Canoeing the Mississippi River
It turns out I never really knew the Mississippi, said Nic Brown in Garden & Gun. On a 200-mile guided canoe trip from Clarksdale, Miss., to Vicksburg, my fellow paddlers and I experienced “no shortage of wild beauty” along the vast non-urban stretches that most Americans never see. Steady barge traffic meant that we were rarely enveloped in full silence, but we camped each night in virtual wilderness—including on a beautiful sandbar island that was “as remote a piece of earth as I’ve ever set foot on.” John Ruskey, our bearded guide and the founder of the Quapaw Canoe Co. (island63.com), regaled us with tales about his decades plying the currents and the river’s role in supporting life across the nation’s heartland. Standing midriver in my team’s canoe one day, I looked down upon the swirling, bracingly cold water before I finally let go of all preconceptions and plunged in. “You’ve been baptized!” a boatmate shouted.
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