River and Bayou

A very undramatic day of paddling today. Just more miles, more bends in the river, more barges.

There appears to be a lot more commercial presence along the banks of the river as I paddle out of the wilds of the Delta and get closer to Vicksburg. Grain and cargo-handling elevators are more frequent. Small working tows, pushing only two or three barges, are more frequent, too. It’s as if I’m approaching a rail switching yard and all the less powerful yard locomotives are busy at work making up the larger trains used for the long haul.

As low as the river is right now, it’s still flowing at pretty good pace. Probably on average about 2 ½ miles per hour, but much faster in the narrow sections of the river and along the outside parts of a bend. There the water might be moving as fast as 4 or 5 miles per hour. I try to stay in the fast water, of course. And it’s quite noticeable when I’m not. It’s as if the river has become sluggish and lazy. Then I feel almost compelled to paddle harder to make up for that lost speed. Which is foolish. Because a river as huge as the Mississippi flowing flowing at just 3 mph is moving a LOTS of water.

I often think, as I drift along, how I’m riding the waters from nearly an entire continent. Water that fell from a thunderstorm in Nebraska. Or rain clouds in Ohio. Me and my little canoe. Just bouncing along in the waves. Riding the current. And how it all sprang from a little lake in northern Minnesota. I find myself trying to imagine what those first early European river explorers (like Marquette and Joliet) must have thought as I travel nearly the same path they did. They must have been as amazed and wonder-filled as I am.

Right now I’m camped ten miles north of Vicksburg well off the main channel in a sandy bit of bank carved out be a dike-created eddy. Tomorrow morning I’ll paddle those ten miles and then make the mile long push up the Yazoo River harbor’s entrance channel to the city’s large public boat ramp. I’ll leave my canoe there and dash across the street to where there’s a park, and hopefully someplace I can refill my water containers. If all goes well, I’ll be in and out in a couple hours, and camping tomorrow night on some sandbar south of the city.

After Vicksburg, it’s a week pass Natchez to the Old River Lock and Dam. Then another seven or eight days down the Atchafalaya River to Morgan City. Whether I continue the twenty miles pass Morgan City through the delta wetlands to the Gulf depends on the weather, supplies, and my ambition.