Southern River Kinship

Camp on Goat Island, Broad River, SCOctober 14, 2012. Dawn, Goat Island, a sandy perch of land in the Broad River, South Carolina.

I unzipped my tent and slipped out into the cool of the South Carolina October morning. The sun, if it was trying to shine through, had a challenge in the gray cloud cover. I walked toward the still river hoping to see some sandpipers working the sandy shoreline. Perhaps in the night, while the Barred and Great Horned Owls hooted, some small bird had flown in. But the sandy shoreline wasn’t there anymore. Had I mis-remembered the soft bank of this island?

I walked past a half dozen stilled tents to the kitchen area, where I hoped to find some coffee. Bob, who runs river trips and had orchestrated the details of this float, had the pot set up. All I had to do was turn the knob and light the propane burner. This was cushy camping.

I looked over at the four sit on top kayaks, two regular kayaks, the wooden hand made canoe, and the supply raft. Something was missing.

“Where’s the second raft?” I heard Bob’s voice to my left.

Indeed, it had floated off in the night.

John Lane in his elementWe included John Lane, the mastermind behind this float. He is South Carolina’s poet, nature writer, river lover. He has launched a three year initiative, titled “Thinking Like a River,” at Wofford College, where he teaches in the Environmental Studies program. This was their first “Thinking Like a River” conference and he had invited  David Furbish, from Vanderbilt, a hydrologist who can explain the mysteries of water to people like me; Allison Hedge Coke, a native poet, activist, storyteller currently teaching in Oklahoma; and Mike Freeman, my fellow northerner and Hudson river paddler who wrote Drifting. We spent two days on panels, visiting classes, giving readings and musing on “Thinking Like a River” with the wonderfully polite Wofford students. (I loved how polite everyone was—the man in the elevator at the hotel, the young woman at the Krispy Kreme who was sure I needed more than one of the hot doughnuts. She was right.)

We were now off to experience John’s rivers, first the Pacolet and then the Broad. With us were three Wofford students; Haley, who assists the Environmental studies program; and Kaye Savage and Terry Ferguson, who both teach in the Environmental Studies program. Yes, there were twelve of us on this trip.

Pringle Duck LipsWhen I write about my outings, whether on foot or on water, I usually have to introduce but one or two characters. Having so many on this journey was both disorienting and marvelously fun; on the river we were like a watery parade. The trip had texture. Kaye, a geochemist, showed how to make duck lips with Pringles and Terry was full of history of the region. For some, being on the water was like breathing, for others it was a grand adventure.

On Saturday morning we had gathered in Spartanburg to assemble the most amazing amount of gear. There were enough dry bags to equip an army. But also—we had a stove, a camp table, an enormous cooler, a poop tent, and tents, pads and sleeping bags enough for everyone. We drove south and east through beautiful pine forests to launch on the Pacolet River. I had read about the Pacolet in John’s book, My Paddle to the Sea. In it, he sets his canoe into the Pacolet in his back yard and heads toward the sea. Reading about this journey (I wrote about his and Mike's books earlier) I had been jealous—that he had a river in his back yard and that he could wind through rivers with such lovely names as the Broad and Santee, the Congaree. Though I love my Hudson River, it and its name do not hold the mysteries of a winding river shaded by sweet gum on a red-sand riverbank. Being on the Pacolet my envy returned. It’s an intimate river, narrow and snag-filled, with sycamore trees hugging tight to the water. It was all green and easy paddling, the current in the shallow water scooting us along. Carolina Wrens echoed their song from the river-side bushes, and Mockingbirds, the sound of the south, kept us company with their musical play. I would mosey along, having  a conversation with Mike about crows or books that he loves, then loll in the water looking at a Phoebe until Kay and Allison stroked by in the wooden canoe, or the raft with the Wofford students coasted up, their talk and laughter adding to the tonic of the river. 

Bob with our mass of gear in the raft I paddled for a short timeI convinced Bob to let me try rowing the loaded raft, and had a few laughs as I dodged trees, and scraped on sand bars. Perched high in the raft I could see to the next bend, the colorful kayaks dotting the water. This was an expedition.

If there is one way to get to think like a river it is to spend time on a river. There, I experienced time differently, the years this river has flowed, and the no-time that it took us to arrive at the Broad River. There, the world opened up, the river less lively then the Pacolet, but more assured. The Wofford students spread onto the rounded sides of the gray raft, legs draped over the sides, and napped as their boat made its way downstream (until, of course, one of them fell out of the boat!). Soon we had pulled up on Goat island. In my reach of the Hudson we also have a Goat Island, with its rocky shoreline and tall trees. This island had a tuft of small trees, but consisted mainly of a wide sandy beach, perfect for our many tents. I pulled my kayak partially out of the water, thinking that this Broad River was not tidal like my Hudson. Nothing would sweep it off in the night.

Napping Wofford studentsOur evening was calm, fire filled, and conversation filled. John told river stories and Haley asked for camping advice. Buy good long underwear, I said, as the temperatures dropped. If your feet are cold, wear a hat, I offered, pulling my hat over my ears. Even in this casual setting, everyone in scruffy river clothes and starting to ripen with the effort of the day, the students remained polite, “yes, sir, and Professor Lane, and Dr. Savage—these kids are a wonder. In that, I heard a respect I found pleasing. Early, we drifted off to our dew-covered tents, to wide sleeping pads covering the soft sand.

The next morning, the quiet Goat Island transformed as everyone was up and packing tents, stuffing sleeping bags, drinking coffee, marveling that the raft had been swept off in the night (my kayak was just held to shore). A dam upstream must have been released. John, Mike and I left early in our kayaks, and before we left, Allison sang a native song to the spider. The spider would help us find the raft (which we hoped was not hung up at the dam in Lockhart). She sang, then made an offering of coffee to the spiders. And her offering worked: a quarter mile downstream, the fat gray raft had lodged on the bank. John tied it off then we pushed downstream.

Our watery parade on the Pacolet--southern fall colors!Too soon we were loading boats onto John’s truck, and I was shifting clothes from dry bags to my suitcase. I had a list of books to read, ideas about rivers, thoughts on bringing rivers to people and people to rivers in my head. It was our work, our writing and teaching, our ideas and affection for rivers, for floating on rivers that had brought us together. Once on the river our bonds formed so surely over a fire, over river musings, over a meal prepared on a camp stove. In thinking like a river, I found kinship on a river.  

Paddling in Good Company

Mid-way through the fall I learned that mine was not the only book to be published this season about paddling down a river. Four other books carried writers into print this fall, from the Charles River in Massachusetts, to the rivers of the Carolinas, to the Altamaha in Georgia. I love these sorts of convergence. Certainly there are many paddle down river books but why five in one season? What has drawn us all to float and think—about rivers, about the environment, about life. Because if one thing unites these books is thinking about the world—paddling, whether in a canoe or a kayak, invites reflection. What is intriguing are the ways these books overlap, observations echo (those great blue heron; those sturgeon), words repeat ("drifting" "My") and number of pages to tell the story align (221 it is!).  In some ways, this could be because a river is a river (though this isn’t exactly true) and paddling is paddling (again not true) but it seems we all turned to rivers for ideas, solace, inspiration, love. Rivers formed this country, and if I can conclude one thing it is that being in and on a river shapes how we see the world, relate to the world.  I want to say they made us better people, though that sounds really cheesy. What I mean by better is more aware of our own thoughts, biases and desires, more attentive to the world, more appreciative of life. I’ll stop there before I write something foolish like: paddling is good for the world, not just for the soul.

Over this break, I’ve read the books of my four river companions. Here are some observations.

Janisse Ray claims the Altamaha river in her work Drifting Into Darien: A Personal and Natural History of the Altamaha River and she has every right to this little-known river: she grew up alongside the river, it’s in her blood and she lives there now. The first section of the book is a wonderful narrative of an 11-day kayak down the river with a group of friends and her husband—they have recently married, so there’s a twinge of honeymoon there as they escape the “real world.” There are delicious descriptions of birds, and the best description of paddling at night (one of my favorite things to do): “A river at night is magic. The feeling is of weightlessness, of floating not just horizontally but also vertically. Humans own the daylight, animals own night. A night paddle is about breaking biorhythms. It’s about becoming animal.” Yes.  The second half of the book includes essays about the river: forming the Altamaha Riverkeeper, for instance. There’s a chapter on fresh water mussels and one on the absence of bears; there are sturgeon and fishing trips and politics. And, there’s grief, loss that informs some of these essays but mostly love—for the river, for the creatures, for life.

Mike Freeman paddled the length of the Hudson in a canoe and wrote about it in his narrative, Drifting: Two Weeks on the Hudson. He started as near to the headwaters in the Adirondacks as he could (the river emerges at Lake Tear of the Clouds near the summit of Mt. Marcy)  and made his way south portaging, running rapids and once flipping over (a wonderfully dramatic moment). Amidst tales of eating more power bars than anyone should consume are lots of ideas on the environment, economy (Freeman was hit hard by the recent recession), politics, and religion (one of my favorite lines: “If there’s one thing I’ve always admired about churches, they were places people went to feel absolutely horrible about themselves.” ) The river, then, is a vehicle for ideas. Unlike me (and several of the other writers here), Freeman isn’t trying to claim the river as his in any way; he is just visiting (recently moved east from Alaska) for two weeks, to see what he could see and let his ideas wander with the river. Freeman is not an easy-going drifter—he’s on a fast course down the river, and his rants against everyone from polluters to coffee drinkers have the same sort of urgency.

John Lane, a prolific southern writer, took to the stream in his backyard in South Carolina and canoed to the sea via the Broad, Congaree and Santee Rivers. His tale: My Paddle to the Sea: Eleven Days on the River of the Carolinas is framed by a river accident in Costa Rica in which one of the guides and one paddler drown. There are two choices in the face of such a heart-breaking event: never paddle again, or paddle into your sadness and fear. Lane chose the latter. His narrative, then, is rich in thoughtfulness with depth. At the heart of it are two friendships, first with the larger-than-life character with whom he paddles the first eight days of his journey, Venable Vermont (by name alone he takes wonderful space in the book) and the his neighbor Steve Patton. Through the trip Lane confronts more rain than any person should have to weather. Though there’s a tension at the end—will he and Steve Patton make it to the ocean—there’s a wonderful easy-going feel to this story, and Lane is a great companion, a wilderness lover, “More John Muir than Teddy Roosevelt.” (Venable is a good antidote to Lane’s dreaming). There’s a lot of terrific, southern history, literary history, river’s history in this book. I came away smarter for it.

I would say that all of these books have an environmental agenda, but the most explicit is in David Gessner’s My Green Manifesto: Down the Charles River in Pursuit of a New Environmentalism. It has the outrage of a manifesto—outrage, interestingly enough, against environmentalists (in particular he slays two: Shellenberger and Nordhaus, who wrote “The Death of Environmentalism”) whom he sees as nagging and who repeat “global warming” too frequently. Which means that Gessner has a sense of humor, a rare quality in environmental writing. What I appreciated most is that birds are his “soft spot.” And it is through birds, through watching birds (though not being a birder!) that we really observe, and in observing we “migrate outward.” This looking outward is the first “step toward falling in love.” And it is when we love something, someone, a bird or a place that we want to protect it. So Gessner’s manifesto is really a return to caring for what we know, for where we live. This gives new life to the NIMBY environmentalist (which is what I am and have continued to preach for in these days of global warming). The journey down the Charles is conversational, even casual and is filled with beer and jokes and nearly breaking the canoe in half—in this sense it will appeal to a young audience. And that is exactly who Gessner wants to get with his book; he wants to light a fire under those young butts. So it is a manifesto indeed.