Two Men in a Boat
 by Wade Stevens Ricks

IN AN ERA WHEN SOLO SAILORS USE COMPUTERS and global positioning satellites to navigate their way around the world, the image of two guys chugging across America in a power boat doesn't seem particularly engaging.

But leave it to William Least Heat Moon (aka William Lewis Trogdon) to sense that there was something out there, something worth seeing. And it was his choice of going by small boat that offered a new perspective, opening up a largely forgotten world of locks, dams and waterways.

Two centuries after the Lewis and Clark expedition, Heat-Moon sought to find his own Northwest Passage. He began in New York, worked his way up to Lake Erie and across the U.S. largely by river, with an occasional portage. The result was a 506-page narrative called River-Horse. The title was derived from the English translation of the Osage name of Heat-Moonis 22-foot vessel, Nikawa.

The author seems to possess a mania for exploring his native country. The nationwide road trip depicted in his best-selling Blue Highways was just the beginning. "No words have directed my life more than those from venerable Thomas Fuller, that worthy historian of olde England: 'Know most of thy native country before thou goest over the theshold thereof,'" Heat-Moon says.

Indeed, he boasts that he's visited every county in the contiguous U.S. except for a few in the Deep South.

In his latest odyssey, the author "wanted to see those secret parts hidden from road travelers."

"To come in by canal or river is to see a genuine demarcation between country and city and to fetch up in the historic heart of things the way travelers once did when towns had discernible limits, actual edges, and voyagers knew when they had entered or departed a place," he explains.

When we make our travel along the now pervasive interstate highway system, or in a sardine-like commercial airline flight, we forfeit access to the most scenic and transcendent aspects of our native landscape. We miss the childlike fascination attached to motoring up to a long-deserted island that is clad only in history and myth. We lose that feeling of exhilaration that occurs when you pass under the Mississippi River bridge in Memphis or Natchez and suddenly feel transported back to another time, when paddle wheelers plied the waters.

Water travel always offers a new perspective. Even in New York City, you can escape the labyrinthine quality of the city by merely stepping onto the Staten Island Ferry or the Circle Line. As you gaze in disbelief at the towering city above you, you suddenly understand the awe immigrants arriving at Ellis Island must have felt in the earlier days of the century.

It was in the shadow of New York City, after one last view of the Atlantic, that Heat-Moon began the trip in 1995 that was the subject matter of River-Horse. In that journey, Heat-Moon was generally accompanied by a mate (he refers to the seven who variously performed that function as Pilotis) and occasionally took journalists or other observers on board. Their boat was ill-suited for sleeping, so they often tied up at a local dock at night and enjoyed the food and lodging of the nearest town.

Accounts of trips such as this run the risk of being consumed by the minor details of the passage. The challenge for the writer is to look outward and try to grasp the essence of the places that are visited. Too many tend to offer up logs of empty miles, without the stories and experiences that make the trip worth retelling. The task of collecting good material is made harder by the sheer fatigue created by just holding a craft on course along a body of water for a full day.

To his credit, Heat-Moon overcomes these obstacles. At many of the stops along the way, he seems to find something interesting worth recounting, either a bit of local lore or an exchange with a local character. In one town along the Erie Canal in New York, he hears about a man who returned a length of damaged rope to the local hardware store, complaining that it wasn't strong enough for him to hang himself with.

Passing the town of Economy, Pa., along the Ohio River, Heat-Moon relates the story of a 19th century commune of German Christian Rappites that prospered for 81 years before dying out due to the practice of celibacy.

At some points along the passage, Heat-Moon displays indignation at the environmental atrocities that have been perpetrated by our throw-away culture. Nearing Patriot, Indiana, on the Ohio River, the author and his accomplice compile a list of the numerous pieces of refuse they find within the span of an hour--lard buckets, milk jugs, doll heads, etc. He also laments the short-sighted river management policies of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and others, who have tried vainly to contain the flow of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, only to make matters worse when flooding does occur.

Although he arrives in the Midwest aboard Nikawa two years after the horrific 1993 floods, the author is just in time to catch the latest scare. He effectively conveys the hope and determination that propels local residents as they scurry to save their town; when sandbags are in place, but the river keeps rising, the resignation starts to set in.

While River-Horse thoroughly documents the perils of the waterways, it also portrays the pleasure and camaraderie that can be had on a voyage detatched from the demands of commerce or even just everyday life.

Heat-Moon and his mates seem to place a high degree of importance on finding good food and cold beverages along the way. He expresses his appreciation for "drafts of a certain Irish stout of renown," and genuinely seems distressed when even the most remote outpost fails to produce worthwhile eats.

As he shares his findings, Heat-Moon's writing is fluid and accessible, although some have labeled him pedantic. While he occasionally uses words that are complex or archaic, they are usually understandable in context. And he shows amazing restraint in not larding his prose with nautical terms. Historical information is carefully woven into the narrative and never becomes overbearing.

In River-Horse, the reader finds the same innate enthusiasm for the subject that exists in Mark Twain's Life on the Mississippi. In that 1883 classic, Twain writes of how all of his cohorts in his childhood Missouri home wanted to be steamboatmen. He describes his feeling as a young man setting out on a river voyage: "When we presently got underway and went poking down the broad Ohio, I became a new being, and the subject of my own admiration. I was a traveller!"

Aboard Nikawa, Heat-Moon is elated when they reach the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers: "I'd waited for this moment not just since Elizabeth, New Jersey, but since I was ten or eleven years old when I wanted to know what it felt like in a small boat to enter the maw of the Missouri. ... At last the river I grew up near, the one whose water I drank from birth until I went off to the Navy..."

As Nikawa wends its way along, Heat-Moon betrays himself to be something less than a cautious mariner. His mates sometimes complain he is impetuous, too willing to take risk. As he battles against currents and dodges floating debris, he worries aloud that the voyage could end at any moment. At one point, his mate asks him, "Does Captain wish to proceed as the way opens or just bang us the fuck through?"

Added to the aforementioned risks are the tightness of the author's timetable, which provides little leeway for delays caused by bridge and lock construction and seasonal vagaries that leave some waterways impassable. This is where Nikawa's waterway voyage diverges from that of a seagoing vessel. Any seasoned sailor knows that when you cast off on a long passage in a small boat, you throw away the calender. Unpredictable weather and inevitable mechanical malfunction make timetables impractical.

As an adventure story, River-Horse pales in comparison to such tomes as The Incredible Voyage by Tristan Jones, the one-legged former Royal Navy sailor who spent six years sailing from the Dead Sea to Lake Titicaca. Yet even though Heat-Moon is heading toward the comparatively placid Pacific Northwest, he manages to keep the narrative flowing nicely with few dead spots, telling us more about our diverse landscape than we would be able to glean from other accounts.

Heat-Moon has logged few empty miles. At almost every bend of the river he has had some unexpected vision or memorable experience, unearthed some nugget of history, encountered some flamboyant character. And he has told it all vividly and with nuance, in a way that keeps the pages turning like the propellers on his little River-Horse.

Wade Stevens Ricks is a writer/producer who lives in the Boston area.

---

A Not Entirely Disinterested Service of
Bancroft & Associates: Digital Publishers.