Page 11 - "Mississippi in the 1st Person" - Michael James Stone (Demo/Free)

The Mississippi River carries it’s own legends, myths, fallacies, facts, history and details that
most people just don’t have time and energy to handle because just the size and scope of the

River itself involves one third of the Unites States of America.

That’s a lot of real estate and when you begin to add in history…..largess of the project makes
it impossible to grasp. The mind balks at that much data and gigabytes and terabytes aren’t

enough.

So downsizing the Mississippi really isn’t fair either because as soon as you discuss “paddling’
you get into “canoes” “kayaks” “rafts” ‘row boats” ‘stand up paddling” ‘sit on top’ ‘sea kayak’

‘hard shell’ ‘inflatable’ ‘personal water craft’ even novelty items like boats made out of plastic
bottle and bathtubs…….

There really should be volumes dedicated to the Mississippi River and all it’s sports and cer-

tainly there is “a lot” of books out there, but not as many as you think.

Just my personal research on the Mississippi and kayaking took me over a year to process and
I barely scratched the surface before I started down the Miss and realized I knew even less than

I thought.

BUT I ALSO DISCOVERED A LOT OF OTHERS KNEW AS LITTLE OR LESS THAN I.

What I did uncover was people on the river knew the area they were in and often were focused
on just that part, that section, that state or in some cases, that side of the River and generally
ignored the rest.

Oh lots of people presented themselves as many things in my journey down the river but the
ones that impressed me most were the everyday folk who just spoke simply of what they knew
and not what they didn’t. The Mississippi just like Alaska does produce characters just like a

Samuel Clemens novel.

But my purpose when I started changed when I sat down to write because while I only intend-
ed to camp out and enjoy the outdoors and learn kayaking…….Ole Man River had a way of

growing on and people got under my skin in a good way……..at least 99% of them.

I would find as a writer not one field to harvest like a farmer in Iowa, but fields of dreams to
reap all over again things I am sure Mark Twain was more than aware of as he became a sym-

bol of Americana that would hold imaginations for generations.

I didn’t plan to, but I did find America at a time Americans had lost hope and their way in poli-
tics and too much technology and returned to a place everyone appreciated and that was boiled

down to as simple as Man against Nature, Man against Himself, Man against Man, and man
facing what some call the Great American Adventure - The Mississippi River Run