Page 66 - "Mississippi in the 1st Person" - Michael James Stone (Demo/Free)

Inches Feet Yards

Cartographers often “scale” their maps to reduce the amount of space taken to show how much
space is used. As map making 101 the scale is important because an inch on a map could be a

foot, a yard, a mile, 5 miles or 10.

Since I was going over 2000 miles on a river I had never been, and doing it solo, (except for
Scooby Do). It was important not so much to keep track of where I was at, but more so how far

I had to go to get to some point of reference, goal, camp, shelter, bridge, power lines or “put
in”.

These “destinations” would be crucial for bad weather, rain, sleeping, camping or even simple

encouragement. My infamous one liner to my wife Lori was “well if I get in trouble I just stay
close to the bank and get out and make camp.”

Except for being in the middle of a lake (not planning on it) or when the creek did rise enough

to be called a river and wide enough to meet other boats in the middle (not how I paddle) then
it made perfect sense to me with my fuzzy logic.

Remember I knew nothing of the Mississippi River before this.

Setting goals and planning was good on paper and certainly any adventure should be consid-
ered with careful planning and deliberation. But when it comes time to do it, you just do it.

Sure if I scaled my thoughts about how far it was and how many MONTHS it would take that
could be intimidating. But we don’t live in the months, the weeks, or even the days, we live in

the here and now. So it is with paddling. You live in the moment you are dealing with.

You can’t paddle yesterdays distance with tomorrows accomplishments.