Fiona Fordyce is no stranger to big rivers. She grew up near the Missouri River just upriver from its confluence with the Mississippi. “We were tossed in the river as babies,” she joked. As a child, she and friends would hop into inner tubes and float down the Missouri River to Pelican Island where they’d search for arrowheads before floating on to Sioux Passage Park. “I always thought that it was really fun.”
When she was a little older, she took friends paddling from her home to Sioux Passage. They were amazed at the experience, felt like the paddle on the big river was a real novelty, and loved it. Maybe that’s where her guiding career started.
She went on to college intending to pursue a career in science, but after graduate school and all those years of hard work, the thought of working in an office or lab wasn’t appealing. She needed a break. She took a job guiding people around national parks with the expectation that one year would be enough. She led camping and hiking trips in the US. Then she got the chance to lead luxury tours in Chile, Mexico, and Colombia. One year turned into ten.
Nine years ago, she joined Big Muddy Adventures (BMA), part of the core group of three dreamers working to get more St. Louisans on the region’s big rivers. While she guided some trips, she soon settled into the niche of sandbar chef, especially after she came up with the idea of a rivertime supper club. BMA transports people in voyageur-style canoes to an island or sandbar where they hang out and eat a good meal. Fiona preps and cooks the food using locally-sourced ingredients, and the cooking is finished on site, campfire style. The trips always sell out and attracts a long waiting list. A food journalist who went on one of the trips called her “… one of St. Louis’ brightest rising culinary stars…”
All the hard work and promotion from BMA is paying off. In 2022, they took about 3,000 people on canoe trips, which is nearly 10 times the number they guided just three years ago. In the process, they’ve opened up a lot of minds.
“Everyone thinks about the river as polluted and toxic, you know, something gross, but I think that Big Muddy in the last few years has done a great job of changing people’s perspective on that.”
The beautiful sandbars surprise people: “Oh my god, this is like a beach!” Many of the paddlers are surprised to find natural places so close to the city. “I like that we have this really unique outdoor rec opportunity here. It’s just so close to the city and you can feel like you’re far away and in nature.”
Most of the BMA trips are a few hours long, but Fiona hopes the company will offer more overnight trips in the near future, to give more people the chance to fully immerse in the world of the Mississippi, to better appreciate our own big river. It happens in other places, after all. “The Amazon is a huge attraction. People fly to South America to see the Amazon. They fly to Europe to see the Danube… The Mississippi competes with those rivers easily.”
Guiding hasn’t detracted from her own joy of being on the Mississippi. She’ll still go out occasionally to explore. “I like going on the river on my own, but it’s even more fun to show people this thing that they didn’t know was there… Everyone leaves saying ‘I have no idea this was here.’”
