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Show RTVER mud on the river bottom and grew to lengths of sixteen feet. Locals trolled for them with great hooks baited with whole rabbits or chickens. The river and the woods and the very air teemed with life. Once I rounded a point and startled a flock of whooping cranes plucking fish out of the shallows. They were snow white and big as turkeys, a strange combination of grace and the grotesque. The cranes took wing and filled the sky with beauty. It made me feel far removed from the twentieth century, but it was impossible to escape modern America. Even in the depths of Mississippi, where the river is its wildest, plastic milk jugs floated everywhere. Thor seemed to adjust to life in the boat and he'd mostly lounge in the bottom, resigned but apparently comfortable. He'd even gotten in the habit of drinking out of the river though twice he'd fallen in while working on his technique. He'd dog paddle beside the boat, closed-jawed and worried, till I'd reach over and haul sixty pounds of cold, wet dog back on board where he'd shake loose a cloud of foul, dog-scented water. Anyway, now that the weather had warmed up he didn't seem to hold a grudge against me. I camped one night at the head of an island. It was about a hundred yards long and a hundred feet wide and it was as sandy as an ocean beach. The island was covered with young cottonwoods, their trunks about as thick as a man's leg, and it was littered with driftwood and the assorted junk the falling river had left behind. The sand got in my bedding and in everything I cooked, but it was soft and warm to sleep on. I got up in the morning and began rowing toward Helena, Arkansas. Late in the afternoon I had a close encounter with a towboat and almost capsized. A small tow pushing about six barges sounded its horn several -195- |