Changing Faces & Words Lost Forever

(Written Sept. 7 while outa signal range)The Miss is ever changing, today windy on our bow, tough like paddling out to surf in heavy seas. Yesterday it was pure glass yet constant strainers (mutli-limbed trees sticking up, out or over the river). And I am changing. Or the Changling: drunk today off a sixer of some cheap-ass beer from a lil country store in Jacobson, the Mississippi Landing store two miles downriver from last night's camp. The Miss meanders all over the map. Meander, the term for all the turns in the river, has a much gentler ring to it than switchback. This is just one of many ways paddling beats hiking.

It's a sweet day, still sunny and warm, but word is that's about to change fast. Cold coming. So I paddle like a demon rather than float and write as Frank invited me to do. He was sympathizing with my loss this a.m. of about half of everything written on my Sony Clie thus far using my full-sized keyboard.

But I couldn't write. So I channeled my anger and grief at all those lost words into paddle strokes with the power of swinging a sledge. And got drunk. And paddled on. When we hit camp, I stripped naked and dove into and floated a bit in the river for which I'd spent the whole day laboring into the wind. Then I got out and much to the befuddlement of Frank and Eric, clambered up a very dead tree overhanging the river just far enough to make jumping safe.

I dunno if I planned on bringing the whole tree down or just some of it. At some point it got thin enough to snap and sent me plummeting about twenty feet through the air. Me in my birthday suit and that branch. It was a real jackass move and Eric said as much, jokingly he said. Frank said nothing.

Temporarilly insane and utterly irrational, I think for a second that perhaps he'd just as soon I bust myself up so he can continue on with Eric. They talk and talk and get along like two avocadoes in a brown bag, ripening one another. Three's a crowd, and I'm odd man out. So I back off, keep to myself and avail myself of the space to write in. In this sense, Eric is a blessing.

Next morning here at "Miss Quito" canoe campsite (accessible only by water) it's "colder than a well digger's ass." God I hate it when meteorologists are right. It's in the upper forties and we're deep in the woods. No dreams here, just the dreams of trees, and alas and alak, I don't speak tree.

Clyde the beagle grimaces as Frank puts his paws through the four holes in a warm but girly-pattered sweater. The dog that Charles Schultz patterned Snoopy after gives a ho-hum sigh. Geese squawk as they fly south overhead. The sky outside is pending-snow grey. My tent smells sweetly of coffee, but the coffee has gone cold. Another day and we're soon underway.

Happy Birthday, Mike. -RSM
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