Paddling Lessons

Mississippi River in the Headwaters region

I’ve been lucky enough to take a couple of 2-day canoe trips on the Mississippi River this year. In April, I paddled with the Quapaw Canoe Company and River Sage John Ruskey near Baton Rouge. In August I paddled solo for 39 miles in the Headwaters Region in northern Minnesota. I figure this pretty much makes me an expert paddler now. Look out, Ruskey!

For the August trip, I started some 16 miles downriver from where the Mississippi begins at Lake Itasca, at Coffee Pot Landing, finishing up at Lake Irving in Bemidji. Interesting side note: the Headwaters are apparently nine miles closer to Bemidji than they were a few years earlier when my older Mississippi River Trail map was printed. I don’t know who shaved off those miles (I’d put my money on Paul Bunyan), but it sure saved me some time.

I felt good about how I did on my first solo canoe trip. I kept up a good pace, never felt lost, and figured out how to pee while standing up in the canoe (it isn’t as easy as it sounds). While I never felt lost, there was the part where I somehow missed the Pine Point campsite that was supposed to be my home for the first night. (There are no mile markers tacked on to the cattails!) Paddling on and trying to figure out exactly where I was, I had a few anxious moments, about 63 of them, as I made my way through the third marsh of the day. The sun was getting low in the sky, and I was trying to figure out if I had enough light to get to the next campsite or if I should be figuring out how to sleep in the canoe.

Trumpeter Swan

The river wouldn’t let me get too bent out of shape, though. The marsh glowed from the golden late-day light, the breeze disappeared, and I began to feel as calm as the world around me. I saw more wildlife in those late evening hours than I saw the whole rest of the day: beavers, kingfishers, a trumpeter swan, lots of ducks, turtles, and more.

I got to the campsite at Iron Bridge at sunset with just enough light remaining to set up my tent and get my gear inside before the mosquitoes carried me away. I was pretty beat, 11 hours of paddling to cover 25 miles will do that (31 miles according to the old map!), so it didn’t really matter when I discovered that the batteries were dead on both of my lights. I just went to sleep.

Spending hour after hour alone in the canoe, I began to realize that solo paddling on a river offers many valuable life lessons. For example, a lake looks much bigger when you are paddling on it into a headwind than when you’re standing on a boat ramp admiring its beauty.

**Northern Minnesota is covered in Road Tripping Along the Great River Road, Vol. 1 and the Headwaters Region Guide. Click the links above for more. Disclosure: This website may be compensated for linking to other sites or for sales of products we link to.

Mississippi River in the Headwaters region

I also learned that the sight of a guy in a canoe with camping gear doesn’t inspire everyone to great acts of generosity. As soon as I hit the open water of Lake Irving at Bemidji, I ran into that headwind and a houseboat full of people who had been drinking for a while. Not only were they clueless about the location of the boat ramp on the south end of the lake (“Good luck!”), but they didn’t even offer me a beer. Here’s a few more life lessons from the river:

• Around every bend in the river, there’s another bend in the river.
• You will get dirty and wet; embrace it.
• Still water doesn’t always run deep.
• No matter how mad your skills and how well you prepare, sometimes the wind and the current will force you into a bank anyway.
• The moment you stop paying attention is when you miss the trumpeter swan or you end up on a rock;
• It’s impossible to always pay attention.
• Whether you drift or paddle hard, you end up in the same place.

Mississippi River at Fox Trap campsite, northern MN

After all the hard work of the last several hours—of the last two days—navigating around obstructions, battling the wind and the big water of Lake Irving, I managed to find the boat ramp without the help of those houseboaters: two little dirt tracks at the end of a subdivision. I had imagined that I’d feel like celebrating when I got to this point; instead, I was content to sit down and enjoy a little snack. Sometimes the act of mastering a few challenges is reward enough.

© Dean Klinkenberg, 2014