Temperature Warp

Holy Cheezusssss! I left Arizona in late May to escape the desert summer heat. I stepped outa the airport twenty minutes ago and bang! It's hotter than when I left! Which get's ya thinkin. Did I, in fact, ever really leave? If I got on a computer terminal right now and scanned back thru this blog, would I find that I had dreamed this whole past four months in New England and on the Mighty Mississippi? What the FUCK is going on?!

Man, maybe I should cut down on the drugs and flying thing. May.. be.

Nah.

I'll be in the Autotransportes de Guasave shuttle van in a matter of minutes now, the lone gringo on an all Mexican shuttle bound for Douglas and my car. There will be air conditioning and the ever-soothing unintelligible banter of hispanic white noise (soothing because I don't comprende a word of it).

We will be somewhere around Tombstone when the drugs loose their hold. My brain will right itself, shake off these pesky bats, and this nightmare will be over. - RSM
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Cumulus Intoxicatum

I never leave the ground these days without the theme song from "Spiderman 2" blasting across the cathedral of my cranium. Today it was that, then Staind's Funeral March as we entered the clouds reclined out of our minds, then Peter Tosh chimed in just in time for a bumpy ride through the lowest of clouds with Stepping Razor.

I'm bad, I know. But I'm also 99 percent sure that the music from my mp3 player is not going to scramble the radar or jam communications from the tower. That's a bucha hooey. And I simply must have blastoff accompaniment music. MUST. So, I get it all cued up - the player tucked beneath my thigh, discretely install the earpiece in my window-side ear, tuck the other in my coat for easy access and, as soon as the last flight attendant plops down in their jumpseat, install the other earpiece and unpause the song, just begun.

This is usually right when the pilot calls out about being cleared for takeoff and the plane rounds that last bend and for a split second you can see right down the pipe, the runway all black streaked and badass, right where you're going, your immediate future, 100 or so riveting seconds of mad torque as the pilot stomps on it and it's damn the torpedos away! The music builds quickly, and it is loud enough to be heard very well over the jets a-roaring. It was recorded right thru a friend's DVD player with the input frequency bars topped out, full intake, peak volume. So it's the right song for screaming down the runway and reaching for the sky.

God, I love liftoff. Takeoff, whatever. Maybe someday I'll be om my back grinning with 5 or 6 G's and it will indeed be a liftoff! Yeee-hah! Chuck Yeager, here I come. Totally doable in my lifetime, I figger.

Yes. Have to put that on my list of life goals. Or stick it in the cool genie bottle given me by Carolle Oldenburg upriver a ways: The Bottle of Dreams. Gotta dream, friends. Gotta. Or nothing ever happens. How can any dream come true if no expectations were ever given it to stand up to? Look out. I've got a magic bottle and I'm comin' for you.

Hey, that's right! Got another dream last night in Groundhog Town! And three other great ones from friends Mina, Jan & Dave (Jan "Corktruck" Elftmann's husband Dave). Man can that dude cook! What a fabulous Minnesota sendoff meal he served me up the other night: Alaskan Cod, corn on the cob fresh as butter taffy, and melt in your mouth mushroom strips to give the finest cut of a cow a run for its money. Yum!

Captain says, "1,149 miles to Tucson, and we'll be traveling at 40,000 feet." Wow. That's high. Of course, high is a relative term here in seat #22F. Being high inside and out of own's body is, well, a lot like swimming in a pool of body temp water. It's nice. It's just what the doctor ordered. And the good doc never let's me down when it comes time to fly. - RSM
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Tomorrow Came

But did I roll over in bed to smell the sweet lilac scent of Andy McDowell's long black wavy hair splayed out across her pillow? I think not. Ipso facto: I think, therefore I go.

(I did enjoy a very comfortable night's rest in the plush guestroom bed at Frank's house. Thank you Frank.)

The commuter train rolls out of Punksatawny on this fine sunny morning - the next day, a day Bill Murray's struggle to achieve made for a great film plot. On the 9:48 am train I have escaped the commuter rush. The jovial chit-chat of retirees and ladies en route to a relaxed day of shopping in the big city flutter up to me from below. I prefer the upper catwalk section of these commuter trains and so sit perched above all others. I have the upstairs to myself. The car smells of plastic and cranked up air conditioning. My "ginormous" backpack takes up an entire seat behind me.

I watch the auto shops and pizza joints and car lots and clean industry of suburban Illinois race by like images in a non-sequential flipbook and try not think about the complex of trains, subways, shuttles and airplane that will compise my entire day. I am thankful merely to be moving.

Moving, after all, it what I do best. - RSM
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"I'm not worthy!"

What movie is that from? I dunno. The only movie I care about right now is the one I'm being a total sycophantic fan in, or of. I'm not so delusional to think I'm actually IN the film "Groundhog Day," but I have had fun running around the town square snappin' off digits like a tourist, or a location scout. But I doubt I could pass for the latter in a real town where the filmmakers used everything in town and built, so far as I can tell, only a handful of interior sets.

One I'm sure they didn't change a bit is where I now sit, the bar at The Dew Drop Inn, aka the town's only bowling alley, all 8 lanes of it (will spare you its real name). On pure instinct or perhaps just luck, I place myself at a barstool where the camera would have been and snap some shots. It's only after talking with barteder that I discover I'm dead on. Naturally, I'm pleased. But like every effin' bar in the U.S., the TVs on. Two of em, broadcasting alternately a sitcom on one, sports on the other.

(A few minutes later..)
Ha! The few patrons in the bar departed, and before the next came in, I leapt on the juke, a hungry leopard with a fiver in my teeth. I stacked the juke box with 15 classic rock hits, sat back at the bar, the sitcom now muted, grabbed my beer & Blackberry, felt very princely, set thumbs to keyboard and.. and in walked Frank.

Well bueno. We need this time to decompress together. "I don't mind telling you now," Frank says, "I'm sore and tired." Telling me now, I grumble, echoing his words. "Stoicism is greatly admired in the military," he continues. "It is a well-heeled virtue in my character." I'm speechless.

Frank is already scheming in his head about next year. "A re-attack," he calls it. "The soft approach didn't work so well." Deeply steeped in my own P.T.S.D., I am too shell-shocked to entertain future campaign ideas. As it is, Frank earlier made me a gift of one of his $285 paddles. It was a trophy I had hoped for in New Orleans. Having come only 500 miles, I didn't feel worthy. I graciously thanked him, however, and marveled at its magnificence, its weightlessness yet incredible durability. I wondered at how I'd get it on the plane.

Frank tells Kim the bartender what lovely, sparkling eyes she has. He's right. She has a certain twinkle. He compliments me on my jukebox choices, then pronounces to Kim and me, "You wanna know the best Rolling Stone song ever? Gimme shelter." Tonight both Frank and I will take shelter here in Punksatawny, beneath his very own roof.

As if reading my mind, the captain now jolly with a few beers whispers at me, "Well there's only one thing to do now. Meet a couple of locals, get in their car and drive down the railroad tracks."

On the juke, Manfred Mann sings the poetry of my 70s youth from Blinded by the Light. "She got down but she never got round, she's gonna make it thru the night."

The bowling alley, near vacant when I entered, is suddenly alive with some league game. But I hear little of the racket of balls and pins, tucked as we are back here in the bar. I hear only Frank to my left breaking down the fortress waters of the Mighty Miss into algorithms (sp?) and logical rationale. And in stereo I hear my chosen music:
Joe Walsh - Rocky Mtn Way
George Thorougood - One scotch, one bourbon, one beer
Steve Miller - Fly like an Eagle
Rolling Stones - You can't always get what you want

Not long after, Frank and I depart for real food on the town plaza. Together we devour some two dozen baby back ribs, chicken, garlic mashed potatoes, goumet salads, Octoberfest beers and cheesecake. It is a gorging, the kind of feeding that ferries romping summer and hard-won harvest into the winter of hibernation.

"Even Lewis and Clark took the winter off," quips Frank, to which I add, crass but not dishonest to my own needs, "Sure, and if they were smart they were fucking squaws."

Unplanned, but it'll be nice to know as I sail at 30,000 feet tomorrow back to my native earth that my captain is not out there going it alone, and furthermore that he, too, is happy to be home. - RSM
(Pure Gonzo Journalism, hot off the fire to you!)
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A Groundhog Kinda Day

I'm in a car zooming down the freeway headed toward the Chicago area. There's a canoe on the roof. A yellow, Kevlar canoe. Frank's sister Cherrie is at the wheel, I'm in the pasenger seat. In the backseat sleeps Clyde with his master, Frank, at his side. There's something oddly familiar about all this.

Yes, it's true. Captain Frank is now off the river as well. He's headed home to manicure his lawn and walk his dog in peace. After three days of paddling (not alone but with his guest paddler Cherrie) he came to the same conclusion we together had once or twice come to upriver: we were nuts. In this case, he realized he would have to be crazy to continue on, alone.

Frank spoke of how, even with his sister in my place in the bow, he was humbled by the massive 6 or 8 or 12-packs of barges (each one huge in its own right but all lashed together - whoa!) being ferried downriver by tugs. "And the size of the river!" He exclaimed. Beneath the Twin Cities, the Miss had really gone mighty on him. Monster barges, speedboats flying by with no heed for the tiny canoe being tossed and sloshed by their violent wakes. And the lakes.

With not much exception, the Miss is really just a big-beaded necklace of lake after wide lake all the way to St. Louis. "It's not fun anymore," he sighed. I could relate. It had been a hardass endeavor from the get-go, but thru northern Minnesota it had at least been pretty. I felt sad for him, but the result of those early hard days zapped me like a taser as I forgot myself and tried to lift some gear with my right as we prepared to pack the car. My race was run. There was nothing I could do to help him, not anymore.

And so officially ends Frank & Rick's Mississippi bid for the Fall of 2006. We're goin' home. But The Dreamcatcher Expedition? That ain't over til I say so. That ain't over til I quit collecting dreams. That's the beauty of a conceptual journey. It's boundless. You can't kill it. It has taken on a life of its own. And right now, this very instant flying across land in a late model silver sedan, right now it is morphing.

Speaking of things you can't kill...
Frank lives in Woodstock, Illinois, that old town square and gazebo town that anyone who's seen Groundhog Day has had burned into their memory forever. How could we forget it? We walked its cobbled streets time and time again with poor grumpy Bill Murray until he got ungrumpy and learned to do good for others and appreciate the simple things in life at which point his time-loop curse was lifted and he got to wake up in bed with Andy McDowell.

Well, things generally go back to their source, and here am I on my way back to the fictional Punksatawny, PA where, after we've unloaded the canoe and gear, I have every intention of strolling over to the non-fictional, very real bowling alley featured in the film and sittin' down for a beer right where Bill Murray sat before deciding to take his local drunken buddies on a suicidal ride down the railroad tracks that pass by right near the alley.

This wasn't in the plan. I was merely to drive Cherrie's car dowriver to wherever they ended up after three days on the river, then ride into Chicago with her (she lives somewhere nearby), hole up in a cheap motel room for the night, and fly outa Midway Airport tomorrow afternoon.

But things are morphing, like I said. Let's just hope "tomorrow begins tomorrow," as the rock lyric goes, and I get to leave Punksatawny and tomorrow night lay my head in an Arizona desert bed. (smile) - RSM
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Motorized Mini-barge

Wouldn't you know the day after I make up my mad mind to pack it in and go home, Jan Elftmann returns from the West, takes me down to her marina and out on the Miss in her cool 20-foot sailboat-turned-mini-barge with raised sleeping quarters. Loved it! So Jan says, "Wanna take it to New Orleans?" (It had a motor, people.) Almost had me. All most. But nope. Time to revisit the desert, touch base, feel home again. Thank you, Jan. Twas a grand offer. You are a gem. - RSM
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The Bringer

Mina just flipped open her brother Matthew Wood's book "The Book of Herbal Wisdom" and a moment later gave a chuckle. She handed me the book and this is what I read:

"Whether we have a happy life or not is another issue. It is a "revolutionary act," as physician/clown Patch Adams likes to say. Happiness does not originate in the stick-in-the-mud boring material world to which we are born, but is interjected by surprise from another dimension. Humor, art, and true medicine come from this other/magical place. The contrary, clown, trickster, poet, artist, crazy person, shaman, physician, steals a fleck of light from that world and brings it to this world, where it works its liberating, healing, happy-making, regenerating ferment. The bringer is wounded in the process." - Matthew Wood

I never once told anyone from whom I was collecting wishes the dark place from which I was reaching out to lift them up and give them hope in the drawing out of their dreams. This time, I kept death and pain out of the equation, until, that is, the tangible physical pain became too great. I am glad of that and happy with what I accomplished, for others as well as for myself. - RSM

What Now?

Where do we go from here? So many choices, so little enthusiasm for anything.

Having a wonderful time here in Minneapolis staying with Mina & Greg Leierwood (check 'em out at Leierwood.com!) and their teenage son Avram and German exchange student Julius. They're amazing people, and their home is so homey (in an artist's way, my way), so full of art and life and spirit. My entire experience of Minneapolis thus far has been likewise. Last night out late at a local performance space for a "Romp," a night of wild skits and dance and puppetry and song, some scripted, most impromptu, all of it great. Place was packed. I could just stay here forever, so tenuous is my hold on the concept of home.

But the dreams! I must deliver the Bottle of Dreams to its destination. Or perhaps not. Not yet anyway. Ways have been suggested to me how I might bicycle down alongside the Mississippi or borrow a canoe and go it my own at a more relaxed pace, or walk it even, continue my mission to collect dreams. But I think not. I think I have set in motion a great thing, and I don't intend to let a shoulder sprain stop me. But I'm also not convinced that the Mississippi River has to continue to be the platform for my mission. My desire to return to the desert and my Bisbee extended family of friends is strong (I've been couch surfing and camping out since late May). I believe the bottle will be going "home" with me, and once there I will continue to fill it, now with the dreams of Bisbee folk, artists, Bisbee's many homeless dreamers (people like me yet a generation younger), Border Patrol Agents, illegal aliens, whoever. Maybe I'll take the bottle into Mexico and with the aide of friend Hunter and collect the dreams of Mexicans, really mix it up.

Frank is gone now, downriver a ways. God be with him on his journey, now solo. Many have done it solo, and he is more than competent and has the best equipment money can buy. He'll be fine. He wishes I would rejoin him when my shoulder heals. But the doctor looked at me grim-faced when I posited that idea, said the injury would likely return in spades. So it isn't likely. As I say, Frank will be fine. He's a rock. Or at least that's the appearance he puts out, the military in him no doubt.

It is me who has deflated like a sad day-after-the-party balloon. I might endeavor to just live here. The people seem great. I like the town. But winter is coming. And I need my sun. I might endeavor to continue the river trip, somehow, some way. But I lack the mental stamina (or any desire) to go it alone. I lack the mental and physical stamina to go looking for another partner or a canoe or a living situation here. I do, however, have the stamina to get on a bus or a plane and motor back to the desert, to rejoin my car and scant belongings, to drive out to the Strawbale and take refuge there again from the things of the world, from decision making and media-campaigning and failed book signing tours and such. I do have that. And after a few days of rest there, I can drive into Old Bisbee and find again my place amongst its citizenry once again.

Many have turned the dream question back on me after I've gotten a dream out of them. They ask, "What's your dream?"

Right now, I just want to go home, wherever that be. - RSM

Kodak Slideshow of Dreamcatcher Expedition

Rick has shared photos with you.

			You're invited to view my online photos at the Gallery. Enjoy! (Note: you don't have to sign up, just click slideshow link!) - Rick
	Mississippi River Dream (1 album)
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ER B.S.

Diagnosis: soft tissue upper extremity injury, shoulder sprain.

Discharge instructions (digested): cease repetitive movement of shoulder or risk chronic injury.

Game Over.

Can I go home now?
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Paddling Hands

Self-portrait by me, RSM

Big Water, Deep Thoughts

Photo Credit: Max Haynes (MaxHaynes.com)

Triumph by any account

We made it! To Minneapolis, yes, not yet New Orleans, but heh. Take what the river gives you, as Frank is fond of saying. Or, in the case of my torn up shoulder, take what your body can handle.

So here we are at the very warm fuzzy home of Mina and Greg in downtown Minneapolis. Mina is a friend from the ever-growing art car community, a friend of Corktruck Jan particularly, but also one I met personally when we met out in the desert during a ceremonial burning of a 6-foot long polar bear she'd amazingly transported as "luggage" on her cross country flight to mount on her rental car for an art car caravan out west.

Mina and friend Yumi (sp?) cheered as Frank and I surfaced from the locks below St. Anthony's Falls in the very last moments of twilght, giving us a fine official arrival into town. A spectacular feast awaited the intrepid travelers and our cheering squad, and we heartily thanked Avram, chef and Mina's teenage son for his chicken & potatoes & duel salad creation. Greg returned home around 10, pleasant if somewhat somnambulant conversation ensued, we said our thank yous and goodnights, and I hit the bed and promptly passed out.

Today, I rest. This entry marks the sum total of work I have planned for the day. Screw the ER, too, by the way. Today, only rest.

It's true, I am not going forward with Frank tomorrow. I have decided to convalesce a matter of days, see how I feel, what the doc has to say. Frank hopes that I will rejoin him downriver a bit. I would wish it so, but I just don't know. Not now. Must rest. Both body and soul.

Congratulations, retired U.S. Navy Captain Frank Grandau, for making it one hard-bitch-of-a-beautiful first quarter of one lofty-ass goal. You have my respect and admiration and gratitude. If I make it no further, know that I am with you in spirit on this, your "Magnificent Folly." It is a triumph by any account.

- RSM

(Special thanks to Max Haynes for bounding thru forests along the river like Daniel Day Last of the Mohicans Lewis and then up on that bridge to capture a good shot of us entering the greater Twin Cities area, to say nothing of our gratitude for your family's hospitaliy night before last. Also, thanks to Mike Strickland for getting Max's photo up on the site the very same day:)
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Reaching Minneapolis

Photo Credit: Max Haynes (MaxHaynes.com)

The Titanic & a renewed appreciation of my simple life

(Written Sept. 19th)
Everyone has their breaking point. Last night while dreaming, I reached mine. I've listed all the reasons, more & plenty good reasons why anyone in their right mind would jump ship before the iceberg hits, so we'll skip all that for now. When you read this two days from now, we will have reached Minneapolis where I am checking into the closest ER on behalf of my shoulder. It's nothing, right? A shoulder. We'll see.

This shoulder, however, is an integral link in the movement of my arm and one I would therefore prefer to preserve for future use than expend on one manly & truly grand conquest of the entire Mississippi River. This shoulder is the lynchpin, and if the doctor says what I think he'll say about it, I'm out. But I'll give it that last chance. I'm not out yet, just discouraged and very much in pain, a pain that has begun moving down my arm, ofttimes rendering it useless.

I'm glad I walked the Appalachian to its end. I will have that victory to recollect whenever reminded of my halfass run at the Mighty Miss. Sad. I am. But not crestfallen. I lack the insane drive, the overdrive, that hell-bent-for-weather spirit which got me thru the toughest times on the AT. I lack a purpose for this journey, a sense of meaning on par with the "hiking off" of overwhelming grief for a dead friend. I have no more grief in me. Luci's gone. Hunter's gone. Stormy, too. Gone. But I LIVE! And I'm sick of beating myself up on a river that throws us new curveballs every day.

For every obstacle we overcome, there awaits a new one around the bend. Wind at our backs now, winter arrives. Then more low water, mile after mile of it resulting in stretches where we must get out and walk the boat over shoals. It's an endless mine field of rocks. I'm on watch every minute for the hidden boulder that will shred our hull. Then whammo! There it is! Power strokes on the right and suddenly, "Aauurgh!" the shoulder snaps. Frank was right: injured, I am a liability. "What will you do if my injury prevents me from going on, Frank?" I ask him. "I'll adjust the gear, sit forward and keep going." Pragmatic to the end.

"But what of the collection of dreams?" you ask. Indeed. I can answer that. I have collected several dozen, and they are wonderful dreams. And in the collecting I have learned something invaluable, a new approach to life, to people. The dreams WILL make it to the sea. And I will make it, a little wiser for the exercise of looking at people not as strangers, not as threats, but as people with dreams, people like me. - RSM
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Locking Through the River Glass

Here goes. Minneapolis downtown, sunset. Freaky. We sit in our tiny watercraft and wait on a green light to enter the first of two locks that will, like elevators and draining bathtubs, carry us down St. Anthony's Falls, the single highest vertical drop on the entire Mississippi River. Once inside, the giant tubs empty out, the gates open and we are home free. Our first 500 miles of the river is history. Now we rest and be among friends. We have paddled non-stop for 20 days under every imaginable sort of worst-case scenario. The kindness of Minnesotans got us through. - RSM
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Better & Worse

Okay. Conditions have improved greatly for our ragged dream team. Wind is at our back. Naturally it no longer blows 25 mph which would propel us forward as fast as it did backward. More like 6. We have current. The threatening skies yield less rain than we expected. Granted, it is 47 degrees F and I look like a neon snowman with all my fleece and thermals and "orange alert" life vest. But all is relatively well. So why am I miserable?

Geese by the dozen blabber amongst themselves on a sandbar. Eagles soar overhead. And today in particular a hundred or so tiny jays seem constantly a-spin around and over us, like the cartoons birds one sees when bonked over the head. They don't appear to be feeding from bugs off the water, so what are they doing with us? Which begs the question what am I doing with us?

I'm in constant pain in my shoulder and every hundred strokes or so it spasms, sending sharp daggers up my arm and rendering the arm useless for a minute until the muscle calms down. I've kept it quiet from Frank. I mean, what's the point to pragmatist him? Either it works or it doesn't. I'm worried, however, lest I'm causing irrepairable damage to the shoulder by pushiing it.

Tomorrow we reach the Twin Cities. I will visit an ER there and see what they say. I already know what I say. I'm miserable, even now on one of our better days, our 20th day on the river, our 16th day without rest. - RSM

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The comforts of a hotel help, but the rain and the cold await

Some nondescript town called Sartel just north of St. Cloud. We pulled in just shy of a power dam and the inevitable portage, the carrying out and all around of all our gear and canoe, too.

We'd been lucky as hell from the get-go with our "pull up to hospitality" trick. But the law of averages caught up with us last night. The folks we approached said yes, but the vibe was damn freaky. I found out later that the daughter, about my age, was going through a divorce. That alone could have been the bad vibe. Franked picked up on it, too, but set off to walk Clyde anyway.

So there I stood, not welcome in the house and feeling very out of place pitching my tent right outside their living room window. Then shazzam! Frank came back suddenly and said "This is weird here. Let's leave our stuff here and pay the son to take us to a hotel." Yes!

Now we're back in his truck again, Monday morn, low 50s, light rain, being portaged in style aroung not one, but two dams within a few miles of one another, a stretch that (w/this weather) would have made for a real shit morning. So boom. We're in St. Cloud and I can weep over the missed 7 miles this winter with my arms resting on the bar at St. Elmo's, a pint of Electric Dave's IPA in one hand, clove cig in the other.

All I can say is THANK GOD Frank is a man who appreciates his comforts.

Alone well after midnight, gliding weightless through the womb-warm waters of the hotel's pool, I felt REALLY good for a change. Warm and safe, a spaceman afloat in bliss.

Now I gotta get out, get cold, get rained on, and paddle, paddle, paddle. Yee-hah.

Minneapolis, here we come! Wednesday I hope. - RSM
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The Monster, the Miss

We wrestle daily with a monster so much older and wiser than we that I can do naught but give every paddle stroke my all and then some as I repeatedly die tiny, insignificant deaths of exhaustion and stare out at her million gallon per.. per what? Hour? Minute? Second? At her movement, her pulse downward to the sea. I am nothing to this river. I am flotsam.

First it was following her as she crossed lakes bigger than seas. Frank says due to the curvature of the Earth, we cannot see land across a 7-mile lake. We crossed such lakes in rain and high swells driven by wind. Then came the meanders, endless loopdiloops where you just knew the river was near touching itself across some road or spit of land, but necessity and the heavy load of gear made paddling, not portaging (in this case skipping) the only choice. Thus no choice. Meander. Thru forest divine yet endless, thru pasture soiled and stunk up by cattle, meander.

Now it's width and record low rains. Result: ankle deep water a mile wide that often as not makes you get out and walk, and rocks to tear up a canoe or hang you up, spin you sideways and wow! suddenly there IS a current and she's all too willing to swamp you - gear, Snoopy dog Clyde, backpacks with your very "home" inside of tent, bag, pad, dry clothes. Not an option.

Now its wind. Wind gusts up to 40 mph, perhaps more, blow at us head on. A small tornado in the area claims the life of a 10-year old girl, splintering her large suburban home. We sleep in tents a few miles upriver. Fate is whimsical.

Waves break over the bow as we dart from the lee (shelter) of one headland and, with a "Ready? Go!" paddle 150 hard strokes fast as we can to attain the opposite shore and another lee before the wind-driven swells can swamp us. It's madness. It's unbridled freedom. It's joy and intense pain, and best of all it's real. But it hurts, and every night that I lay my broken body down to sleep, I pray for twice the value in rest as hours until dawn. -RSM

PS: Who is Emile Durkheim (sp?) and why does Zack the bartender compare me to him?
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The Good, The Bad, The Cold

Traveling with a weather expert, there are now few secrets or surprises from the sky. Thus, here 100 miles north of Minneapolis this a.m. temps have dropped from mid 70s to 50s, the sky has darkened, and my coffee is more a welcome comfort than ever. There is a silver lining to this cloud, however. The winds have shifted! (I feel like a giddy sailor.) The prevailing winds from the north have returned. Thus, we trade warm days for WIND AT OUR BACKS for a change! That's the theory anyway. I have yet to crawl out of my cozy tent, take paddle in hand and test the waters. (There could be something the Captain's not telling me!?)

Sadly, I don't have time to do more than tack off a quick list of recent miracles: The Oldenburg Family, our miaculous John Deer portage one-mile around the biggest power dam in Minnesota, and our fastest three miles to date.

Gotta pack and paddle now. A pleasant Sunday's rest to you all! - RSM
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Fear & Loathing in 40 mph winds

(Written Fri Sept 15, 06)
Today. Wow. What an experience. I have never piloted such a tiny boat in such high seas. And I do mean "seas." The Miss has now officially earned her title: Mighty.

Freak the Mighty. (Not a bad film w/music by Sting). I felt like a freak yesterday, some nutball recovering depressive Ahab armed with a pocket full of dreams as I endeavored forth on my mad quest to hunt down my own whale-sized inner demon in impossible winds, the canoe shoaling up repeatedly in a mile-wide, 6-inch deep ocean of a river.

I think of Christine who graduated from USC Film School with our mutual friend Mike, Christine now fighting for her life after a bone marrow transplant, Christine who appreciates the little gifts tucked into every nook in time, every moment.

Christine wrote to Mike of me: "I imagine your friend on the water, gleefully paddling down the great river, seeing sunrays through the trees and looking forward to the smell of campfire each night. He truly is blessed. What an effin' amazing adventure!"

True. It is "effin' amazing" and with Christine in mind I won't even begin to complain.

I wonder, however, how Christine would have greeted the Great River Miss today. Her vision is idyllic, and there are days when the Idyll rings true. Today in the half-hurricane winds was not one such day. (On rock radio station KAXE "The Loon" 107-something, they were actually calling out weather advisory warnings to commuters! to watch out for high winds! On a rock station! Well, we were on the rocks, all right.)

I wonder. Hospital-bound yet high spirited, you know, Christine probably would have been thrilled by the dangerous waters - surrounded, as we were, by forests all around of lovely autumn foliage, this beneath a bright sun and cloudless sky.

Mid-afternoon the main channel led us far to the right banks and behind islands made long ago by log jams that refused man's efforts to unjam them and filled thus over time with mud and grew trees, we spotted a beaten set of stairs leading up a high bank and went for it seeking refuge at the house high above. The result was perhaps our most memorable tale of a bad day turned good by the goodness of river folk.

And I'll tell ya all about that when next I have time to write. For now we must away. - RSM
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Crow's Wing

Crow's Wing state park. We pulled in at dusk, tied off at their dock, completely ignored signs saying No Camping near the landing, hiked to and used their sweet hot showers, passed out dead (right behind the No Camping signs) after a killer day of headwinds and (my) dissappontment with the local paper, rose this morning and got out before any ranger or camp host bothered us.

Capt Frank and I are gettin on better, recalling that which we admired and or had in common with one another on the AT vs. bickering. Which is more than good. All energies must go to battling the headwinds ahead. With any luck and a good deal more current, we'll be in Minneapolis by Wednesday. - RSM
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PS

It was righteous good rapping with you Rob, and I'm so happy that you are happy there in the northwest woods with Leroy and the refreshing rain. - RSM
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Brainerd's Brian, my Postal Hero

I want to say a very special thank you to a kind man who will likely never read this. We stopped in Brainerd, Minn for three things: mail for me at the P.O., supplies, and a hopeful chance at an interview with the local newspaper. Of the three, we got one: some food supplies. The editor of the paper turned me down, saying "We get so many PR's like yours about people doing the river for this cause or that." The package I was awaiting had yet to arrive, forcing me to check in with Postmaster Brian to arrange to have it sent forward downriver. Brian was the opitomy (sp?) of Minnesoata "niceness" that we've been encountering for weeks. I thanked him and left, ran by a thrift store to buy a pie pan to use as a plate, loaded up on high calorie candy bars at a gas station, and headed back to the river.

That's when it hit me. My "thwart" bag was missing. The thwart bag is so named because it attaches to one of the thwarts, or cross members of the canoe. But it makes an odd day-pack because there's no way to strap it over your shoulders. Only reason I was carrying it was that it contained evry valuable without which this trip would cease very quickly, and I'd left it behind somewhere.

I found it, after a panicked running tour of downtown Brainerd, at the P.O. Brian had it behind his counter. Hooray. That would be the end of this tale but for the "above and beyond" effort Brian went to on my behalf. You see, in the bag was a full prescription for migrane headaches. Brian must know someone who suffers migranes, perhaps himself, because hour got on the horn to the police to intercept us down at the river landing. When I returned to his office and my bag, he said "I saw that Immitrex in there and I knew I'd better act fast as you couldn't do w/o that."

Indeed. Or my camera with half full card. Or my this, or my that. Losing all that woulda been bad. Thank you, Brain of the Brainerd, Minn P.O.!

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Loving the Lee

Lovely sunshine morning here on the Miss. As we head into Brainerd, however, across Rice Lake, 25 mph winds slam our bow and the going is ve, very rough. No paddle breathers here. It's paddle for your life. I've come to love the lee, or the protected side of any headland, a respite from the wind.

At French Rapids Access, a power boater guns it right by us sending a huge wake our way. Waves break over the bow and drench my gear. But we're almost there! To town and some rest. - RSM
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Mileage counts

Of the Mississippi River's 2,300 miles, we have apparantly knocked out 335. Just 1900 and change to go! Ugh. - RSM
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Mike's Brats

Green's Point canoe landing, hell-if-I-know-where, MN. The river here just north of Brainerd is wide as oceans. It's immensity freaks me out. Forests and river mud rice fields wild forever.

Just when my morale was nose-diving late today, that song came on by Nelly Free-tardo or some shit, and I had to admit it was good advice out here in this sea of rice. She sings, "I'm gonna soak up the sun.. tell everyone to lighten up," and this: "When I'm feeling lame, I'm lookin up."

We'd lost Eric yesterday, but there he was again tonight. And it was all right. I've given up. One more brow beating from Frank like I got the other night over buying beer when I shoulda been buying food and so on, and he won't have to kick me out of his boat. I'll be gone of my own will.

Tonight went singingly, as non-town nights seem to be going for us on the river. Frank's got a knack for gettin' people to invite us in or over, and tonight went well. The nearest local, a guy named Joe, didn't invite us but said we would be fine camping down at the canoe landing (even though a dozen signs speak to the contrary). But here we are.

We wanted to make a fire though, a wood fire over which to cook our bratwursts from Mike. So, three houses down Frank met Sue who said sure, you can use our fire pit. Bratwurst never tasted so good, and the Milky Way came out and we doused the fire and made for bed. Big head winds tomorrow afternoon, so we gotta rise early and paddle hard to beat the winds to Brainerd. Already thanks to my writing, I have lost an hour of much-needed sleep. The boys have been sacked out for awhile.

Frank earlier said, "Powerlines, beautiful!" Indeed, landmarks to our progress out here are few and far between. Still, I can't help think, when power lines become a thing of beauty, you know you're life is become really strange. - RSM
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Mounting Tensions & The Odd Man Out

(Written Sept. 10 while out of cell range)
"And then the Lama said, 'There'll be no money. But on your deathbed you will receive total consciousness.' So I got that going for me. Which is nice."

Palisades, MN pop. 110
Summer returned to northern MN yesterday. Which is nice. In and out of tiny Palisades rather quickly, I find out too late that it is home to one "Bullet" Elftmann, father of my dear friend Jan. I got a few dreams while in town, but damn. Bullet! Now there's one dream I woulda loved to have captured, a guy I woulda liked to have met.

There was talk of wolves. Local Marlene was kind enough to take Frank in for a load of laundry. Frank must have mentioned Eric's fear of bears, prompting Marlene's friend Gordon to say we could now add wolves to the list of potential predators, preying our food supplies at least.

Sure enogh today when things were getting a bit dull out on the river (dullest of all being the constant banter between Eric in his canoe and Frank in ours when all I craved was a little peace) Eric shouted out "Deer swimming across the river!" A close eye on it as it climbed out of the water in the sun showed it clearly to be what locals call "a government dog" (a bit of slander owing to the severe illegality of shooting the rare creatures). Far off as it was, it proved an impressive sight.

Evening, we pulled onto a beachhead in the inside of a bend in the river about 20 miles up and made camp. While Eric cooked up a mean spicey pasta dish, I collected driftwood and got us a roaring bigass bonfire going.

Eric, aka "Canoe Boy," joined us almost from the start and though I can find no fault with him, he wasn't "in the brochure" as I'm fond of saying of everything about this journey that irks me. It's mostly just his omnipresence. When he has to piss as we roll down the river in our separate canoes, he waits until I have to piss before stopping. Okay, so he's lonely. But does he have to announce his bowel movements? What is it about men who do that?

Mostly he grates on me because just by lingering with us he creates distance between Frank and me in this crucial early time for our two man team. I feel anger from Frank, animosity over little things. When asked, I confess to feeling the odd man out I a "threes a crowd" scenario. Militarilly-trained Frank merely says, "You'll work it out." Despite having recently read my AT opus "Dead Men Hike No Trails," he seems to have forgotten that I'm about as emotionally stable as a pregnant Elisabeth Wurtzel reading "The Bell Jar" while in the waning hours of an LSD trip. Wurtzel, dunno if I spelled her name correctly, wrote "Prozac Nation."

Frank tells us that thanks to his high rank in the Navy, he has a sea mound named after him near Fiji in the South Pacific. Wow. Cool.

Frank sleeps with his dog. "Clyde's all over my $300 bag and on my pillow," he complains. But he let's him. Frank has no children of his own, married to the sea as he was. He loooooves Clyde.

Frank teaches us how to cuss in military-speak. "Whiskey tango foxtrot oscar," for instance translates to "What the fuck, over."

We have reason to cuss. The river is so low it has no current. Portages are a muddy pain in the ass because the ramps and banks are too high. And the river up here in its "youth" winds and loops back on itself endlessly.

I try and look forward to nothing, just the endless meanders as I paddle along, entranced. That way the bridges and boat access ramps and campsites that pop up to validate my progress will come as great surprises.

Heated and beaten for lack of a long overdue bridge, Frank has a conversation with the river. He speaks for both sides. Amused and tired in my narrow V-shaped cockpit in the bow, I just listen and try and smile.

"What a long strange trip its been." Frank renders the grateful Dead a bit off key but heartfelt. I can't help think: THIS is the trip and man is it strange.

About the only thing keeping me sane and semi-grounded is FM 107 Power Loon Radio out of Brainerd, somewhere up ahead. But I can only listen in with one ear, it being imperitive that I be able to hear Frank's instructions from the stern. The Miss in her miniskirt is a mine field of exposed rocks and trees and the occasional rapid. One wrong move and the canoe will swamp. Frank has no intention of us swamping, not even once. "If we swamped, it'll have been because we made a mistake."

I have little doubt where the blame would lay. - RSM
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Eagles Everywhere

Another day on the Miss, and the mood is entirely different. Where yesterday I felt compelled to paddle my ass off to placate Frank (who had expressed dissatisfaction w/my pace the night before) today he suggests we slow our pace. The rules seem open to change daily, hourly. I know Frank means well and I respect him. I try and keep up.

A white plastic chair has been following us downriver. It's kinda spooky. "The ubiquitous white plastic Wal-Mart chair," says Frank. "At least mine at home are brown." The white chair stands out in ghostly white bright contrast to the walls of forest to our port and starboard. It is the only sign of human life for hours.

Bald eagles are everywhere, everyday. This morning not a half hour out, one dives out from its low tree perch and right over our heads.

I groan and moan it seems with every other paddle stroke. This shit is killing me. Frank never complains. He admits fatigue now and again, but never a groan or an ouch!

The season is perfect for our journey: fair weather, no bugs, the colors of fall. But the river, for lack of rain, she isn't moving at all. When we stop, she stops.

We counted strokes for awhile, to keep a pace, to concentrate past the pain. While talking of endurance and who survives vs. who doesn't in life threatening battles with Nature, Frank speaks of Joe Simpson, the guy who broke both legs atop some 19K foot peak in Chile, I think it was, and lived after being given up for dead by his partner days later. He survived by counting rocks as he crawled boulder fields for days. Now I count breaths, in through my nose, out through my mouth.

I'm laying on my right side now in a bed of grass and leaves, my PFD (personal floatation device) as my pillow. The river stares back at me, laughing. The breeze makes her appear to be flowing north. She has become muddy in recent days, no more of the crystal clarity of 100 miles back. I bet she's muddy from here on out. Birds chirp. Frogs leap by in the grass. Leaves fall. I sieze every free moment available to write. This has been one. Frank and Clyde return from their midday walk and it is time to go. - RSM
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Mike's Backyard

Rolled into the general neighborhood of Crosby, MN last night a dead man paddling. Barely paddling by day's end. Felt like Hell. Pulled off onto some shitty patch of rocky "beach" at sundown, seeing no other option. Felt no lust to even set up tent.

Then Frank planted the seed of another miraculous night of hospitality. He paddled the canoe right across the river to Mike Seguin's house, who not only said yes to our camping in his yard but went out and bought us hamburgers, took us in to eat and share a few beers, told us his dream, and even pulled out the cognac. I eventually excused myself to go pass out in my tent as I was already passing out at the dinner table. It was divine intervention.

This morning Mike let me take a shower, made us coffee, and sent us off with home made venison & wild rice bratwursts. Amazing. Still sore as hell and praying for my shoulder, I might just make it another day. - RSM
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Bad Day

(Written last night)
Oh, did I happen to mention that THIS SUCKS?! What was I thinking? Canoe the Mississippi River end-to-end and with a perfect stranger, no less. Frank reminded me last night that we were strangers, right after letting me know that due to changes in his life and unforeseen character traits in me of which he's none to fond of, he may kick me out of his boat any day now. Tensions are running high here on Expedition Dreamcatcher.

There. I said it.

Thanks for letting me vent. It was a bad night last night and today I really stressed what is likely a pulled muscle or worse, torn tendon in my left shoulder. I stressed it to make Frank happy, for apparantly I'm not paddling hard or often enough. Frank has expressed his plan if indeed I am injured. To whit, I am to remove my belongings from the canoe, get myself to the Twin Cities and convalesce (sp?), for I am become a liability. There, at which point of his arrival there we could reassess my physical abilities.

It's all very pragmatic and logical and yet I feel the ass. And so today I rowed, giving it my all from my seat in the bow. Yet even at the bow, and perhaps the moreso, I felt the ass. Jackass. Bad shoulder - old broken down me.

God help us. So many dreams already I am beholden to, keeper of. But this is torture, impossible physical demand. I am terribly torn tween the duties of the quest I have embarked on and the reality that my body just may not be up to the task.

The other stuff, the criticisms, the personality differences well, that's just all chafe.

Dreamers worry not. I will cast your dreams to sea if I have to Greyhound down to the Gulf and perform the ritual alone.

-RSM
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Signal!!!

Just got signal finally after several days w/o! Consequently, I'm inundated with emails, joyfully so! But please understand if I don't respond right away. Also, signal could be a lucky fluke, here now and gone when I pull into camp tonight! (Yes, I'm on the Miss right now, on the water with paddle in lap, bald eagles soaring overhead, Frank paddling and Clyde snoring away in the bilge.) So, thank you all for writing. Hope you enjoy my thumb-typed words of recent days. All the best! - RSM
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Notes Before Dying

(Written late evening Sept. 8 while outa signal range)
I'm so wasted. I sit by my nightly fire writing through bleary eyes. I say "my fire" because I usually make the fire and cook while Navy Frank swabs the deck). He keeps the canoe real sharp looking and clean. The dinner I served up tonight was a yummy stew with fresh new potatoes, carrots and foiled chicken in which I tossed a pan of olive oil sauteed red and white onions, garlic and ginger.

Today was to be a short day, just 15 miles. But nooooooo. Somebody(s) read the map wrong. I can't really complain tho because I don't generally bother looking at the thing. I just paddle. But I have a good eye for spotting the canoe access-only campsites that dot the river.

We are in deep forest now, rarely a home and if so, well up away from the river's edge. So you gotta really pay attention to spot the tiny signs hiding amidst the wall of forest. I spotted it tonight when we were already passed it. Scott's Rapids campsite it's called. Nice spot just FOUR miles downriver from Sandy River, this morning's stated destination.

Eric must have missed it however. He never showed. I imagine him now downriver somewhere, befuddled and huddled 'round a blazing driftwood inferno to ward off his ghostly nemesis, the bear. Poor bastard.

I would weep for him but I am saving my strength for what is slated to be a night in the mid-thirties. Can you say brrrrr? Jesus, just three days ago it was summer. Weather do change mighty quick in these parts. Frank reckons it'll change back as this is the just the end result of a cold front that came through last night. Twas supposed to rain but it didn't and the clouds went away.

Result? We poor exposed members of the one day notorious Dreamcatcher Expedition (right up there w/Lewis & Clark!) are gonna wake up to snowflakes falling on us from inside our tents. How does that happen, you ask? By breathing. Your every breath inside your tent (and maybe a fart or two) crystalizes on the tent ceiling? Nifty, eh?

And there's another reason I ain't gonna weep for this little break from Eric. Having Frank all to myself tonight resulted in him fishing around inside the brain of my Sony Clie pda. And whaddya know? All the writing I thought I lost the other day and went and got all drunk over?

NOT LOST. Sum bitch. Am I happy? Betcher ass I am. Yay Frank! My hero. Guess I coulda read the directions.

I had enough sense and know-how to figger out how to backup to the memory stick though. I just got noodled up in thinking it was all lost because the software Sony uses is the same fuckin' Palm platform I grew to hate when it ate my shit on the AT in '04. When the batteries died and the dang thing rebooted itself, I went and checked the contents of the memory stick thinking surely I was covered, and it LIED to me. Frank got it in a choke hold and it gave up the goods that were there all along, just hiding.

Dunno if I mentioned in these brief notes emailed in from my phone here in outer space or wrote about it in my more copious and complete journaling on the pda, but our efforts at starting this journey right from the headwaters were thwarted by an Act of God: drought. Anyway, God ain't counting miles, but retired Navy Captain Frank Grandau is. The important thing is we're doin' it, and our cause is righteous. Frank agrees.

His tally: we're 243 miles from the the first trickling watershed of the river (can you say swamp?). Of that distance, we have paddled 136 miles in 13 days including - and this vitally important - the Northernmost point of the Mississippi, our original stated goal. , One day was a day of rest, a day off. In the tradition of many a lofty endeavor, we started at zero, with nothing. We were puny of arms, weak of upper body, and both of us had suffered a shoulder injury in recent months. And we hadn't trained at all.

Frank puts it this way: "Starting off, the river and its lakes were killing us. But the tide is turning and we are beginning to kick the river's ass."

Can I live with our progress thus far? You betch yer ass I can. - RSM
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Tinder box'd lunch

(Written Sept. 8 while outa signal range)
We pull ashore for lunch at some backwoods boat launch after a cold but fast 12 miles that included 3 or 4 good little Class 2 rapids stretches. Personally, I'm freezing. My upper body and head I've got covered. I need socks and my thermal long underwear pronto.

Ashore, Franks walks Clyde. I don the extra clothes but am still residually cold. I see a fire ring up on an embankment and do an about-face back to the riverbank where tons of dry dead wood is piled high on this outer bank of the forever meanering Mississippi. I tear into it a man possessed and without aide of white gas or even a scrap of paper I have a giant bonfire going not ten minutes after we've come ashore.

We pull out our little radio and feast on sausage and colby cheese, bagles and pickles and white chocolate Twix bars. And heat. Sweet heat! - RSM
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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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River People

(Written Sept. 5 while out of cell range)

I am learning much from locals and the truth to the J. Fogherty line, "People on the river are happy to give." You know the one, "If you have no money, you don't have to worry." And then, "Rolling, rolling, rolling on the river."

Campsites and towns being scarce up here, we literally just pull up to peoples' docks and ask either to lunch w/them or camp on their lawn a night or stow our canoes safely w/them if there is a motel & shopping nearby. It's great. Forced outa my shell, mostly by a quite gregarious and unabashed Frank. It was Eric, however, who spotted Pinky Jetland and his wife Virginia eating dinner in their riverside house.

Eric Hofmann of Villa Park, Illinois came up alongside us on the river back a few days ago on his solo journey south to a town called Savannah, llinois. Pinky proves more than hospitable, hosting our canoes and driving us the short distance into town. We overnight and relish our first shower and real bed in roughly a week at the Forest Lake Motel. Later, Eric and I close the Forest Lake Tavern across the street. (More on Eric and Pinky and my first interview with reporter Marie of the local paper and the whole of our Grand Rapids, MN experience later.)

Out of town and downriver an hour and now it's Bluegrass on Grand Rapid's KAXE public radio, a band called Crooked Still. Beneath blue skies the smell of sunblock is in the air, the water aquarium clear. The sand beneath appears like some underwater Sahara, dunes seen in miniature as though from the window of a high flying jet plane. Forested banks have taken over where yesterday and days before there were only native rice paddies, endless and dispiriting.

The constancy of herons taking flight as we round every meander has become a regular treat. Now and again we are graced with the close flyovers of bald eagles. Frank says of the forest and wildlife, "Now this is what I expected."

Frank is teaching me all about the weather. He points up at scattered white puffball clouds overhead and on the sky horizon. "Cumulus Hummulis," he says, and I imagine he's joking. But he isn't. They are fair weather clouds and provide welcome patches of shade. Of the word cumulus he says,"It's a great scrabble word."

We consider the river's history, of how many have rowed this river before us. Yet so few per year do the whole thing as is our goal. Collecting dreams is a positive and heartwarming experience. I am very sore though and just hope my shoulder muscles heal and grow strong rather than tear anymore, as it thus far feels they are doing.

It's later, 6 pm and the water is black glass. The river snaps a series of perfect Polaroids, paints realist portraits of all shoreline life and a whole new parallel world arises from the dark evening surface of the northern Minnesota "Minnie Miss." We pass beneath power lines buzzing loud. Lost in thought and this thumb typing, I am transported right back to Appalachia. Must have walked beneath a 1000 of them there.

Frank notes that it has become difficult to judge the shoreline, so like a mirage is the blending of the real and the reflected.

Eric is terrified of bears. It is an irrational fear around these parts where adult bears are still hunted and thus associate man with guns. Orphaned cubs no doubt grow into adults with a bone deep fear of our species. But phobias are like that. Scorpions where I'm from are tiny, and though their venom is potent, it's not enough to do much more than make a healthy adult like me sick for a day. Yet having never been stung by one, I fear them. But Eric is huge. He's going this river solo, his every paddle stroke damn near reverses the river's natural direction of flow. He'd give a bear a run for its money.

So one night before meeting up with us he's alone and anxious when he hears a scratching at his tent. He swats at it, frightened. After a minute of frightened silence, he hears his pots and pans being banged around. Now he's freaking out. He pulls out his bear mace and is fumbling with it in the dark when the creature returns and scratches at his tent again. Terrified, Eric reaches for his tent fly prepared to zip it open and let the "bear" have it when he accidentally fires off the bear spray inside his closed tent. Ouch.

The next morning he studys the tracks in the earth around his camp. Appropriate to his folly, they belong to a skunk. - RSM
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Owls, Our Mascot & Other Things that go bump in the night

(Written Sept. 6 while out of cell range)

Not awake in any real world sense as I write this groggy morn. This is just a dream within a dream journey and I but a psychological botanist of s