1999
"Floating On Rain"
by Peter Carlsen
I learned to love canoeing south of the border on rivers with names that most have never learned. It started in a Boy Scout camp in the hill country of Texas. Not a likely spot I know. At the age of 12, we moved to Iowa. There, Mom found an ad in the Des Moines Register: Going out of business, for sale 53 wood and canvas canoes. The dying business was in our town, but by the time we showed up there were just a few boats left. For $75 we took home one of the remnants – a slightly worn, 1911, 17-foot Old Town canoe. It was hardly the pick of the litter, but it was red and I thought it wonderful.
Iowa is known for its farm land, pigs, corn, and a lot of two lane roads. No one thinks about rivers and canoes in a land full of corn fields and feed lots. No one looks closely at maps. But rivers are there like veins in a leaf. It takes rain to grow those crops. The rains come. They nourish the earth, run though the clods, and are carried off through pipes beneath clay bottomed fields. They flow into creeks and build the rivers that make the only non-geometric paths through the land. Growing up in Iowa City, I learned to love the rivers.
Each summer, when we could get the folks to take us, we paddled the Iowa, which flowed between power dams through our town, and the neighboring Cedar. Far to the north were the Upper Iowa and the Turkey with their promise of whitewater. Our fingers traced the blue lines of the Maquoketa, Skunk, and Des Moines. The warnings of undertow and swift, tricky current made us want to paddle the Wapsipinicon where Grant Wood lived and painted. It was supposed to be very beautiful. But these were too far for our reach or our parents' willingness to fetch. And so the Cedar River became the favorite get-a-way.
We never thought too much about it starting in Minnesota. We never quite managed to ride it all the way to where it joined the Mississippi. What it picked up flowing through the cities of Waterloo and Cedar Rapids was a constant source for discussion. But clear water was not the reality of Iowa rivers and we learned to accept them for what they were. As I got to know the Cedar I came to think of it as Huck Finn's Mississippi, for they seemed quite the same in my mind. Reading Twain I became sure that I was but the skip of a stone from the boyhood idols of another age.
In those days we drifted shirtless for hours down the river. As the trees screened the corn fields, we could slip into another, separate world. Tree banks, cut banks, trap lines, and current became the focus of our attention. We were left alone. This was not the Iowa that most folks knew. Only occasionally did the pasture break through or the cows come forward to remind us of the world beyond. Otherwise we spent the days lost in the remains of a less cultivated land.
If the old wooden canoe was our schoolhouse, most of our time was spent at recess. We splashed beside it when we grounded on shallow bars. We floated beside it when the water was deep. We grew to know the power of currents by feeling them on our bodies, wading, walking, trying to hold our ground. With our canoe we learned of the draw of the river.
I was surprised to discover sand beneath the brown water. I couldn't really imagine where it came from. Everything in Iowa seemed be built on clay and soft, fragrant, sticky muck is what I expected. But there it was, running between the toes, forming huge sand bars at bends. Unused, large and deserted, except for an occasional cow and us boys, we found beaches that rivalled the best in Europe. We raced hundreds of yards across the fine white sand, wincing only when we struck a shell or small rock, dodging the patches of cracked, brown mud and tufts of grass.
On board I perfected those lessons I learned in the Hill Country. We paddled in the bright channels and dodged under the shade of trailing branches. We steered past islands, down the dark, cool, narrow channels and out into the flat, bland expanse of head winds. Sometimes we just drifted, and that was a lesson too. While reading the river and journeying from home with bare feet on worn ribs, we watched and came to know the galloping logs and tangles of trunks, snags, bank swallows and mud turtles, herons and hawks, black sucking muck and hot sandy loam.
At the end of the day, shoulders burning from a fresh sunburn, we paddled for all we were worth toward the small town where we had arranged to be picked up. We paddled straining to hear the sounds of people from the gathering cabins and cars on the old iron, single lane bridge. First came the sounds, then the final bend, and far down the path the straight lines of civilization. The bridge was five spans wide and mid-way across were two figures waiting, looking upstream. It often was my sister, or my father, or my brother, or my partner's parents eating an ice cream cone and peace-fully waiting and watching for our arrival on a summer evening.
The river has a magical effect on people. Watching the current brings peace to the soul. While back in Iowa City last summer, my sister took us out to a small river town bar she had just discovered. Do you know about Sutliff, she asked. Of course I did. It was the bridge and general store at the halfway spot on most of my trips on the Cedar River. Now some 25 years later we drove out through the rolling countryside on a grey misty evening. Most people think of Iowa as flat, but it's really not. We zigged and zagged across the country in one mile squares and came to the old bridge crossing, now closed. The road curved away to the north leading to the new bridge and the new crossing. We pulled off and parked before the barricade, preferring a slower approach. The old bridge was still there anchoring the small settlement across the river. It was left as part of a rural version of historic preservation. I'm glad it was spared. I think the locals knew the spell it cast through time. We walked slowly across the creosoted timbers. Above the wind and current rattled the old iron framework. Below ran the river, wider and more massive than I remembered. Its brown currents streaming around the bend far upstream, under our feet and off into the haze far, far to the southeast. I had forgotten about its size, its hidden power, and its swirling warmth.
We ordered hamburgers from the bar at the far end and took our food out to a picnic table that had been placed on the bridge. I watched the current and tree-line far up-stream, remembering all the time I spent floating down its path. I was wishing I could be out there again. I looked for a boat, but knew there would be none. Just the river and boils as it crowded past the stone piers beneath us. In the growing dusk I looked upstream again into mist where the current came from. Out of the darkness drifted a boat. I blinked and thought I was mistaken. Soon shouts began to reach us. It was not a fishing boat as I expected but two canoes lashed together finishing a two-day journey. When they landed, one of the party came over to talk to us and share his enthusiasm. It was an annual family outing, cousins and in-laws searching for memories. Each year they assembled at a different place and this year it was the Cedar. And how was it we askedwonderful he said.
I am like the author, Paul Theroux, who never crossed a railroad track that he did not wish to follow. Only I'm drawn to rivers. I strain to look as I cross bridges, trying to catch a glimpse of the water below. Off they flew dropping out of sight behind guard-rails, and disappearing between walls of trees. Some are clear, some small, some crooked, some broad. And I want to follow. Each one draws me, makes me want to travel along. Each beckons to my imagination, calling out to discover its boundaries, to follow its course, to feel its motion. There are others out there who feel their call. I am not unique. For those of you who share this affliction, I urge you to drop a canoe in some stream south of the border. There on a summers eve you can find enchantment when the river banks are so heavy with lightning bugs that you think there's heat-lightning all round the horizon, and the sound of cicadas drowns out the rattle of bridges as you float with the rain that nourishes the earth.
