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Show RTVER proved perfect for drifting. She was very handy under oars and was almost impossible to capsize, an advantage over a canoe that cannot be stressed enough in the case of a waterway like the Mississippi. The boat was light enough to drag out of the water without much strain. I was surprised time and again at the great strength those Canadians had built into her. At first I named the boat after Woody Guthrie, but she had such a femininity about her that I rarely used the name. I came to call her Walk on Water. I might have found somebody to take on the trip, but I had to do this trip alone. I had the notion that I'd find the Answer out on the river, the Answer to what I wasn't exactly sure, but I knew it was certain to be a very powerful Answer, no matter what the question. I suppose the question was, "How did I get this screwed up and how can I fix it?" I was counting on the challenge and solitude of the trip to get my head straightened out. On the last weekend in February I built a rack on the back of Stockdale's GMC pickup truck and the next week we loaded Thor in the back and hit the road. Three months in the construction fields away from Ann had rendered Stockdale pretty demented and we were both ready for a cross-country rampage. Three days of incessant drinking and driving found us crossing the Mississippi at Memphis. We pulled off into a church parking lot that overlooked the river. I went down to a boat store called Frankie and Jonnie's and bought charts of the river. When I got back we sat for a while and watched the Mississippi. I'd never seen the river in the spring flood. It was transformed from the languid river of the fall: it was the river I remembered gone mad. The current was a living beast, raging as it smashed past the pilings of the railroad and roared under the highway bridges. Again the real Mississippi was many times larger than the -140- \ |