Day 36 Mississippi River
I woke up in Johns upstairs bedroom at 7am. I walked down to coffee, oatmeal and the apple cobbler I had missed the night before due to my early bedtime. With a bowl of cereal (fresh milk..hmmm), yogurt and cobbler John and I prepared to make a run back to the Marina and send me down river. Before we left, John gave me one of his 2 gallon collapse water containers. The night before we had talked about my limited water storage. Awesome.
As we got to the marina, John helped load my boat. Just as I was pushing off, a older gentlemen with a cup of coffee and gray ponytail walked up the dock near me.
"Where ya headed?"
"The plan is the Gulf of Mexico!"
The guy paused a moment.
"1978. My buddy and I paddled the river from Itasca with plans of hitting the Gulf. We had both flunked out of college and did the trip as a vision quest to try and figure out our lives"
Turns out they made it just a touch farther than La Crosse, to Savanna, IL. As the fellow explained, they met a gentlemen in Savanna that changed the course of their lives.
While stopping at a bar in town, the two young paddlers, eager to learn and figure out a path for themselves, asked their typical line of questions; what do you do, do you like your career, do you have any advice?
As they got talking they learned the fellow had left a decent paying job in his youth to work for better pay on the Mississippi tow boats. With tears rolling down his cheeks, he explained how his back and knees were shot, and that he couldn't play with his grandkids because his body was broke. Wiping the tears from his face, he told the two paddlers; "Boys, work with your heads, not your backs".
With that the two paddlers left the bar moved. They stopped the trip right there on the spot, re enrolled in school and never looked back. Now, some 39 years later, the fellow in the gray ponytail was a retired teacher and coach and spent as much time as possible on the river. He told me that that 1978 moment on the river in Savanna changed his life forever.
After talking for a bit more I pushed out from the marina and made my way down river. Paddling for much of the day, I decided to stop a touch earlier than normal, around 4:30pm, so that I could stay one last night in Minnesota. The Iowa border was a half mile down river, and it felt right to camp one final time in the great state that I had spent the past 36 days exploring.
I made a fire and enjoyed dinner as the sun set over the turning tree tops.
Tomorrow I close the book on Minnesota, and say hello to Iowa. Things are moving!