November 30 & December 1, 2007

School visits in Louisiana led me to a small cabin on Bayou Long, the tail end of Belle River’s water flow in Stephensville, just outside Morgan City, 90 miles west of New Orleans. The sweet-voiced cabin owner, Anthony, had said in the dead of night when I arrived, “Don’t worry about the alligators, it’s way too cold tonight...”  And he was right as I only saw a skeleton during my stay. (www.cajunhouseboats.com)

After a great school visit to Berwick Elementary (followed by a tremendous school-wide Vocabulary Parade), I set out in the cabin’s small canoe, pleased that I figured out how to solo paddle the wide bottomed impossible little boat. (How? After much spinning I finally straightened her out with a deep stroke from the stern angling nearly under the boat, ending with a quick steering pry on each paddle.)

The morning mist had just lifted when I set off north, hugging the bank of the camp cabins lining one side of the bayou (the other side is wild), then out to an island ringed in cypress trees. With no wind and glassy water I slid along as quiet as any water snake—which were on my mind as I’d been warned to be careful stepping or turning anything over.

The cypress trees have a near magical presence. Very slow growing they stand in shallow water, rising up out of great skirts of trunks, often twisted ever so slightly so as to seem to be turning. They are surrounded by “cypress knees,” the up-turning roots of the great tree, knobby topped, standing two to four feet high, ringing the big trunks. Watermark lines on their trunks recorded the low water of the current southeastern drought.

Like Minnesota’s long-gone Big Woods of hardwoods, this watery country once held the greatest cypress forest in North America. In my little cabin a poster proclaims: FB Williams Cypress Co. Ltd, The Largest Cypress Mill in the World, Patterson, LA, 1902-1934. Thirty-two years. It took about the same amount of time to harvest the great hardwood forests of the upper Midwest, much of which also ended up shipping out of New Orleans to the rest of the world.

Whenever I am in the presence of something that grows very slowly, like the giant redwoods, or carpet lichen, there is a kind of patience that seeps into my eyes, then down into my heart. A momentary borrowed quiet sets in. This is what happened here on the bayou.

Everything about this paddle was liquid—the glassy water and its reflecting flashes up the trunks of the great trees, the high fluid lines of a hundred ducks, black, drawing lines across the sky, followed by the changing floating “V” of the white pelicans, flashing white, then wing-tipped black. The cypress trees are hung thick with Spanish moss so edges are softened and even the smallest breeze is evident, eddying like water around draped limbs high above.

Even on December 1^st it’s still fall here on the bayou and the leaves are browns, dark burnt golds, pale orange, many floating in the mirrored water. A white heron lets me paddle only so close before raising giant wings. It is so quiet I hear duck wings pounding air as they draw over.

The next morning I tired to repeat the same paddle. A gusty wind came up and the little flat bottomed canoe could barely fight back. Hunters flooded the islands, orange vested, roaring around in silver boats. Successive gun shots rang deep in swampy woods. Not to be mistaken for a canoeing deer I tied an extra orange lifejacket to my waist and set off for home.

This is why they say you can never step in the same river twice. Every river is always different, moment to moment, day to day. Fortunately, I still carried yesterday’s stillness, deeper than gunshots. Then suddenly all the hunters roared off, as if someone had blown a whistle. The wind died. A huge eagle caught sight of something flashing in the water and the quiet hunters took over. I paddled home.

The water was high and fast due to a recent dam release followed by late rain and the constant riffles and rocks kept us on alert. Lunch was spent atop a warm flat rock just beneath this waterfall where the most graceful curve of sand channeled the spring out to the river. Burnt gold dotted the riverbanks of bare branched trees, the last remaining maple leaves holding tight. The day was exquisite in every way, all the more so as we knew it would not be long until even these last golden dots will be lost to white.

The summer of 2007 brought a very busy studio filled with deadlines, a little bad luck and a lot of very bad weather in Minnesota with intense flooding in the south, drought in the north. Our rivers are loose for only half the year and all those things must be in alignment or before you know it, the green carpet of summer is suddenly dotted with orange tinged leaves.

And that’s exactly what happened. On October 2nd I walked to my car and found crisp leaves spinning down around me, astonished that I had foolishly nearly missed the rivers. Call it misplaced priorities or too many obligations, call it whatever, but no matter how late you wake up to it, no matter how hard you push against the earth’s spin, you can’t stop the water from turning to ice.

Impending ice is not negotiable so we left early on the 3rd of October for John Snyder’s Iowa farm. I had read of a river south of Decorah, south of the lovely Iowa River—the Yellow—tiny and farm lined, eventually twisting into the Mississippi. Arriving at John’s farm late we found his kitchen counter piled high with magnificent green-topped beets and vegetables grilling on the fire. The next morning we toured John’s new barn studio renovations (he is a brilliant painter) and filled our ice chest. A map check pointed us south, curving on dirt roads to a tiny dot along the Yellow River.

Iowa is tinged with straight-out-of-the-crayon-box-orange in early October, and like a kindergartener’s coloring book, it was scribbled everywhere between the deep greens. Pumpkins lined mowed lawns: three minis for one dollar. Trees stood half green, half orange. Morning light turned brittle corn stalks orange. Roadside tomatoes sat fat and juicy with the color. We missed turns, found turns, bought pumpkins, and wound our way to an outfitter in a named town that was really no more than a string of houses along the river.

Unfortunately, not a person was around. No people meant no shuttle service. Fortunately, a man pulled up, introduced himself as father to the outfitter, and volunteered to run one car down to the take-out, and bring us back to our canoe. He turned out to be a delight, and a collector of Indian artifacts, (some found just across the river, he pointed) and promised a tour of his collection at day’s end.

Sitting down in a valley, the Yellow River twists between farms but is lined by a greenway for much of the river. A Paddling River Pirate saw us off! Evidence of the severe flooding of August was everywhere: trees undercut on the banks, debris high in the branches, and submerged trunks clawing up from the surface. Water rushed fast for late fall, still. Ian was seriously concerned and insisted on zipped lifejackets (PDFs), speaking sharply. He was right.

River-left we spotted a lunch spot complete with steps but the swift current carried us beyond it before we could stop. Paddling back we got a taste of how a gentle stream can be a tough competitor. Ian had packed an orange spread-of-a lunch but dessert’s Honeycrisp apples drew a swarm of bees. We escaped to an island for a rest amid rushing water and no bees. It was one of those Perfect Places and I sometimes imagine myself there, still.

The river turned through several limestone bluffs and then flattened out to cornfield edging. An eagle, startled to find us at a turn, surprised us with a flight across our path. The sheer size of a nearby eagle is always astonishing yet by the time it joined another to soar the far ridge it was only a tiny dot in the sky. Day’s end brought us to the take-out and here’s where I made a Very Big Mistake, ignoring Ian’s good advice and overshooting an easy take-out for one I thought I understood to be ahead. We ended up dashing to the bank in the muck amid a herd of horses on both river banks. My misunderstanding had very nearly taken us to the next section of the river where the guide warned of no take-out for miles and serious rapids, to boot. We had to carry our gear and the canoe up a steep bridge slope and moments were tense between us. Canoeing is a partnership. It is not called “The Divorce Boat” for nothing, and I pushed the limit this day, not listening more closely. We were last-minute-lucky and I learned another river lesson.

We had a peek at the Indian artifact collection on the way back and saw stones shaped for pounding, arrow points, and food grinding. The drive back to John’s farm was equally orange, with dried corn fields stretching as far as you can see and an orange sign explaining why a train lay silently parked across the only dirt road we knew to get us home. Dinner at a restaurant in Decorah dropped us into a young crowd of Barak Obama organizers, all checking electronic devices and buzzing like the river bees after his local speech. Next morning the drive back to Minneapolis gave us tractors to buy, or pumpkins, and I couldn’t resist one more of the latter.