| November 26, 2000 Wabasha, Mississippi River
When we paddle in the summer, it's easy to talk about a Once a Month Club, where we will paddle somewhere, somehow, every month of the year. When the spray skirt seems too hot above your legs, when the sun is seemingly forever in the twilit sky, it seems like a great idea. And even the day before a November 26th paddle on the Mississippi, even that very night before when the house is warm, when your fleece and wind-stopper and fuzzy socks are all laid out on the floor, ready to go, even then it seems like a good idea.
However, when you arrive at the put-in and look at the boats atop the cars and see that they are covered with frost and ice, you begin to wonder. And then you walk to the water to check out whether it's a beach launch or a concrete boat launch, and you see that it's completely choked with ice, great chunks of it that aren't moving, you begin to wonder a bit more. And then the guy with the lab who is going out in his camouflage fishing boat offers to break a path through the ice for you and he starts his motor and the sound of his bow moving forward through the ice is loud enough to send the fish swimming away for miles around -- THEN, you really wonder.
Yet, when you find a nearby open area of water (at least it's open when you launch), through perhaps the great momentum of a group, or perhaps through some unspoken sense of adventure, you load up your boats with dry clothes, lunch, chocolates. You put on dry suits, dry tops, wet suits or whatever you've brought. And you set out upstream on the Mississippi.
And then the wondering stops and the real wonder sets in.
The eagles watch your passage. At first, not too many, and then they seem everywhere, camouflaged by the mist of winter. One flew above the river holding a fish in its talons. A solitary goose -- perhaps a ross goose (smaller but similar to a snow goose and definitely not a white eider) -- swims alongside, not too concerned. A possum scurries along the beach on the Wisconsin shore. The ice tinkles like glass along the shore, and paddling through it is an odd experience, your paddle striking a hard surface where none should be.
Lunch atop a beach dune. A campfire to warm our cold toes and fingers. Food spread on a space blanket, a tablecloth in the winter. We stand around, eating, sharing, delighted to be out on the river. We paddle, ten of us, downstream, sometimes talking, sometimes silent, listening to the sounds of the river in autumn so late that it's winter. We watch the eagles, hear their cries. Thanksgiving has come and gone, another year. And we are thankful, all of us, for being able to enjoy the natural world about us.
paddling through ice
ice on shore
paddling into the mist
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