Tag: canoeing

Peter Frank and the Great Loop

What drives a person to climb Kilimanjaro or swim the English Channel? Why did Alexander Supertramp light out for the territories, only to meet his demise after ingesting the seeds of a toxic plant in the Alaskan wilds? Why did Huck Finn set sail on the Mississippi — was it to get away from the Widow Douglas and his abusive father, or was it something much deeper that called him down the river? Why do locals like Ryan Gillikin and Joseph Bolton kayak the Alabama 650 every year, pushing their bodies and minds to the point of exhaustion and delirium? And why did Forrest Gump decide to just start running?

It’s a mystery, folks. The biblical Cain was our first Great Wanderer, but he had little choice in the matter. After slaying his brother out in the boonies one fine autumn day, he was cast east of Eden, condemned to walk the Earth for eternity, branded with God’s own tattoo. 

Unlike Cain, today’s explorers will tell you they do have a choice — at least some of the time. But what drives them to set sail upon the dark waters and traverse the barbarous lands remains somewhat of a mystery, even to them. For its part, America has a long tradition of explorers and wanderers. The conquistadors of Spain got the ball rolling in the name of gold, God, and glory. Lewis and Clark (along with Sacagawea) traversed the western frontier at the behest of Jefferson, while Mason and Dixon settled some important boundary disputes with their jaunts. Voyaging is a big part of the national character, from Kit Carson in the Rockies to more intellectually prone seekers like John Muir and Edward Abbey. And then there are the cultural titans like Jack Kerouac and the Grateful Dead, whose legions followed in the literal footsteps of their journeys, forging a new kind of adventurer along the way.

Today’s explorers seem to be as much about the spiritual quest, and not as much about clapping eyes on new lands. For them, it’s a test of will, a feat of the heart. Perhaps this is because today’s voyages can’t help but look and feel a little different, now that we live in the time of GPS and mobile phones. Alaska may still be the last terrestrial frontier, but in the age of satellites, civilization is never out of reach in the way that it once was. What about that Mars trip we’ve heard so much about? Well, that might be a while. So perhaps it is that after centuries of settlement and industrialization, the American wilderness is all but erased, but the wilderness within remains.  

One of America’s great modern explorers is not a household name. He is a gentleman by the name of Verlen Kruger. A native of Indiana who lived in Michigan for much of his life, Verlen, who died in 2004, is credited with canoeing more miles than any other American — in excess of 100,000 miles. Somewhere in between the time of his relentless voyaging, he managed to design a specialty canoe, the Savage Loon, a thirteen-and-a-half-foot craft specifically tailored for long voyages. Reminiscent of a kayak, the Loon has all the tell-tale features of a traditional canoe in that the boat features a hollow shell with a raised seat and lacks the keel or fin found on most kayaks. With a cockpit more than eighty inches long, it was designed to be able to navigate rough conditions on extended treks. In canoe circles, the Loon is known as a “decked canoe,” meaning that the deck covers a portion of the cockpit — and indeed it is often mistaken for a kayak. 

In addition to his contributions to design (he funded his voyages by leasing his patent to commercial canoe-makers like Savage), Verlen Kruger is known for having logged one of the longest canoe jaunts in human history, a 28,000-mile odyssey across North America that came to be known as the Ultimate Canoe Challenge. This was a feat that found Verlen and his son, Steve Landkin, paddling the length of the Mississippi and Colorado rivers upstream as part of The Great Loop. That’s a pretty long haul against the current when you are clocking a 6,000-mile route. In 1981, Verlen and his son became the first to canoe the Great Loop in reverse, or clockwise, as one sees it on a map. 

“I’ve often thought about the results of making some of these big trips,” Verlen once said. “I haven’t done anything great for humanity; it was more that I’ve done something great for myself. But I do hear from other people who say they’ve been inspired by my travels. Hopefully, I can get them to look a little farther, a little deeper into themselves, into what they can do.”

The Great Loop is a circumnavigational route that winds through the eastern half of the United States (15 states) and parts of Canada (two provinces), taking “Loopers” through the Intracoastal Canal, the Great Lakes, the Gulf of Mexico, the Mississippi River, and a byzantine network of canals and rivers in between. Most undertake the voyage with a motorized craft, taking on average about a year to complete the journey, though it has been done in as little as six weeks. The great majority of voyagers elect to travel in a counter-clockwise direction, which allows them to move along with the currents, which can be especially helpful on powerful rivers like the Mississippi and Ohio. For the motorized set, the trip is typically one of leisure. The starting point is a matter of choice, but many opt to start in Chicago in the fall, which allows them to wind around Florida in the winter, when many parts of the northern route are closed. 

Read the rest at Mobile Baykeeper.

The words for water

Language, one of the core human properties, connects us to the land and water, for it is through language that much of our worldview is shaped. In his book Thirty-Two Words for Field: Lost Words of the Irish Landscape, Manchán Magan explores the history of a language — in this case, Irish — and a landscape that is inextricably linked.

“Our landscape now looks like an increasingly anonymous expanse of indistinguishable fields, yet seen through the Irish language each field has its own word, depending on its characteristics and function,” Magan writes. “To a city-dweller this land may all look the same, and in English each would probably be just referred to as a field, yet to someone whose ancestors have been cultivating the land, growing grain and tending cattle for over four thousand years, and who has built up the soil over centuries by hauling seaweed from the shore and burning limestone to add alkalinity, they look very different.”

Many Native American languages contain numerous words for “water,” and these various shadings describe its different qualities and functions. It’s a level of complexity that attests to water’s cultural significance in indigenous societies. One can’t help but wonder how many words the Mississippian people had for “water” at the Bottle Creek site, a part of the Delta so complex and mysterious as to defy description in English.

In his latest novel The Promise of the Pelican, Roy Hoffman draws on Mobile Bay for inspiration. For Hoffman, the Bay is a character in and of itself, as kaleidoscopic and varied as any individual. As he tells Virginia Kinnier in this issue: “If you look at Mobile Bay every day, you’ll know that it can be like the person you live with; it’s the same person each day, of course, but that person has moods and expressions and gestures.”

Hoffman may not be coining new words for “bay,” but he is exploring its dynamics and nuances through long-form storytelling. “I once followed along with a bar pilot for an article I wrote,” he says, “so I know the eeriness of the fog in the morning and what the bell buoys sound like before you can even see them, so I was able to draw on those experiences to add more realistic elements to the story.” 

It is these nuances — the “eeriness of the fog” and “what the bell buoys sound like” — that give shape to the story of Mobile Bay, and, ultimately, the story of those who live on its shores.

Cormac McCarthy once wrote that things separate from their stories have no meaning, that they are merely objects without a sense of place or purpose. It is only through storytelling, one of his characters contended, that things start to possess a history and a sense of meaning emerges.

We are losing our storytelling traditions in this country and losing them fast. Local newspapers were once a place for common ground, a forum where we could all learn about the day’s events and about each other. Our daily gazettes were far from perfect, but they were vital to the health of a community. The social networking sites we have today position users in a feedback loop that fuels tribalism and division. Controversial content is amplified and puts us at each other’s throats. All nuance is lost, and it is that nuance that gives stories their human quality and allows for empathy and understanding.

This issue tells the story of Peter Frank, a young man from Michigan who is traversing the six-thousand miles of the Great Loop in a canoe, much of it up-current. He is connected to the land in ways I cannot imagine, and I wonder how many words he has for “water” inside his head. We hope his story inspires you. If it does, please consider supporting CURRENTS and the preservation of our culture through storytelling. By doing so you’re helping preserve the waters and land that create those stories. 

Visit mobilebaykeeper.org/currents to become a Baykeeper and subscribe to this publication.