Page 67 - "Mississippi in the 1st Person" - Michael James Stone (Demo/Free)

My first goal had been “up and around the bend”. When I scouted it out the day before, it took

me about ...oh with wasting time I suppose a half hour at most, there and back. With the kay-
aks, shallow water, cartwheeling the tow, more shallow water and drag drag drag……., my

short “bend in sight” took a couple hours.

BUT FOR ME A COUPLE HOURS OF GAINED EXPERIENCE

This entire trip was learning How to Kayak not some bucket list or fame. In fact even the Mis-
sissippi guide said this was an excellent river to learn kayaking.

A kayakers rule of thumb is “What you see is where you Go”. I had tried it several times at
home. It went like this:

I SEE ROCK> I HIT ROCK.

Now of course I tried not to hit the darn thing but looking at it I always went to it.

“See Rock. See Michael Hit Rock. Michael Hit Rock. Michael don’t like to hit Rock. Michael

hit lots of Rock. Michael expert Rock Hitter.”

I really took way too long to prove where you go is where you are looking.

Looking north now, being around the bend, a straight away lay before me. As it is the Missis-
sippi Creek, like the Mississippi River, don’t get the wrong idea about straight, it had lots of

wiggles in it. And as it widened to maybe 8 or 10 feet across, Yep, you guessed it. Shallowed
right out on me and DRAG DRAG DRAG……..it was really a drag to drag your boat on a

River supposedly so mighty. “Mighty shallow” I would record more than once or twice.

What I could see here and now was in front of me and it was pretty good 300 yards I suppose, I
knew later in the year, for most kayakers these yards and some places miles I could see, would

be reduced to feet, maybe inches.