Mississippi Canoe Trip
(Page 8 of 8)
July/August 1970
By CINDY COOPER
The "whats" and "how" of canoeing on major rivers - such as the Ohio, Missippi, or Missouri - are easy to verbalize. However, the experience itself cannot be related so simply.
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We passed through ten states and areas that are rural, urban, resort and wild. We saw some of America's great contrasts - the most beautiful natural landscapes and the ugliest most obnoxious pollution. We met hundreds of people who helped us understand what small towns, the Midwest, countryside, the South, this nation and the land itself are all about. We learned as never before.
We got to know, not only ourselves and each other, but a river with a vast history that is so grand and unpredictable that not even modern man - with all his technology, revetments, cement banks, dikes and dams - can intimidate, stifle or tame it. But mainly, we experienced an adventure that - like the water - cannot be constant, must always be flowing and dynamic in format and will necessarily be vastly different for each individual.
We paddled for 67 days to reach our New Orleans goal. One could continue for pages about those days and write about that Old Man River and phlegmatic weather and sore muscles and blue Ohio water and canned spaghetti and singing and yacht clubs and dead fish and thirsty cows and the sun rising over a silver canoe with a couple of people just discovering America's oldest highway. After 9 1/2 weeks spent not too outlandishly, we finally paddled into New Orleans, Louisiana . . .
So now move over, Huck - we made it!
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