Page 75 - "Mississippi in the 1st Person" - Michael James Stone (Demo/Free)

Letting the kayaks out before me I began “walking the dog” as the current, the tension on the
tow lines and my interest in developing this “technique” all led to avoiding tree limbs in the

middle of the river, boulders to the left, branches like sweepers reaching out from the shore.

When the “line of attack” -the line was wrong or would lead to a collision. Stopping made the
kayaks stop and like walking a dog, backing up cause the daisy chain effect to make the lead

kayak backing down the river take a different approach based on the prevailing current.

AND WATER ALWAYS FINDS THE PATH OF LEAST RESISTANCE

Walking along like this and making progress from curve to bend, to distances achieved, felt in-
vigorating.

Like an explorer all ready to head out into the wild unknown and adventures yet to be seen.
Soloing did this as the mind developed it’s own directions of where to go with imagination.

Birds and animals, revealed themselves as no sound but the creekside babble of water over
rocks or pushing the kayaks made noise to the quiet of the nature sounds.

But that sounded loud in the ears of one used to the cities cacophony.

No doubt the surprise of seeing a human being not making a lot of racket from paddling or
splashing or even talking or playing some tech device allowed me some rare visage of nature I
would record in other books of this section.

It was an exquisite slow down to walk these few miles watching my kayaks perform before me
as a parade down the main street creek. And I the parade marshall. Plants and animals gawking
from the curbside/creekside.

Once again in the far horizon of the flats of obvious dead brown plant life standing like a burn
out forest I could see to the right green trees marching down a slope to where I imagined the
river would go.

I was almost right.

Eventually the river did go to the right of this vast hidden lake overgrowth with only a trail of
water called the Mississippi winding through it like a snake in the grass.

And even as I had hopes of the trees being Wanagan to my right in the distance, the creek

banked left and I never got close again to Wanagan till I arrived there.

Though short a distance on a map, and shorter still on a trail, even more so on pavement or
sidewalk, river miles are never real miles and go miles and miles and miles to make up the dis-
tance of one or two or three river miles.

Or so it seemed.