Leaving hotel calafornix

The next morning it was still raining and so foggy I couldn’t see my hands stretched out in front of me. When I walked away from the camp to use the restroom I couldn’t find my way back without getting down on my hands and knees and searching for my footprints. Mississippi river water makes great coffee. The next day the fog had lifted a little and I could just make out the flying tower of a passing tug above the shrouded river. I went for a walk behind the place I was staying. About 200′ away I discovered a huge pile of white chicken feathers between and in front of two “tiki” gods fashioned from tree trunks cut off at 5’. This was weird.

On the way back to camp four northern Cajuns on ATV’s rode up with high powered rifles. They wanted to know what I was doing. I told them about the Pittsburg to New Orleans thing. “Got any women with you?” I didn’t like this question, turned a little to the left, moved my jacket back with my hand, and put my hand on my piece. Nope, no women. This made them a little uneasy, which was funny considering the situation. Carrying a 22 pistol on your side into a confrontation with four Cajuns on machines running dogs carrying high powered rifles and most likely packing automatic 45′s in the foggy voodoo swamp is exciting. Laying a hand on your pistol is ballsy. They told me they were hunting with dogs. I extricated myself from that situation and returned to camp. For some reason I didn’t feel at ease with this site.

The rain increased and the fog parted. I took advantage of the somewhat increased visibility and departed the site. As soon as I left the shore the fog raced back into position, sneaky stuff. I found myself completely enveloped and only able to see 30’ to 40’. I also discovered I was in danger of spilling over a dike or weir in the Mississippi that was somewhat parallel to the rivers flow. This was kind of horrifying as I did a “rail slide” down the pressure wave upstream of the river weir to where I had no idea. Fortunately I avoided going over the weirs edge and ended up on an island. I was so happy to get off the river. I pulled everything way back up in the trees and made camp. That night it rained more than I’ve ever seen in my whole life. I got up in the middle of the night when the area was struck by lightning to use the restroom and discovered the 5 gallon bucket I’d left uncovered was full of water. I emptied it and it was full of water again in the morning. All night long one could hear large sections of earth falling into the river somewhere close by. I would say the thunder god had arrived.

The fog had cleared into eerie island like patches while the rain continued. I got on the river. The sand bars were disappearing like all the guys warned and the river was full of trees. Periodically a tree would launch clear of the water and crash back down into it like a whale just like the two guys drinking mountain dew and cat fishing said they would. I called these tree missiles and they were intimidating. I came around a bend in the river and encountered something new, an ocean going tug plowing upstream. These are different than river tugs in that they have a high slicing bow for going through waves, they pull the barge instead of push it, and they have an incredible bow wake. It was the wake I was concerned about. Fortunately for me, I got to the tail of an island and hid around the backside just as the 8′ tightly spaced waves crashed into shore. This is what’s downstream? Wow.

It was around here somewhere that I encountered a creek or drainage ditch through the levee and paddled up it. There were a couple of big 50 lbs. beavers at the entrance that slid into the water as I entered. I silently paddled in. There were tunnels in the levee and I stopped in front of one about eye level 15′ away. A big beaver came out of the entrance and looked at me. I kept still. A whole bunch of beavers piled out like clowns from a car and sat on the bank looking at me. It looked like they had quit the dam project and moved into levee undermining. These were big Cajun gangster sabotage beavers. I made a move and they bailed. It was a fracas getting off of that creek. I got escorted out.

Around a bend in the river I came upon the Mississippi Queen. A trip down the river wouldn’t be the same without seeing this paddle wheeler. She was tied up to the side of a place that looked like nowhere, Saint Francis. St. Francis is the patron saint of animals, birds, and the environment. This is my queen. I paddled around to her wheel. Two nude mermaids were displayed on the stern. I was enamored.

The river was experiencing a tremendous rise. The storm, heralded by tapirs was rumbling up the Ohio River valley and was to become the “storm of the century” in New England. The Mississippi River that was near record lows when I got on was very rapidly filling up. It had become extremely dangerous, it was filling up with trees and the sides of the river were falling in. When approaching Baton Rouge the redness of the young willow trees growing along the river side becomes more pronounced, red sticks standing straight out of the ground are everywhere.

When I floated around the S turn into Baton Rouge I couldn’t believe the turmoil caused by the Army Corp. weired dike in the Mississippi. It’s practically unnavigable, this is illegal as spelled out in the freedom of waterway act. The sight of ocean going ships just downstream of the Huey P. Long bridge could be intimidating. As I approached the first loading pier I wanted to go around the end of it but a tanker ship was pulling in so I had to go underneath it. The signs all along the pier read, “Warning High Pressure Sulfuric Acid!” The large diameter pipes overhead were misting out a liquid everywhere. I got sprayed but just washed it off with Mississippi river water. It turns out Monsanto runs this operation too.

I floated past a wharf and an older guy with gray hair and beard walked out just as I was passing by and he said he knew where I’d come from and what I’d seen and recommended I get off the river here and not go on to New Orleans. I reached for my eyebrows with my left hand and kind of buried my eyes and ? cause this was so obvious and floated on. Every one of the piers, wharfs, and other unloading and loading areas I passed was attended by an older 57ish gray hair and bearded fellow who let me know I was a real hero and strongly advised I get off the river now. This was timely advice from an obvious character and hard to ignore. I pulled off the river at what appeared to be town from the river. When I walked up over the levee I was obviously at the House of the Rising Sun. This was definitely it.

To the east just past the slim garden and expansive lawn was the grandiose Capitol of Louisiana. It works for me I thought and headed into town. I called up my dad and asked if he would drive out from Florida and pick me and my gear up. He said he was on his way. I couldn’t have done this trip in such style without him. Strolling down the street across from the capitol I was accosted by a beautiful young woman enjoying a streetside meal at a restaurant. She invited me to eat with her and I accepted of course. It turns out she was the U.S. Senator’s daughter or something, I forget. This thing was turning into a whirlwind at the end here. The Senator’s daughter told me about a little hole in the wall blues joint down the way that would be happening that night. I told her it would be nice to see her there and thanked her for lunch. She thanked me for a state of the river report, which is what she got. If a river report could be a song the currentless chorus would be “dam, city, shit pipe, dam, city, shit pipe, dam…”

The blues joint was electrified with the force this evening. It was a real place and the musicians played musical chairs with new performers walking in and others leaving all night. I’m not even going to tell who came in to play at this place because it wouldn’t be fair, you’ll have to paddle down the river and see who shows up yourself. I crashed out at the flophouse. The next day I went to the University. Baton Rouge is a dam diked town, it’s actually below the river, this is kind of spooky. I’m not sure how this actually works (it doesn’t for long) but the towns got pumps and everything. I think a better idea would’ve been to have the Army Corps pile up rocks on the side of the river and put the town on top of the pile instead of perpetually throwing them in the river.

My father and his buddy Mr. Mitchel came and picked me up the next day. We went up to the river to get my stuff? The river was rising fast and huge rafts of timber were floating down the river. I’m glad I wasn’t on it. Those characters the other day sure had good recommendations. We went to New Orleans and had beinies and café dumondee on the Riverside. I think the mouse came back to Florida with us.

Talking about a trip like this to someone is tough for me. It’s very difficult to explain in words, especially considering the average person’s attention span (about the length of a TV commercial). Most people thought I was weird to even want do this let alone actually do it. Most people pretty much assumed I’d lost my marbles. Also it’s hard not to come off as cocky when telling this story. I’m actually humble though. How could I not be after witnessing this thing? It’s just an exuberant humbleness. I laugh SO much when I think about this trip, and I’m just trying to talk you into being able to do the same. Hustling down the river is not crime or a sin. It’s more like a fishing trip.

I removed most of the lawn and all of the hedges starting my first habitat restoration project at my parent’s house. Took a greyhound back to Lancaster, Pa to get my truck and stayed with Mr. Singletary for a month. This is where the Amish live, there’s some Mennonites too. These ladies and gentlemen have got a little more control over themselves than the average folks. It was funny because I came up there with what I call the Abe Lincoln look, no mustache, dark pants and felt hat. I fit right in. Mr. Singletary was daring enough to recommend me for a temporary position as a propagation manager for Greenleaf, one of the larger horticultural operations. I worked in Smoketown supervising some Amish women and Latin Ladies, we took cuttings for propagation. In this area of the country a story is told just by travelling around. When you get to Bird in Hand you can go to Smoketown or Intercourse. When headed for Intercourse don’t take the bypass to Blueballs.

MICROIRRIGATION PROBLEM

Riding out West on a horse would have been nice but from my experience horses always get the bit on me and then try to rub me off on an apple tree, as if they were trying to tell me something then gallop back to the barn. So I drove out West. Thomas Charles Delman and another U.F. Grad, “The Duke” lived in Boulder, Colorado and I rented a spot on the couch in the basement of a house with 6 to 8 characters living in it. Tom and I were unemployed and a told him about an idea where by we would work for a few months and then quit and take the money we’d saved and go down a river from the mountains to the sea. I told him how exciting and what a learning experience it would be. He seemed mildly interested. I found an advertisement for spray techs in the local paper and we went in for an interview. Steph owned and operated Boulder Tree and offered us employment based on our knowledge of Plant I.D., this was important because one had to be able to identify which trees to hose down with poison. Right away I couldn’t stand this job because I didn’t like unproductively spraying poison willey nilley everywhere for show. I’d come from Florida where trees grow great and the people had “Nebraskaitus” and killed the trees, insisted on growing grass, and sprayed chemicals all over the grass to do it. Out here in Boulder along the Front Range of the Rockies in the high plains where grass grew splendidly they wanted to grow trees, which didn’t grow well here and thus the poisonous chemicals. Once again the government could easily fix this problem with appropriate laws, tremendously reduce the amount of unnecessary or extremely unproductive pesticide application, make money enforcing good laws and protecting the children’s and life in general’s future.

Of course Tom and I wanted to make some money, and it looked like cottonwoods and fruit trees irrigated with super drip line collected water and fertilized with a urine separating composting no flush less toilet with a squirt gun would have given a comparatively productive, much less destructive source of firewood chopping, micro irrigation maintenance, fertilizer application, tree pruning, and apple picking. We coulda perhaps lived on mostly apple pie and smoked trout. The trout fishing ended at the Boulder sewer outflow pipe.

With a scheme as envisioned I may have made $200 less a week with 3 garden work days instead of 5 poison job days, but may have saved $50 a week eating apples, made an extra $50 a week selling apple butter, and perhaps even picked up an extra $100 a week guiding fishing trips to rich people. Tom and I didn’t really like spraying pesticide for show, and would rather have picked apples and smoked trout. We spent our evenings fishing Boulder Creek. Boulder Creek flowed at a dam steady 50 cubic feet per second or cfs. This became our standard and we became good at judging cfs flows by looking at any body of flowing water and determining roughly how many “Boulder Creeks” it was, say 20, and estimate the flow thus to be 1000 cfs for the stream in question. The Boulder Tree crew was probably the best bunch of guys I ever worked with, Sam McGee, the diesel mechanic, Mark Weber, scientist, Aaron, likewise and a bunch congenial characters. I was the fastest on the draw and usually TJ, the “slowest” guy was my partner, naturally. Usually about 7 AM would find us mixing up a batch of poison with water from the fire hydrant, we had our own fire hydrant key and everything. I was the “spray tech” and TJ was the assistant. Every morning we got a new route or list of addresses and trees to “shoot”. Somehow I got the worst or most difficult route of the spray techs. Steph may have been getting revenge on me for being a self acclaimed “superstar” or he may have found I was the best at gunning down a bunch of low dollar, far apart accounts. Me and TJ were basically the cleanup crew.

Boulder Tree had a bonus scheme whereby if one sprayed over a certain amount (several hundred dollars’ worth) of trees per day the crew would get a percentage of what we sprayed on top of that. So there was an incentive to spray as much poison as one could. TJ and I had the worst, hardest to make money routes everyday yet consistently we got a higher bonus than the rest. How’d we do it? There was only one way to do it. Boulder had a rule, if one was to apply pesticide one had to notify all of the surrounding homes. Basically, this meant one had to knock on the neighbors 8 doors, plus the clients before one could begin application. I tried this the first day, it took and extra hour a site and I never did it again. There was a lot of “Green” people in Boulder who didn’t like me spraying poison and would stall, question, argue, complain, call the cops and all kinds of stuff that didn’t stop me from spraying next door.

I realized they were perfectly content to attempt soulicide and ecocide by dam toilet, while pretending it wasn’t so, and point their finger at me while hugging there commode and vanity under their Ruef and denying the entire dam shitty problem. Typical “Greenies”, an especially virulent ferociously rabid breed in Boulder. I had a guy attack me with a pitchfork. I leveled the spray gun towards him and cranked the aperture open to its largest size, I was gonna blow him away with the spray gun. He stopped.

The solution was stealth. Me and TJ would pull up to the site nice and quiet. I’d look over at him, shhhh, pull up the brake, smoothly engage the PTO (power take off) that operated the chemical pumps off the trucks diesel engine and carefully step out of the truck. Don’t slam the door TJ, shhhh. I’d quickly grab the gun, sprint to the tree, jumping 4’ chain links, and pulling off the hose. If there was a privacy fence I’d carefully look over it for kids, there never was any, and blast the offending person’s tree, careful to stay out of the drift. In addition to being quite another trick was not to wear the respirator. If you didn’t wear the respirator townfolk didn’t realize you were spraying poison. Don’t shoot into the wind. Then I’d sprint back to the truck and operate the hose reel, this was a little tricky for TJ, high speed level wind. While I did this TJ just put a flag in the lawn, slapped a door hanger/bill on the door knob¸ jumped back in the truck and we were off. This worked great except for one thing, supposedly, I was required to drive the truck too. The problem was TJ couldn’t read a locator map or any kind of map. He had no idea where he was in the world, none, and he couldn’t relate directions to a driver on the fly. He could drive the truck though, he was actually better at it than me. So he drove the truck and I kept us constantly in the correct direction.

At some point in time Steph must have realized I wasn’t following the rules and I think he sent out his “lieutenant”, Jeff Means, to observe how I was actually completing the extremely difficult routes I was being given, and then some, earning big bonuses every week on an impossible route. Jeff Means was studying to be a psychologist and he did something bizarre. Mr. Means had festering wounds over his jugulars on his neck. This was because he cut off the circulation to his brain with his left hand almost continuously. Obviously at some point in Jeff Mean’s life he’d discovered if he wanted to alter his perception of reality, or “catch a buzz”, he could easily just choke himself. It’s cheaper than buying herbs and beer and it lessons one’s responsibility for the agricultural disaster. It was apparent that Mr. Means would have preferred to choke himself all the time because as soon as he had a free left hand it would rise up to the festering scabs on his neck and he’d squeeze the life out of himself. To understand the true horror one had to see him driving a chemical truck down the dam road choking himself. This was my immediate supervisor, psychologist in training. The end result of Mr. Mean’s investigative surveillance was I was told I’d have to drive the truck. Apparently the rules said the certified spray tech had to drive the truck, more than likely for insurance purposes.

I told Steph if I drove the truck all TJ did was basically put a little flag in the lawn. I explained the directional difficulties, and added that the way I hustled my heart rate was up when I got behind the wheel and had to drive to the next place while reading a map over the steering wheel. I told him to fire TJ or have him work with someone else, give half his pay to me, I’d slow down, and he could take the other half of TJ’s pay for himself, and we’d all make the same amount of money. No dice. The end result was I developed a tendency to drive away, out of sorts, with the PTO still engaged. This causes the PTO shaft to decouple violently and become damaged. I became a member of Edward Abby’s “Monkey Wrench Gang”. I discovered that the hose reel was another week point of a chemical truck. One could damage the hose reel on a chemical applicator truck and put it out of action of for a while. About the time they figured the guy who’d been a boon to the chemical application industry was a sabotage artist (I personally disabled 4 trucks), Tommy and I bought a canoe and put in our 2 weeks’ notice.

We looked around for canoes and came upon a used one for sale at Boulder Outdoor, The Dagger Legend. Tom and I had decided to attempt a descent of the Snake River to the sea in a canoe, an unheard of proposition. The Dagger Legend is a 16’ tandem expedition style canoe with a flat bottom, hard chines, and lots of rocker. This design allowed it to carry lots of gear while still having some freeboard and be extremely maneuverable in big fast moving water. It was the perfect boat for what we were doing, made of “Royalex” which was like a polo ball core with a green “Rubbermaid” trashcan like layer on the outside and a similar grey layer on the inside. Supposedly, it was bullet proof. The used vessel we bought had been folded in half by a likely raft guide driving a forklift into it in the storage shed. So it had been tested, and while it was a little misshapen “minor cosmetic damage” as a result of it getting stabbed with a forklift, it had new seats and struts and was $700, half the cost of a new one, perfect.

Tom and I tested our boat and our abilities with shake down cruises on sections of the St. Vrain, Michigan, and Colorado Rivers. We discovered a tendency to crash head on or “T Bone” into rocks. This can be disconcerting, “T Boning” a rock at 10 knots and coming to a dead stop instantly. Reinforcing the bow and stern with Kevlar skid plates to protect the integrity of the hull seemed in order, we also glued D rings to the bottom so we could tie our gear to the bottom of the hull, and we drilled holes in the gunwales of the bow and stern to keep additional floatation bags on the deck of the boat. Having all the gear and extra floatation strapped to the deck displaces the water when running rapids, and it keeps all the stuff in the boat. Everybody, perhaps with the exception of Sam McGee and “the Duke”, thought we were crazy as we headed out of town. We picked up a set of wheels on a folding carriage in Wyoming for the portages around the dams and headed west for Jackson Hole.

On the way we stopped at a roadside diner for supper as the sun set. We jumped in my Jeep Cherokee and headed west into the night of the high plains desert. This was open range country. I opened up a bottle of beer, my first of the night, took a sip, and put the beer back between my legs. If it wasn’t for the white spot between the eyes I probably wouldn’t have seen the black steer that was standing in the black road. As it was, the “cow”, looked up just before impact and I became aware of a huge beast immediately in front of the truck. There was no time to brake. I swerved to the right. The nose of the beast impacted the left headlamp and the remainder of the creature folded up and slammed into the driver’s side of the truck. I got a look at the beast as its bloody face smeared past the window. This whole action caused the truck to fishtail and as I remember it I had to reverse steer and punch the accelerator to avoid flipping the top heavy SUV. We almost rolled the truck, I barely kept from spilling my beer, and it took a hundred yards or so to regain control of the vehicle and come to a stop. A broken headlamp, a front quarter panel smashed back causing the driver’s door to be nearly inoperable, and a dented driver’s side were the sum of the damages. We pulled over at the first service station, called the sheriff, and told em there was a dead cow in the road.

When we got to Jackson Hole I replaced the headlamp and we stocked up on groceries. We went up to the ranger station and inquired about where we should start our trip to the sea. We wanted to start up in Yellowstone National Park but were told this wasn’t allowed. The ranger didn’t really want to sell us a float permit for the section below Jackson Lake, saying it was extremely dangerous. Of course Tom and I countered the whole trip was dangerous, should we drive to the Pacific Ocean, put the boat in there and call it safe? I explained to the ranger my extensive paddling experience, we showed him our rig, and promised to wear our lifejackets. e sold usHH He sold us a permit to float the Jackson Hole section with lots of words of caution (the strainers, the braids) and we got a sticker we attached to the bow of the Dagger Legend as proof “we were there”.

We cruised around the town of Jackson Hole and found a river outfitter who employed a gal who was willing to take the truck. I told her she could have it for the summer. This same place was willing to pick up the truck at the put in site and we were in. The character who ran the shuttle was the proprietor’s son and he seemed to think we stood a fair chance of being successful because we had “the Cadillac of Whitewater Canoes”. We set off with the wind at our backs in a storm of pollen. A short distance below the dam an undammed tributary flowed in full of ice cold glacial melt, trees, rocks, sand, silt, and clay and the Snake began to resemble a natural river instead of the tailrace below the dam. The ranger was correct and the braided strainers were extremely dangerous and this section while not sandwiched between vertical canyon walls and full of huge drops and big whitewater rapids was deceptively dangerous. It may have actually been the most dangerous part of the whole trip. There’s a lot of trees up in the park and a river of sticks is just about the scariest natural thing one can witness from a boat on the surface of this wet rock. Just think they used to all be like this before the dam ages. A river of sticks. The view of the Tetons, French for tits, big ones, supposedly the youngest mountain range of significance, was exciting.