Paddling With Ghosts in Tennessee
My arms burned each time I plunged a paddle blade beneath the surface of the river, pulling myself toward whatever I might find ahead. This five-hour kayak journey down Tennessee’s Wolf River traverses a cypress swamp crossed by channels and tributaries that lure paddlers down their path, only to disappear into the landscape, earning this ecosystem an eerie name: the Ghost River Section. I had carried my ghosts for years; I brought them into the swamp with me.
My father loved to canoe and traveled with a group of men to the Boundary Waters, a million-acre wilderness in northern Minnesota. He came back to our home in Indiana with rolls of film to develop, most with pictures of still water, spruce trees or a solitary moose, but my favorite were the loons.
As a child, I couldn’t imagine anything so exotic, with their black-and-white feathers and garnet eyes. When he played footage from the trip, I knew I would never forget the sound of their wild and…
Categories: The Expeditioner