Prologue

Coming down off the pine ridge, side stepping in the deep snow on the steep slope, I can see that I am nearing the stream now. I can tell by the brushy swath of tag alders that typically line any small stream in these parts. I'm downstream a few yards from the source on the lake, and this, too, suits me fine. I can pretend that I have discovered this small flowing stream and trace it upstream to where it begins. The alder thicket does not make the task an easy one. The ground near the bank is tussocky and infirm, but it's possible to fight one's way to the very edge of the stream directly through the thick brush, or, if you're lucky you might chance upon a path made by deer and other animals making their way to the water's edge to drink. Either way, you find yourself on the bank of a precious, glittering stream, 8 or 10 feet wide, deep blue and reflecting the sun and snow as if it were a river of diamonds. The current in the stream would never be called swift or strong at this point, but neither is it lazy. "Old Man River" is not in evidence here. This is a youthful stream, freshly sprung, and full of the energy it will need to complete the journey it's beginning. After pondering the magnitude of that journey for a few moments I return to the task at hand. It doesn't take long to see that tracing the river immediately along its banks will be impossible. The brush is simply too thick. The only option is to retreat to firmer, clearer ground and continue upstream.

Walking through the deep snow, even on snowshoes, is hard work. In the freezing air, the exertion creates a welcome warmth that spreads from the tips of my fingers and toes to the edges of my ears. As I near the lake and the little dam, it finally becomes impossible to maintain my ancient explorer illusion. Even in the dead of winter there are many visitors to the source of the Mississippi River, and the last few yards of my expedition are on a path of snow packed by many feet. Four people are at the little dam when I arrive, trying to walk across the wet and icy rocks. But I'm not disturbed by the lack of solitude. I have a special reason for visiting this spot, and a special attachment to the river that this little stream will become - I'm planning a trip by canoe, starting here, and ending at the mouth of the river, at the Gulf of Mexico.

The beginning of that trip is still months away. Why am I here now? Even though I was born in Minnesota and spent the first 21 years of my life here, I've never visited this spot. Perhaps I feel I owe it to the spirit of the river to visit its source once as a pilgrim, to pay homage to the Father of Waters, before I enter those waters and ride them for my own reasons. Here would be an obvious place to explain what those reasons are. If only it were so simple, if only I knew the reasons for sure.

I grew up in Minnesota, only a short drive from the Mississippi, but the river was not in my consciousness as a boy. I lived on a lake, one of the biggest of the 10,000, and that was more than enough to supply my aquatic pursuits. I knew that the source of the Mississippi, the third largest river in the world, was in my state, and that gave me a sense of boyish pride, but the river was an abstraction, too far from my surroundings and my reality to have any personal impact.

Even at college, where I lived within a stone's throw of it, the river didn't enter my awareness much except on the occasional Saturday night when my dorm buddies and I would repair to the river bank to drink quantities of beer and toss the cans into the lazily flowing current. I cringe now when I think of that, but something worthwhile did come out of those revels beside the river.

At any beer bust, it is inevitable that there will be a moment when one is required to seek some solitude. During one of those interludes, as I was adding my flow to his, Ole Man River took his opportunity and planted a seed in my awareness. He made an imprint on me that I can still picture without even closing my eyes - the nighttime Mississippi, lit by the stars and the moon and the glow of the city. Street lamps from the urban walkway on the west bank reflected in a quietly moving sheet of water. Even in its relative infancy there in the Twin Cities, the river exudes a feeling of power that belies its placid surface appearance.

I left Minnesota not long after that. It was the late sixties, and I was drawn west by the tide of the social movement whose focus was out there. I spent a long time there, many chapters of my life were written, and eventually there came a time at the end of a particularly painful chapter, whose details belong to another story, when I found that all of the threads of my life that held me there had become untied. I was unfettered and in need of a change of scene. So I hit the road. I travelled for a long while, and at the end of those travels I found myself back in Minnesota with a mind to see if I could make a go of it in my old home state and a dream of canoeing the Mississippi River.

The idea had come to me during my travels the year before. I had run across an old buddy from Minnesota, living in Europe, whom I hadn't seen in a couple of decades. He described to me a trip he had made in a houseboat from Minneapolis to St. Louis 15 years earlier, and I instantly knew that I wanted to make this trip, and by canoe I could do the whole river, start to finish. Back in the Land of 10,000 Lakes, I was reveling in the beautiful spring and summer, smelling the first scent of wet bare earth after a long frozen winter, and then the delicious, heady fragrance of the warm breeze redolent with fresh chlorophyll and lilac perfume. During that summer I spent countless hours during countless days exploring the banks of the river on my bicycle, or walking along riverbank paths, or just sitting on some sunny bank, most often at my favorite spot on Nicollet Island, across from downtown Minneapolis, just watching the river rolling past. I still felt a stranger in my own home, lonely at times, but the river was a friend I could always depend upon, just as the Pacific had been a friend to me many times over the preceding years of exile. As I began to study and plan for my trip and traced the course of the river from Lake Itasca to Minneapolis, I saw that it ran through towns that I knew, or had heard of all my life - Bemidji, Grand Rapids, Brainerd, St. Cloud, Anoka - just seeing these names on a map seemed to begin a process that made connections with my own life, and put me in touch with deeper and deeper aspects of my personal history. The image of the calm, powerful river that had been imprinted on me years before reemerged, and with it there was growing the river fever and fascination that had been missing before.

Now, summer is long over, and fall was short - on Halloween day we had one of the biggest snow storms in history. The river has frozen in places, and I continue to learn and plan. I take long walks along the river whenever I can, but it is no longer possible to bicycle along the paths or sit for very long on the bank. Instead, I now keep a sort of vigil, always acknowledging the river in my mind when I cross it or catch a glimpse of it from the street. I have begun to read histories of the river and its towns and explorers, and stories by others who have done what I am contemplating. I have, I think, a pretty clear picture of what the Minnesota portion of the river will be like, but even with the stories I read, I have difficulty imagining what the river will be like in Missouri, Tennessee or Louisiana. The diversity I am going to see defies my imagination.

And now, before the winter has begun to age, before any sign of spring, I am here on this pilgrimage. I have paid my homage to the spirit of the river. Like the other four pilgrims who were here when I arrived, I have braved the treacherous, icy crossing of the stone dam, and like them, I have wet socks to prove it. My wife Lily, who will be the lead (and perhaps sole) member of my support team, has joined me after allowing me my fantasy hike through the snowy woods, and it is time to get back in our car and head back south. I'm counting the days now until I can return here and begin my journey for real, and I am already beginning to feel like Clarence Jonk, a man, who, as a young college student in the 1930's, built his own houseboat and set out to sail it from Minnesota to New Orleans:

"I am all impatience to be off...I dream of rocky cliffs that border this river, the endless bendings and turnings, the lakes and sloughs along its length, little riverside towns and villages, fishing boats, freighters, new faces, squatters, bottomland folks, birds, animals, trees, and wild fruit. But, most of all, I dream of great freedoms to come where the living is quiet, where the struggle to survive is less."

Clarence Jonk didn't make it to New Orleans, and I guess there is no way of knowing whether I will either, but I think I am pretty well prepared for the physical problems and situations I will experience, and I hope I can prepare myself for the unexpected "bendings and turnings" that are bound to come.

For those are what make the adventure what it will be, and adventure is surely one, if only one, of the reasons for undertaking this trip. As for the other, underlying reasons, for making this journey, I have to admit that I have hardly begun to think about them, and how they fit in with my process of re-establishing my relationship with my past. But there will be plenty of time for that in the next 101 days.

The Voyage in brief

This idyllic scene is where my trip started. My canoe floats, tied to the dock and ready to be loaded, in the boat harbor at Itasca State Park.
	There was no one around when I arrived at the place where the Mississippi flows out of Lake Itasca, so I had to set my camera on a garbage can and take my own picture. The sign carved on the tree trunk reads "Here, 1475 ft. above the ocean, the Mighty Mississippi begins to flow on its winding way, 2552 miles to the Gulf of Mexico."
Just a few yards down from the source, the river/creek narrows to the point where I could touch both banks at the same time.
	Remnants of an old bridge across the upper Mississippi.
Sunrise on Cass Lake
	The Blandin Corporation is a huge logging company in northern Minnesota. This is one of their mills in Grand Rapids. The brown piles in the foreground are actually piles of logs waiting to be milled.
The dam at Cass Lake, Minnesota in the morning mist.
	Here's my campsite on Lake Winnibigoshish, the largest of the lakes the Mississippi passes through in northern Minnesota.
I saw, heard, or saw signs of beavers on virtually every day of my trip, from Lake Itasca all the way to Venice, Louisiana.
	One day when my dad was accompanying me we met this man, Gene Osmondson, on the river near Big Sandy Lake. He also was doing the entire river, solo, in his kayak. We talked for a few minutes and exchanged phone numbers and he went on ahead of us. But as luck would have it we ended up staying at the same campsite that night. He had a great arrangement for paddling the river. His wife was driving their motor home down Great River Road and having her own adventures exploring the small towns along the way. Every few days they would rendezvous and exchange stories. It gave him the chance to get a hot shower, a good meal, and a night sleeping in his own bed.
My first navigational aid
	This was my first view of how the "Muddy Mississippi" got its name. I was moored on an island for a lunch break.
It wasn't all smooth sailing. My wife, Lily, was with me for a few days and took this picture of me trying to get us off a sandbar. Mark Twain talks a lot about sandbars, snags, and other hazards in "Life on the Mississippi." Just like the riverboat captains he describes, I learned to "read" the river - but in this case I read it wrong.
	Rainbow viewed from the dam at St. Cloud, Minnesota.
This was a common sight all along the upper river. In fact, cow manure and farm pesticides are two of the major pollution problems in the Mississippi River right now.
	After a month of paddling I had finally reached the outskirts of the Twin Cities. To celebrate passing through the cities we arranged a party of people in four canoes. Pictured are: Mark, Ali, Brian, Lily, Me, Faye, Jerry, Holly, and John. My dad was there too, but he was busy with some chore or other.
Minneapolis skyline
	Hennepin Avenue bridge. Hennepin avenue is the main street through downtown Minneapolis, and is named after explorer and Jesuit missionary, Father Hennepin.
St. Anthony falls seen from the Stone Arch bridge. At approximately 50 feet of drop, St. Anthony falls is the largest, and only true falls on the Mississippi river. Over a period of about 8000 years erosion of the layer of sandstone that underlay the hard limestone cap had caused huge blocks of limestone to break off and avalanche to the base of the falls. This meant that the falls had slowly migrated from near Fort Snelling (near St. Paul) to its present location next to downtown Minneapolis. Scientists estimated that only about 1200 feet of the gradually thinning layer of limestone remained. Fearing that the falls would be converted into a completely unnavigable section of river, the Army Corps of Engineers created the current system to halt the erosion.
	The birds in the trees on yonder island are cormorants which are making a comeback on the river.
Wisconsin/Minnesota/Iowa border marker.
	Swing bridge near LaCrosse, Wisconsin. This is a variation of a draw bridge. The whole bridge pivots at the center allowing river traffic to pass on either side.
Scattered all along the river between St. Paul and St. Louis there are islands like this. They are created by the dredging of the navigation channel by the Army Corps of Engineers. For about a month during that part of my journey, sandbar islands were my usual camping place.
	Sunrise in Iowa
Heron off the point of an island near LaCrosse, Wisconsin. The heron was probably the bird I saw the most of on the whole trip, from the first day to the last. Always singly, never in flocks like most of the other birds, but very pervasive - I probably came upon about one heron every hour or two every day.
	This was my first towboat sighting. At the time, I wrote in my journal "Saw a large towboat today." This towboat has fifteen barges. Farther down river it would become common to see tows with 50 barges or more.
I was perplexed when I saw this in the distance. I was passing through a section of river that bordered on a military reserve so at first I thought it was some kind of camouflaged vessel. Finally I realized what it was - a duck blind!
	These markers are called "daymarks" and are the major navigational tool along the river. They are either green or dayglow red. The mnemonic device is "red on the right going upstream." They also come in three shapes - squares, triangles, and diamond-shapes. The shapes indicate to the towboat pilots when the navigational channel is changing position in the river (in other words, is it staying close to the shore or crossing to the opposite side).
The buoys that actually mark the channel also come in red and green, and you can use the same mnemonic for them. The other feature about them that took me way too long to notice is that they are different shapes. The red "nun buoys" like this one have a pointed top. The green buoys are flat on top. This is for purposes of navigation in weather conditions that make it impossible to see colors. The silhouettes of the two buoys are quite distinctive.
	The Mississippi River is famous for its fog. I only encountered it twice. When I entered the bank of fog seen in the distance here, it was so dense I had to navigate using only my maps. I was afraid I would wander into the navigation channel and be hit by a towboat. It took me almost an hour to find my way out of it.
This green buoy was unique.
	Here's my home on the waves. It looks remarkably clean compared to the way it would look by the time I got to Louisiana.
A serious cat fisherman. Joe McCullough invited me over for a catfish fry that evening. Mmmm!
	White pelicans are also making a comeback on the upper Mississippi. I saw huge flocks of them all the way up to Lake Itasca. I was able to float quietly through this flock without disturbing them too much. Another bird that has made a big comeback on the upper Mississippi is the bald eagle. The Mississippi valley is a major flyway for many migrating birds.
View across the spillway at Lock and Dam #21
	Sunset at the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. The Mississippi is the one coming in from the right.
For weeks I had been hearing about a section of the river near St. Louis called the Chain of Rocks. I asked everyone I talked to about whether or not they thought I could run through it or if I would have to portage around it. The responses ranged all the way from "No problem, I've done it many times" to "My cousin was killed two years ago trying to do it." I had a few days layover in St. Louis so I was able to scout it before I got to it. This is the view of it from the Old Chain of Rocks bridge. The Chain is a natural rock formation, much like the St. Anthony Falls area in Minneapolis, caused by a drop in elevation of the river floor exposing sedimentary outcrops.
	The view of the Chain of Rocks from water level. I ended up portaging around it.
The new bridge at Alton, Illinois in the middle on construction. This project ended up having a major delay when a long sunken towboat was discovered at exactly the point where one of the bridge supports had to go.
	The St. Louis waterfront and the Arch. Before I embarked again in St. Louis I was told a true story from a couple of years before, about a young man who was also canoeing the Mississippi. This man's parents had arranged a press conference with a TV crew to be on hand when he got to this point. The current past downtown St. Louis is swift and tricky and there is a lot of barge traffic. The young man took his attention off the river to wave to his parents and to the camera and ended up being capsized in the path of an oncoming barge. He drowned right there in front of everyone.
This is the view out toward the main river from the charming town of Hickman, Kentucky. Hickman is an example of a town that used to be a river town, and is no longer. The channel in this photo is a loop that used to be part of the river, but at some point during high water was cut off. Hickman is lucky, it still has water access to the main river. Many towns in situations like this have been left high and dry 20 miles away from the river.
	Autumn leaves in Hickman, Kentucky
The day's catch - fishing boat in Hickman, Kentucky
	I was fascinated by the idea of a school bus crossing the Mississippi river on a ferry.
The standard barge is 9 feet deep. This one is fully loaded and appears to be just barely afloat.
	My early morning departure from Cape Girardeau, Missouri.
Cape Girardeau, Missouri seawall.
	Mississippi River model at the museum on Mud Island, Memphis, Tennessee
There are probably hundreds of miles of this system of erosion control, called revetment, along the lower Mississippi. It is made from concrete tiles wired together. What a massive job!
	This is the famous "M" (for Memphis) bridge. It's especially impressive at night when it is lit up. An interesting story tells of the problem the lighted bridge caused towboat pilots when the bridge was first built. The lights made it difficult to read the tricky currents flowing past the bridge, so a system was set up so that pilots could have the lights turned off while they were passing the bridge.
A huge flock of birds migrating south near Helena, Arkansas.
	Near St. Francisville, Louisiana
I met O.G. Williams in Vicksburg, Mississippi, and we ran into each other on the river two more times. The first time he invited me aboard his 26-foot sailboat, the Sue Ann, for a cup of coffee. The second time, two days later, we arranged to meet again at the end of the day and I could sleep aboard his boat. He was sailing from Oklahoma to Galveston and then had plans to sail off into the sunset (or sunrise maybe).
	I was nearing Baton Rouge when I happened upon this German couple who had been on the river for over five months. They had started in the headwaters of the Missouri river and had come all the way down in their inflatable boat.
Hazardous cargo
	An interesting beach on the outskirts of New Orleans
Close-up of the shell beach
	In the section of the river below Baton Rouge the channel becomes deep enough to allow ocean-going ships to pass. I had learned how to easily deal with the hundreds of towboats I had encountered along the way - they're noisy and slow moving, and they don't throw out much of a wake - but these ships were a different story. They travel fast and are virtually silent until they are right next to you. And they can create a large wake - I encountered bow waves up to six feet high.
The Mississippi Queen moored at the New Orleans riverfront
	On the last morning of the trip I again encountered the Mississippi fog. I stuck close to shore for about an hour before it began to lift.
From Venice, Louisiana (at mile 10) on down, there are no roads. My parents met me in Venice and my dad had brought along a little outboard motor and a bracket to attach it to the canoe so I could motor my way back up to Venice after I had paddled down to mile zero. So here I'm on my way - Mile 9.
	Mile 7
Mile 6
	Mile 4
Mile 2
	Mile Zero!
Victory!
	My welcoming committee
Lily and our friend Mark had this plaque made for me. It says "In commemoration of the epic Solo Canoe journey of the mighty Mississippi River undertaken and completed by Guy Haglund in the year 1992. Beginning at Lake Itasca in Northern Minnesota and ending at the Gulf of Mexico, a journey of over 2300 miles. Guy, your friends and family are very proud of your accomplishment."