description of the Lower Mississippi?
John Ruskey 07:02
Well, it’s almost like a mythical kingdom that flourishes within reach of everyone who lives in the deep south. But I live in Clarksville, Mississippi, and along with the rest of my crew here at Quapaw Canoe Company, Mark “River” Peoples and Ceili Hale, we call her “Mayfly” and and, and Heather Crosse “River Otter” and Jay Smith, he’s known as Jack Rabbit, and everyone kind of feels like I do and and that is kind of similar to what Huckleberry Finn felt, you know, several centuries ago. And that is that town is full of claustrophobia and confusion and and over there on the river in the kingdom of the big river, or queendom, I should say, because we think of her like a queen, and we’re her worker bees. Is where the beauty and the grace and the balance exist. And in fact, I feel like we’re living in kind of an unreal world, and over there is where the reality is. And what I mean by that is that we’ve created a unsustainable world on this side of the levee and over there, nature is continuing to thrive in the way that nature has spent millions, billions of years, excuse me, as long as life has been evolving on planet Earth, nature has fine tuned this planet that we all share, which is kind of like a spaceship that we all exist on. And when I say all I don’t mean all humans, I mean, all creation, all 25 million species of us and counting. You know, we know definitely the existence of about 5 million species. And biologists think that there are another 10 million out there, and maybe double that. So we share this, this Great Mother Earth, with 15 million other species, and we’re not doing a very good job of keeping the balance and living and and being part of everything else, and our leadership kind of way humans have become that the ultimate apex predator. We’re at the top of the pyramid and but contrary to what many religions say in including our own Christian Bible, that that that God put us on the earth to take care of this garden, contrary to that we are, have created something that Is is ceasing to to develop in a long term sustainable way, in harmony with the way it has in the past several million years of human existence, anyway, and and so what I’m getting at is that the Lower Mississippi River, by the nature of its extreme rises and extreme falls, has actually created her own biologic refuge in which and even though there are tow boats, because we move most of America’s grains up and down that river, as well as scrap steel and coal and petrochem and a lot of other things. Even though they’re tow boats that use the waters, and there are some notable populations along the way, even for all that, the big river is so powerful and has such a stronghold through her flooding and her drought, I should say droughts are part of this cycle that she has exerted ultimate power over what happens on the other side of the levee, a unique landscape has been created that runs from Cairo, Illinois at the junction of the Ohio River, 954 miles down to the Head of Passes where the river splits off and all the different passes out to the Gulf of Mexico and The Bird’s Foot Delta and so when you go over the levee, you enter a landscape that we did not control. The flooding dictates where you can build, where you can’t build. And then on the other side of the coin these extreme droughts that we keep experiencing summer after summer, and it seems like we’ve entered another one this fall, where we’ve edged all the way down to zero on our local Helena Gauge, and it went down to negative four a couple years ago, which is as low as it ever gets around here, negative four just means that it’s that’s the certain mark on it doesn’t mean there’s no water. It just means that it’s reached a certain place on this scale called the Helena Gauge. There’s still enough water for the fishes and the turtles and canoes. But at that point, it becomes touch and go whether tow boats will be able to pass through or not, because the shoals have become so shallow that the normal draft for tow boats means that they’re going to get stuck.
John Ruskey 14:20
And several years ago, we started a week long trip in Memphis, Tennessee with a bunch of British adventures led by Dave Cornthwaite. And there were 1000 tow boats pulled over to the bank on the Lower Mississippi River that week, and because water’s gotten so low, they couldn’t continue to travel. And so it was kind of funny, we were out there and carrying on with our expedition and jumping off the canoe into the river in the middle of the river in the corridor of tow boats that were pulled up along the bank and and within that, within that long landscape, it’s, it’s like one of the long landscapes that the biologist E.O. Wilson talks about that connects major bio regions with other major bio regions, such as connecting the Central American isthmus with Patagonia. And what does that well, the Amazon rainforest does, and the Andes, they’re both long landscapes that animals can travel long distance through. And in North America, we have the Rocky Mountains on one side and Appalachia on the other, and that creates a long landscape that connects the important bioregions of the south with those of the North. You know the the arboreal forest and the Mississippi is one of those long landscapes along which migrating songbirds and waterfowl travel and uses their pathway. It’s the major bird pathway in North America, but so do all many species of fish and crustaceans, such as the the freshwater shrimp and eel, the American eel travels up the River, and insects also, such as a monarch butterfly, which sometimes travels through three generations of the family to get down to the mountains of Mexico and our our roadless Mississippi River. The River is, is the only road out there, and she’s the ultimate highway, of course, but she’s not for the she’s a different kind of highway, and she’s open to all creation and and in, in in that when, when we go on our long distance trips, and most often, we’re doing it with our clients, people who have hired us as expert guides, that’s what we take them over the levee and onto the river to see and experience, because there’s no way to describe it or even photograph it or videotape it. You can’t see it in a movie.
John Ruskey 18:20
Mud comes pretty close, but it’s, it’s a thing you got to be there to experience and the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Mark Twain’s Life on the Mississippi. They come pretty close to to illustrating the supreme peace and connection and feeling of freedom that you get when you’re on those big waters. And for me personally, it’s the closest I’ve come to feeling like I’m exactly where I need to be in this world and the most connected I’ve felt anywhere. And by the way, I’m a Rocky Mountain boy. I was born and raised 8500 feet in the Colorado Rockies, and so I should be finding that up in the alpine meadows or something. But no, I found it down here in this muddy, muddy.
Dean Klinkenberg 19:28
In the hot, muddy bottoms of the Mississippi backwaters and islands and channels.
John Ruskey 19:34
Exactly.
Dean Klinkenberg 19:35
Yeah. So, as you know, like in the 19th century, the particularly the European travel writers that came through were not particularly impressed with the scenic beauty of the Lower Mississippi, in particular. It was mile after mile of flood plain forests and trees. And I guess, you know, maybe they never got off those boats, or barely got off the boats, and did get a chance to really see anything else besides that, or. What, tell us more about that world of the Mississippi that they missed? You know, what is it that those cranky travel writers missed about the beauty in the world of the Mississippi that you get to see and experience it on a day to day basis?
John Ruskey 20:13
Yeah, well, that’s exactly the strength of it is that it is. It’s a it’s the same thing over and over and over again. Around each bend, you see the same creatures and the same shapes of sandbars, and the same way the water flows around one island. It flows pretty similar around the next island and the next island and the island after that. And they’re like 230 numbered islands between the mouth of the Ohio in Baton Rouge. And these are big islands, like 100, 1000s of acres of forest and and sand and gravel bars and mud and and and thriving with with all of the animals and birds and fishes and everything else. When we go out there, we’re visitors in their their home, and oftentimes we don’t see evidence of any of the mammals. But when we wake up in the morning and walk out on the sandbar, we call it reading the morning paper, because you see everything that’s happened that night. And a lot of creatures are nocturnal down here, you see everything that’s happened the night previous by the tracks on the sandbar, because they leave a literal record of the coyote and the deer and and the bobcat. We’ve been seeing a lot of bobcat and sometimes black bear, and then during the daytime, we do see more river otter and sometimes possum, armadillo, raccoon and all those. And then at nighttime, also the beaver. They they’re nocturnal creatures, and they like climbing the the muddy bank and and cutting down their favorite tree, which is the willow, and bringing it down to the water’s edge and chewing it down on the water’s edge at nighttime. And the reason they do it at the water’s edge is because that’s their escape if coyote shows up or some other creature beaver jumps in the water and that that’s beaver’s some. So the the the beauty is not like going to the Alps or, you know, seeing Himalaya or or the Andes, you know, Patagonia or something. The beauty is in the seemingly infinite expanse of bottomland hardwood forest, that’s a paradise for all creation, and it’s a paradise for paddlers. But we’re just one out of the 1000s of species that thrive in the Lower Mississippi Valley, and you know, it’s similar to the Spanish conquistadors who came into North America looking for the fabled seven cities a Cibola. They were looking for the gold, and they failed to recognize that the gold is in the mud and the millions of native people who lived here and who lived in harmony with the environment here, and the environment itself and all of it was like, it was like the Garden of Eden. It was a place where the earth it had evolved so far forward that everything had found a harmony. And it was a continually evolving it wasn’t a static thing or like something in formaldehyde or behind glass in a museum, but ever evolving thing. And, and, of course, is still evolving, but in a much different way now. But, and you know that kind of, that kind of monotony, what some people might describe as monotony, you might find that also, you know, like on the Aleutian Peninsula or traveling up the east coast along the mountains, they all look pretty similar as you’re driving along, you know, and tow boat pilots, when they get down in this area, they call this stretch of river, the squiggles. And sometimes they call it the the Land of the Lost. And they kind of get that feeling too, and but so did the conservationist, Teddy Roosevelt, who used to hunt bear in the Mississippi Delta. And in fact, it was here that he got his nickname teddy bear, and he failed to, well, I don’t know. He failed to recognize the the importance in saving something that seemed infinite. You know, he protected millions of acres of hundreds of millions of acres of lands out West, created national parks and and, but he didn’t save a single acre of the biggest trees. What this is how he described what he saw in our forest here. He said they were the biggest trees in North America outside of the West Coast. And so it’s a some people might get the same feeling out on the open ocean, you know, the Pacific Ocean, like it all looks the same, and you can, you can sail for months across the Pacific, and everything looks the same, but the beauty is in the life that it is flourishing with.
Dean Klinkenberg 26:43
Do you think that that similarity in the landscape has worked against conservation in a sense that, like you said, you look at the mountains, most people find it pretty easy to appreciate the beauty of mountains, but I think with a lot of rivers, it seems like people don’t automatically have that same visceral response to appreciating the beauty of the rivers, especially parts of rivers that have that sort of continuity, that sameness over mile after mile. Do you agree with that idea, and if so, do you think that has made it harder to conserve river riverine worlds?
John Ruskey 27:25
Yeah, definitely, it doesn’t have that kind of striking beauty that anyone can see when you see the crest stone peaks in southern Colorado, or the San Juan Mountains of southern Colorado or the Grand Canyon, to use another natural landscape metaphor, the Mississippi you have. It’s a kind of place that you got to slow down and look closer to see the spiral forms in a snail, for instance, or in the way a well a leaf curls as it dries, or in the way a flock of red winged blackbirds move across the landscape. And it’s not the kind of thing that’s gonna like, jump out at you and cause your eyes to pop out of your head. It’s the kind of thing that you got to sit still and or be part of and, and then it permeates you like a in a way, and in a way that I think is deeper actually. I’m from Colorado, and I get a deeper feel from nature here in Mississippi than I do in my home state of Colorado. So yeah, like it comes through you in a different way. And it’s almost like swimming. You know, when you swim, you immediately enter a whole different world, I guess, and that has different sounds and completely envelops you, like if you swim underwater, especially. And the same is true for walking over a riverbank and sitting down on the banks of the river, you’re immediately in a whole different world than the land above the river bank.
Dean Klinkenberg 29:36
So I could probably answer this for you, but I’m not going to that. So what do you tell people then to prepare them when they’re coming out on the river for the first time? What do you do to help them prepare for the experience of being in this world, and what to look for and and how to sort of immerse themselves in that world and see that beauty?
John Ruskey 29:56
We pick out particular things. Um. Uh, some of which I’ve already described to you, others being like crinoids or agates that wash up on the gravel bars of the river, you know, the rivers carrying everything from Montana to New York State downstream with it, and that includes all the seeds and pieces of wood and geology from all over the country. And so some of those geologic wonders are agate that comes from a particular place in the Yellowstone River of Montana, for instance. But we also find pink granite and crinoids, which come from the the geologic era of the of the crinoids or not, it’s on the geologic area, but there’s an era in which the crinoids ruled the world, and they’re an ocean creature, and now we find their fossils, and they’re really striking, circular segments that are the arms of these creatures that were attached to the bottom of the ocean and and that the remainders of which are like, it’s like finding a gem or something on the on the river when you find one. But the some of the we tried to describe, in particular, the beauty that we see and Mark Rivers is real good at this too, and experience when we’re out there, such as the geology or the splashing of a beaver tail, or the passing over of a flock of 1000s of White Pelicans and their annual migration, or the singing of the owls at nighttime, or the rising, as we’re seeing now, of the Milky Way after dark is now at Zenith above the our campsites out on the river with Scorpius and Sagittarius on either side of the base of the Milky Way. And from our camp, we just saw this last night, or two nights ago, I was out with a bunch of sixth grade girls with an annual fall camp that we do with a school, Mississippi School, and looking downstream, we were looking right down at Sagittarius resting right down on the face of the water downstream of the island we were camped on. And when you look at Sagittarius, you’re looking at the center of the universe. I mean, excuse me, the center of the Milky Way galaxy. And rising out of that is the is the galaxy itself, which is kind of flows like a river in the sky, you know. So we pick out those particular things that not everyone will see the first time they go out, or on the first day they go out. But as guides, it’s very helpful if we can share something that they can focus in on and be amazed by. And you got to look, and kind of kind of use your imagination to a certain extent. But then once you start doing that, then you look at other things. And you can just look at the way the water flows, or the shape of the mud and the sand forms on the islands. And you start seeing and one little piece. Once you get one little piece, it’s like learning to read the grammar of the language of the river and its landscape. And once you start to see and once you gain the gain a little bit of understanding of the language of the river, then you see it all around you and you, and every day that you spend on it afterwards, you see more and more and more. And pretty soon, the days pass away like a dream and and and life on the river becomes like life on the raft that that Huck and Jim experienced when they went down the Mississippi. It was like the river was the the ultimate freedom and the the ultimate place to be, and you forget about everything else back on land.
Dean Klinkenberg 35:01
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 Mississippi better. I also write the Frank Dodge mystery series that is set in places along the Mississippi. My newest book ‘The Wild Mississippi,’ goes deep into the world of Old Man River. Learn about the varied and complex ecosystems supported by the Mississippi, the plant and animal life that depends on them. And where you can go to experience it all find any of these wherever books are sold.
Dean Klinkenberg 35:42
So slowing down and paying attention to detail are not exactly things that we’re encouraged to do in the modern culture, but it sounds like those are, of course, very important things to do to really fully appreciate the the Mississippi, the world of Mississippi. I’ve been lucky enough to be out on the river with you a few times, and my my whole view of the Lower Mississippi was completely overturned and shaped by those experiences with you. And I’m grateful, and consider myself lucky to have had that opportunity, as we did have that chance to just sort of slow down and pay attention to detail. It was so helpful to have you and River pointing out different things and helping me understand that world. What I wonder, though, like not there are a whole bunch of people who are never really going to have the opportunity to go out in a canoe with you. How do we help people who can’t get to the river, or maybe can’t spend much time next to the river. How do we help them come to that same place to appreciate the river in that same way?
John Ruskey 36:48
Well, they will have to make time. There’s no way around it. It’s not something you can do in a little 15 minute video yoga, you know, or something you have you have got to set aside the hours or the days and inside of that little piece of time is, is the opportunity that each of us have in our lives to just set aside a little piece of time for nurturing your soul. And you could do that anywhere. But for those of us who live on the river, you absolutely have to make the time to make it happen, because nature’s not going to come to you. You got to go to nature and and open your eyes and your ears and turn off your phone and a sketchbook and writing is sometimes helpful for some people. I’m one of those kinds of people that helps me see when, when, when I write things down or sketch things. But even those two can become tools to get in the way. But all we have in this world is time. We’re born with nothing. We’re going to leave with nothing when we die, and all we have is this certain allotment of our lives, and you’re not going to find it until you travel to the banks of the river and get out of your car and walk down the bank and participate in the life along the river in some way. It doesn’t have to be with me or my team in a canoe or or with any other guide. It’s pretty simple. Just find the nearest landing or state park or I know a good guidebook written by a podcast leader to the wild places on the on the Mississippi River. But if you just open your map and start looking for places where the road goes to the river, those are almost always great places to start.
Dean Klinkenberg 39:18
I agree it’s harder in some places to get to the river than in others. I really find, like on the upper part of the river, it seems like, you know, you can’t spit when you’re near the river without, you know, finding access to it. But you get south of St Louis in particular, and access gets to be a little harder. You almost need a boat in little places. But I was kind of wondering, like, the the area where your home base is, it’s also kind of famous for the attitudes about the river being this big dangerous beast, and what have you talked about the importance of actually getting to the river and it seems like that’s been sort of like a historic obstacle for a lot of people in the South who have you know plenty of stories about a raging Mississippi, wiping out communities and killing people and wiping out crops. What have you found as a good way to sort of reach past some of those fears and and help more people actually get to the river and see it in a new way?
John Ruskey 40:21
Well, the experience for us, the once we get someone in our canoe and and oftentimes it’s like family reunions, and so some people are organizing it, and others are just going along for the ride, you know, and the school trips we do, and youth groups and summer camps. And the the best, the best way, is just to experience a little taste of it, and then you want more. And an example of that happened this weekend. We’ve been we’ve been providing a fall camp for sixth graders at a Mississippi School, and it’s become like a rite of passage in the school curriculum for fifth graders becoming sixth graders in that passage that you go through at that age when you’re learning about yourself and the world and starting to make more decisions for yourself, and the school decided that they wanted a Mississippi River Adventure to help their students travel that passage. And we’ve been doing that for 13 years with the same school, and so now they’re kids coming into it who grew up with siblings who went with us 10 years ago and told them about all the fun they had getting sandy and muddy and running around the sandbar, jumping in the river and swimming and and now the kids that are coming to us, they expect to get in the river. They’re not afraid of it. They’ve seen pictures and heard stories for years now. And when they come with us, they’re expecting to get immersed in in those things that, unfortunately, we’re taught to fear and to try and stay away from. Most parents do not want their kids getting in a big water or getting in the mud or getting in the sand in the Mississippi River, because they have these preconceived notions that it’s mud, that it’s polluted or dirty or unsafe, and anything, any natural landscape in this world, is unsafe, if you are foolhardy about it. But we tell people again and again, and we’ve been doing this for 27 years, and we annually take out one to three thousand people every year, and we’ve been telling people for years and years the most dangerous aspect of any part of this trip is your highway travel getting here, because once we get on the river in our big canoes, we’ve been doing it so long, we know what to look out for and what to where to go, where the good places to swim are, and to camp and what to avoid and, and it’s worked for 27 years.
Dean Klinkenberg 43:50
So I think part of the secret to that success, as you describe it, as I hear it, is that you have just been present for 27 plus years. You’ve had an opportunity to build relationships with people in that area, you’ve had a chance to get some publicity and show people that you can go out on the river safely and try to break through some of those misconceptions. And then you’re those early pioneers, in a sense, who went out become really good spreading word of mouth to the ones coming behind them. So there’s no quick, easy answer to any of this is it? It’s sort of that, that slow, gradual process of just finding a few people and getting started and getting them out there?
John Ruskey 44:30
Yeah. I mean, we’re talking about a river that touches the lives of 66 million people. You know, when you include the tributaries, and is one of the seven biggest rivers in the world and the biggest river in North America. And it’s yeah, when you nothing about the Mississippi River is small or easy to define or put your finger on, but yeah, the it shouldn’t be that way. It should be that every person has this spark of curiosity and the built in knowledge of you know how to approach nature that they’ve learned through their upbringing. But we don’t have that anymore. We’re we learn to survive in a mechanized, human made world in our lives, and very few people have a intimate relationship with the workings of nature.
Dean Klinkenberg 45:40
So I know it’s been important for you from the beginning to develop river stewards, people who care about the river and will look out for it. I’m just kind of curious your thoughts about what does it mean to be a steward of the river today?
John Ruskey 45:58
Well, this is something that the biologist E.O. Wilson that I brought up his name earlier, he talks about in his ‘Half Earth,” where he says, if we’re going to save the remaining 85% of species that are living in this world, we’re going to have to set aside half the earth to for them to survive in. But the other interesting thing that he pointed out is where are wildernesses working in the world? And he found out that it’s not the places that we’ve set aside in isolation like we do in the Rocky Mountain West our wilderness areas, but they’re the places across the world, and they’re commonly found in Africa and Southeast Asia and South America. They’re places where indigenous community communities actually live in within or on the outskirts of that environment and and live it in harmony with it. You know, they make their livings in some, some sustainable way that involves that landscape. And so we in our development of river stewards of the Mississippi River, we tried to do something similar in encouraging our youth and the adults we work with what we’re we don’t limit this to anybody, anyone with any interest. We have this thing called the Mighty Quapaw Apprenticeship Program. And anyone who has a sincere interest in learning canoe building and navigation on the biggest river in North America, we teach how to safely and healthfully travel and exist in the floodplain of our big river, and to and for us, our connection is as guides. We we go and then we return, and we go and we return, but every time we go, we are sharing knowledge, and at the same time, we’re making income that allows us and our families and our staff to survive another season, you know, on the river. And so it’s become a self sustaining kind of thing that necessarily, very, very, necessarily involves this landscape that we are connected to, and that is the floodplain of the big river, and the big river herself and all her wild ways so and we are not in any unique position here where we are, there are countless big rivers and small rivers and and mountains and canyons and ocean scapes and landscapes of all, all sorts all around this earth that are indecipherable for those who do not have experience with them, but are integral to the success of the whole. And the whole is Mother Earth, all of us together, none of us are going to be able to do it alone, but if we all work together, then then we will, and that’s all it takes. Is. Is a working together and anyone, anywhere, wherever you are in this world, you could find that place, that you find that connection, and we encourage that with others who come to visit us to find that place, it that inspires you and that you you have some knowledge of and share it and find a way that you can make it better and it can become part of your living and the way that you and your family can continue on forward in this world.
Dean Klinkenberg 50:43
Amen.
Dean Klinkenberg 50:46
I had a chance to travel around Africa this summer. We were there for six weeks in different parts of the southern part of the continent, and I did see firsthand some of those relationships with indigenous communities and the natural world around them, and trying to find that right balance where people can still meet their needs and make a living, but without sacrificing the environment around them. And I have a feeling this would be a great campfire conversation some night to go deep into all of that and some of the ideas bouncing around in my head from that time there, but I did feel like, you know, at one point, we got to spend three days on the Tsiribihina River in Madagascar, and it was, it was almost shocking to an American to see the way the river was so integrated into the daily lives of the people who lived there villages right next to the river. They would move seasonally, during the rainy season, and the water came up, and they would come back as the river went down. They fished, they bathed, they washed their clothes. They farmed in the fertile floodplains that were recharged or reinvigorated every year after that seasonal flooding. It was, it was an interesting sort of look back, in a sense, at the way people have historically lived with rivers, and a shocking contrast to a particularly with the Mississippi these days, but the Missouri River as well.
John Ruskey 52:13
Yeah, wow. Yeah, that’s the way the Mississippi used to be pre Columbian.
Dean Klinkenberg 52:19
Yeah, so you’ve been, you’ve been doing this for 27 years as a guide. Have, how has the river changed in that time? What have you seen change in the Mississippi in during those 27 years?
John Ruskey 52:39
I well, we’ve seen a continuous stream of plants flowing through which is kind of interesting. You know, the river is become is not only conveys mud and sand and gravel, but it also is carrying all the seeds of all the plants that drop their seeds into the water somewhere upstream or get washed off the bank, come down the big river and and wherever the environment is right, the seeds take root and, and, and sprout. And so the tumbleweed, for instance, has come to take root on some of the sandbars, which, if you’re familiar with the Mississippi River sandbar, some of them are like deserts. Feel like deserts when you get out on them. And sure enough, they have a have had, had the the right elements to make happy the seeds that are washed down out of the Great Plains and tumbleweeds have taken root. And some years we see some, some years we see a lot, you know, like in the fall, they start, they they break loose of their roots and start blowing around. And they make good fire starter, by the way.
Dean Klinkenberg 54:12
I bet.
John Ruskey 54:13
And other plants also have, have migrated through. Some notables include stinging nettle and lamb’s foot, which I used to see in Colorado when I was growing up, and, and, and, of course, our warming climate has had a influence on that and created the environment that makes it possible for Northern plants to migrate south. We’ve seen an increase in bald eagle and what else, ibis, ibis, bald eagle, have been coming from the North. People no longer shoot them categorically, like they used to, and DDT is no longer used as an insecticide and and so they’ve they’ve made a comeback in the South. When I first came here, I hardly saw any bald eagle, but now we see him almost every day. The ibis, on the other hand, the American Ibis have been pushing northward from the Gulf of Mexico. They historically stayed within 100 miles of the Gulf, but land loss and habitat loss down there have caused them to stray to other environments and look for other locations for habitat and they found suitable locations in the Lower Mississippi as far north as we are, we’ve been seeing a few flocks of those. And notably, this is the biggest example of all, the snow geese which flock by the hundreds of 1000s out of the North and traditionally went down to the Gulf Coast for their winter migration. And now because of the same factors, settle down in the biggest flocks of birds that we see here in the Mississippi Delta. We see some big ones and a lot of other bird species, but the Canadian, excuse me, snow geese are the single biggest and and will sometimes take over entire soybean and corn fields that are laying fallow, and they’ll spend months here in The Mississippi Delta, January, February into March, and when they land, they’ll turn a field of 1000s of acres white or sometimes peppered with fowl or geese. And when they take off, it sounds and looks like something that I’ve seen on Planet Earth. You know, when you’re watching a migration of wildebeest or something in Africa, it’s that size of a of a motion of animals, you know, like 10s of 1000s of geese all taken off, all at once, and circling around overhead and and moving through the air.
Dean Klinkenberg 58:07
Nice.
John Ruskey 58:08
At the same time we’ve seen in the past 10 years increasing extremes of drought. And and flood. 2011 of course, was a notable flood. But we also had a very high water. In 2019 they opened up the Bonnet Carre Spillway twice in one year in 2019, which has never happened. And 2011 was the highest water since 1927 overall. And in some places, like Natchez, it rose higher than it did in 1927. Meanwhile, the the flood was followed by years of drought. And 2012 was a drought year, and we’ve had three drought years in a row with low water extremes. That looks like it’s happening again this year, even though we finally got some water in April, it came up to 47 on the Helena Gauge. So I was telling you earlier, we’re down around zero right now on the Helena Gauge. So it’s, it’s literally 47 feet lower today than it was in April. You know, people have a hard. Our clients and anyone who goes down to the river, have a hard time wrapping their mind around the fact that there was 50 feet of water over where you’re standing today, on the banks of the river, you know, which is something like a five story building.
Dean Klinkenberg 59:52
Yeah, it’s crazy.
John Ruskey 59:54
And you know, that’s one of the things about being a guide. And this goes back to our earlier conversation, because it adds a whole new significance to your experience when you go out to the river and your guide tells you, well, a lot of people are wondering what the bottom of the Mississippi River looks like. Well, this is it. This is what the bottom of the Mississippi River was. You know, five months ago when we had floods, we’ve seen some places get wilder, like some people abandon building sites, but we’ve also seen a lot of encroachment of new high end hunting camps being built down on the lower Mississippi, and a lot of new industry going on in northeastern Arkansas, southeastern Missouri in particular. And it’s a little concerning the loss of woods and bottomland, hardwood forest floodplain, which is our richest biota here in North America. It has, we have the highest rate of sequestration in our bottom line, hardwood forest in North America, because the soil is so rich, and when trees grow, they grow to abundance here in this wonderland because of the rich soil and the flooding of the river. So we we get concerned anytime we have loss, and we all we’re kind of like the beaver. We want more water and we want more wetlands, and seems like we’ve lost some significant wild places in the last 30 years. At the same time for the experience for a paddler on the lower Mississippi is essentially the same today as it was for me the first time I went down the river in 1982 on a 12 by 24 foot raft. It’s pretty similar experience today, and I will testify to this, the river is clean. I swim in it every time I go out, and I’m out 100 to 300 days a year. This this year is going to be maybe in the 200 number of days I’ll be out there on the river. And every day I go out, I’m a swimmer, so I have to get in the water. It’s just in my blood and and I’ve never encountered water that was to whatever to swim in, and never gotten sick from swimming.
Dean Klinkenberg 1:03:11
That’s great. Well, I’m kind of mindful of the time, and I’m going to have to run to another call here in a few minutes. So why don’t we wrap it up with a couple things tell people where they can find out more about what you’re doing if they want to know more about the Quapaw Canoe Company, like, what are the what are the best places to follow what John Ruskey is up to?
John Ruskey 1:03:31
Well, the very best is the newsletter that I write and have been sharing for longer than I’ve run the canoe company. Actually, it goes back to the 1990s when I first moved to Clarksdale and started exploring the river. I started sending out letters and emails to my friends and family, sharing what it was that I was seeing out on the river and and everyone was like, “You’re kidding me. You saw that. Oh, my God, that’s beautiful. And what else did you see? And tell me more.” And so I started sending out, like regular emails, and it became an email thing that I’d send out for years and and that became a newsletter that we call the Lower Mississippi River Dispatch. River Time is it’s short name, and if you Google “River Time,” it’ll come up River Time: The Lower Mississippi River Dispatch. It’s a substack newsletter, and that’s the very best place. Actually, you’ll you’ll see photos and artwork and writing from my pen and Mark “River” Peoples. He’s, he’s a talented writer and naturalist and my chief guide also. And we have a website for if you’re interested in getting out on the river. We have a website that you can find at QuapawCanoeCompany.com and I’m not very good at social media stuff, but some of my staff is
Dean Klinkenberg 1:05:19
All right, I’ll post links to all that in the in the show notes for including the substack and the QuapawCanoeCompany.com, and whatever I can can find on the social media stuff. And you mentioned you’ve got some new songs, and I thought we would just sort of take us out with hearing John Ruskey play one of his new original songs, and as always, deep gratitude. John, it’s been a pleasure, as always, to chat with you and I thank you for your time and for sharing your experiences and for creating so many new river stewards and breaking through those fears of the Mississippi. So what do you have to play for us?
John Ruskey 1:06:10
This is a song that comes from something I wrote into a painting that I was working on like 20 years ago, of the flow of the river and clouds above it curling away into the distance. And I wrote the words, the sky is a river, that it suddenly came to me. The sky is a river. The river is sky. Don’t ask me why. Let them flow on by. You know, seeing the parallel that so many others have seen the way water moves and the atmosphere moves, but it was just words in a painting, and a couple years ago, I was looking at that painting and was like, that’s kind of neat. That might make a good song. Sounds like a ditty and a song and so this, this, this is an ever evolving song, but here’s how it sounds today.
John Ruskey 1:07:14
Sky is a river the river a sky. Don’t ask me why let him flow. Let him flow. Let him flow on down. Don’t ask me why. Let him flow on by
John Ruskey 1:07:50
Train is a river. The river a train. Don’t make me explain. Let it rain, let it rain. Let it rain. Let it rain. Let it rain. Let it rain. Don’t make me explain. Let it rain, let it rain.
John Ruskey 1:08:26
May fly’s a river. Rivers may fly. Don’t ask me why. Don’t let her die. Let her fly. Let her fly. Let her fly. Let her fly. Don’t let her die. Let her fly. Let her fly. Let her fly.
John Ruskey 1:09:05
Milky Way’s a River. And the River’s Milky Way. Don’t get in the way. Let it pray, let it pray. Let it pray. Let it pray. Let it pray. Let it pray. Don’t get in the way. Let it pray, let it pray.
John Ruskey 1:09:44
Boy is a river, and the river’s a boy. Who plays in the water. It’s a joy. It’s a joy. It’s a joy, it’s a joy, it’s a joy, it’s a joy. Plays in the water. It’s a joy. It’s a joy.
John Ruskey 1:10:13
Girl is a river. And the river’s a girl. She flows through the eddies, curls and uncurls. She curls and uncurls. She curls and uncurls. And she flows through the eddies she curls and uncurls.
John Ruskey 1:10:52
Time is a river. And the river is time. Don’t make it be mine. Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine, let it shine, let it shine, let it shine. Don’t make it be mine. Let it shine, let it shine. And a journey sublime. Let it shine, let it shine.
Dean Klinkenberg 1:11:41
Awesome. Thank you so much, John, appreciate it.
Dean Klinkenberg 1:11:45
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 to 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 that’s set in 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 you.
