Southwind_E01 – 08. 01. 2021

Shelters

The more time we spent with the river, the more we moved away from the cities. The farther south we sailed, the fewer towns and marinas we came upon. We mostly found shelter in sandbanks and small bays just behind river islands and bends. By then, we were able to read the river much better and we could tell a good spot to land just by looking at the map. Despite the factories shooting up right around the corner and spewing indeterminate substances into the air and the river, these hidden corners, hinting at the paradise lost, still linger with me like romantic Twainian reminiscences. The evening campfire settled the troubled daytime spirits and scared away the mosquitoes; a couple of beers relaxed us back to normal and rocked us to sleep. In these shelters, we all – nature and us – pretended that reality was different, that we were coexisting in harmony.

What, after all, is wilderness along the river? We saw long tracks left behind by crocodiles sliding into the water not far from our steamboat, footprints of large birds, tracks of sidewinding snakes, trees gnawed on during the night by beavers, swollen dead fish, Asian carps, including a few that jumped out of the water just before us in shallow bays, bald eagles circling above us in the Upper Mississippi, and gulps of great cormorants, squabbles of gulls, and flocks of other birds I hadn't seen before. I am not sure whether buffalo gnats (or black flies) qualify for wilderness, but it was here, along the river, that I encountered them for the first time, and they bit their way deep into our memory. Their bites made my ankles look like two giant apples, and Max was scratching the scabs on his legs and face until they bled all the way to New Orleans. Drenching ourselves in insect repellents didn't do any good at all.

Was it wilderness when we docked our boat under an abandoned grain elevator and then waded for three hours along the river bank through knee-deep mud to Wickliffe, Kentucky, only to find it was in a dry county, i.e. one where sale of packaged alcoholic beverages is prohibited? And when we took the road back and we were greeted with guns and threats of fines and imprisonment if we returned to our steamboat, since we were supposedly trespassing?

Was it wilderness when I, pleased to finally escape from Greenville, Mississippi, where we had been kept up all night by the sound of gunfire, made campfire on the beach and sipped my beer when I suddenly heard the monotonous beating sound of huge oil pipes, but interpreted it as ritual drumming of some undetermined sect, so I, scared they would spot and find us, put out the fire and, wide awake, listened for every little noise on the beach for hours while clutching a hammer?

Was it wilderness when we camped at a piece of a floating dock from a destroyed marina, washed ashore in the woods near Hannibal, Missouri, Mark Twain's birthplace, and were awakened in the middle of the night by the sound of a shattered window and rocks, and the whispering of two voices next to the steamboat, explaining to us that they had come to watch over us? They started a fire two metres from our boat and smoked crack until dawn. Max and I, meanwhile, slept with an axe and a hammer in our hands.

Was it wilderness when after three days of sailing, we woke up on a lonely shore and I wanted to make our morning coffee, but Max accidentally tipped over the coffee pot into the river, and I spent two hours, mad as a hornet, making a net from the stuff that the river washed ashore, so I could pick up the pot from the bottom, since the river was too polluted for me to dive in?

Or was it wilderness when we cooked dinner over campfire embers on top of a sandbank, comfortably tucked away and out of reach of the waves stirred by the cargo ships in the river branch, and used messenger to invite a friend who was just staying in New York to join us?

When Max and I talked about Mississippi, I always thought about fear of the river. In truth, what I harboured throughout our journey was fear of people. Human nature is either a well or an abyss of endless surprises. Here, people are present at every step of the way and they have discharged all their greed, released all their impulses and disgorged their survival instinct into the river. Wilderness is but a memory.

Towards its end, the Mississippi is far from suitable for small vessels. Between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, large tanker ships make up most of the traffic. Compared to them, the barges from the upper part of the river appear almost minuscule. The media dubbed this section the petrochemical corridor. Exxon, Mosaic, Denka/Dupont and Wanhua Chemical all have their plants here. Due to the many clusters of cancer patients identified in this part, the area also earned the monikers Cancer Alley and Dead Alley.

In order to avoid Baton Rouge, we sailed into the last piece of the Wild West, to the right into the Lower Old River channel, and then left down the Red River to Atchafalaya, a refuge for all looking to operate outside the system.