(ch. 3)Again: A New Goal

One day away from Grand Rapids the wilderness seems pristine. There are no signs of human contamination -- no trash, no power lines, no polution from power boats, no signs of human construction. Then far off on the distant horizon you catch a glimpse of something wrong. At first it looks like a dead tree trunk far away, but it's too straight. An hour latter as you see it again you realize it's a smokestack of some kind. For the rest of the day it appears for awhile and then disappears behind the trees -- slowly growing larger. Finally you turn a sharp bend in the river and are faced with a full view of the Cohasset power plant. After nearly a week in the wilderness this first vision of civilization is jarring. During the election last year when I realized that Dubya may have won honestly second time around, I came to the conclusion that the planet would be better off were the human species exterminated. This view brought that idea back to my mind. Belching toxic smoke it looked like some evil fortress from a fantasy science fiction film. I wanted to turn back into the wilderness we had just left where the water was clean and the forest was full of life. This was a vision of industrial death.

There are two dams in Grand Rapids that must be portaged. The second of these portages is a big one and so the town's power company has made arrangements with the town's taxi business to carry canoeists around for free. Thank you Grand Rapids for this service.

In the photo to the right, Isaac is smiling. He was feeling better by the time we arrived in Grand Rapids. Isaac had a new goal. When we first began to plan this trip we talked about a shorter trip. In fact Grand Rapids had been suggested as an end point. By the time we were ready to go however we were talking about the Iowa border. I was saying that it would be great to make the Quad Cities. (We took charts with us that included Iowa.) A few times I had joked about canoeing all the way home to St. Louis, but I never really planned to go that far. Well that was what Isaac was planning now. His original goals had been thwarted and he needed a new reason for making this trip. Paddling over one thousand miles back to St. Louis became his new goal. We had the time, and now Isaac had the will. I was in no position to argue.

We were on our way to Aiken County, my least favorite section of the Mississippi. Leaving Grand Rapids the river is crystal clear and the river bottom is covered with water worn rocks. A day later there are no rocks to be seen in or out of the river -- everything is mud. Millennia ago a huge glacial lake, Lake Aiken, deposited here billions of tons of silty sediment. The river now flows through this muddy lake bed. The water turns yellowish brown and the river banks are a gooey fetid muck that sucks your shoes off your feet. Sometimes you sink into the muck nearly up to your knees. Rocks along the river bank don't return until just past Crow Wing state park. The only redeeming aspect of this river section is that the soil here, unlike much of Minnesota's vast pine forests, is good fertile farm soil. As we paddled along, the forest periodically gave way to farm fields and pasture. The variation in scenery made the day's paddle a little less boring.

But we were still in Aiken County, and Aiken County is the misquito capital of the state. Minnesota is famous for its misquitos. They tell jokes about them and have even written books about them. Misquitos breed in standing water and the land of 10,000 lakes has standing water. I've been in the swamp in Louisiana and the misquitos there are really bad -- here they're worse. Aiken county is the misquito hatchery for the rest of the state. If you can't protect yourself from the blood sucking monsters you'll go mad. Isaac opted for full body armour. I opted for toxic chemicals. No matter what you do, the misquitos up there are so desperate to suck your blood that some small percentage of them are going to get through -- what's 1% of a million?

Tom Delay is a Tick.

And Pat Leahy is a blood sucking misquito. When you're paddling down the river you have lots of time to just sit and think. Sometimes your attention is held by the river, but at other times your mind will begin to entertain itself with all sorts of fanciful ideas. Paddling through bug infested Aiken County I realized that the pests we were enduring were perfectly analogous to the present collection of blood-sucking vermin that infest Capitol Hill. Think about it. A tick will crawl up your leg (heaven help you if it crawls far enough up your leg) and then stealthily dig through your skin until it's head is partially embedded in your flesh. It will then suck your blood until it's own body is so bloated it nearly explodes. If you're seriously unlucky the tick will infect you with a deadly lingering disease. There you go -- have you ever heard a more accurate description of a Republican politician? The tick is especially pernicious; it digs into your flesh slowly enough to avoid detection. You can't feel a tick bite. It's a cowardly pest that tries to put the bite on you and get away with it's vampirish villiany. See -- Tom Delay! Now the misquito is an equally vile pest. Unlike ticks misquitos typically swarm. They come after you by the hundreds. While scores of them distract you by flying in your face and buzzing in your ears, dozens more are sucking your blood from the back of your neck, your ankles, your legs, even the top of your head. Misquitos are smash and grab blood suckers that work you over in large groups. They're Democrats! Misquitos have an uncanny ability to penetrate your defenses. You pick up a spray can of toxic poisin and cover yourself head to toe. The only place you fail to apply the poisin is on the back of your index finger that you used to depress the nozzle of the spray can. Seconds later there's a misquito sucking your blood from the knuckle of your index finger. If there's blood to be had, no matter how little and no matter how hard it is to find, a misquito will find it. See -- Ted Kennedy!