Swimming Across the Mississippi River

Ruskey, Ellis & William after the feat

And You Call This Fun?

A canoe trip that has been done thousands of times…not much of an adventure. Where’s the satisfaction in doing what you know for certain can be completed?  The trip would be a social event – but it had so much more potential. The feeling inside of me was of a kid watching from his bedroom window at friends having a blast on the new slip-n-slide. “What could be, but won’t happen”

I was going with a group to canoe down the Mississippi River. First off, I didn’t plan the trip so I knew there was no way we are paddling on the Mississippi. What about the stories my Mom told me about staying away from rivers? They will kill you. Fisherman said whirlpools stopped their boat in an instant almost pulling the entire boat under? Or what about those logs that get pulled under and shot out like an arrow? So I came to the conclusion they were wrong and we would be going down a tributary along side the Mississippi.

I usually don’t do trips unless it involves doing nothing at the beach or is an extreme adventure – one extreme or the other, nothing in between. It was time to put my anxiety about wasting a weekend doing something that thousands have already done behind me and enjoy time with friends – it bothers me to even say that, sit there and just talk??

Life is about two things - God and relationships on Earth. So I need to get better at just sitting and talking and riding in a bus for hours to go on a trip that takes an entire weekend all for the purpose of paddling down a stream that again, has been done and done and done…

The Guide

The Guide - John Ruskey

So on the way to Helena, Arkansas, a guy with us googled the name of the river guide that was supposedly taking us down the Mississippi. John Ruskey. And that was the turning point. This cat had basically lived on the Mississippi for the last 30 years. He has paddled the largest rivers in North America from one end to the other…And then my big break came…this guy has brought people out to swim across the Mississippi River! Now I’m no longer anxious about wasting two days of my life on an expedition that has already been done thousands of times, I’m anxious that not only will I be repeating history for the 5,000^th time, but the opportunity to do what few have done will be sitting right under my nose.

Ruskey got started on the river when he and a friend – inspired by The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - built a raft out of salvage material and paddled from Minnesota to Louisiana. Ruskey had stints in Colorado and Austin but winded up in Clarksdale, Mississippi playing the blues while spending 30 years on the Mississippi. Ruskey has been on explorations all over North America but “Nowhere have I felt as powerfully that feeling of something much greater than me at work then when I feel the fluid motions of that big channel of water. I feel it stronger in the Mississippi then I have in paddling the Pacific Ocean, the Straits of Juan de Fuca, or paddling behind Victoria Island".

“Mississippi Wandering” with John Ruskey

“We All Live Downstream” with Ellis Coleman, Ruskey’s partner

Ruskey describes what one will see on the river: “You will see the third biggest river in the world as it slowly and implacably pours out of the heart of America and winds endlessly towards the gulf of mexico, unheedful of gravity, pursuing strange serpentine pathways through the mud and clay and sand.”

Helena, AR is a small town in southeast Arkansas. Ruskey’s guide service, Quapaw Canoe Company, is based out of an old brick building that appears to have once been a factory. The building is wide open like an empty warehouse. It is filled with hand carved canoes that carry two people and others that carry ten. One of the canoes we took out is a ten person canoe named the Voyager.

The Question

Alright, so how does one go about asking permission to swim across the Mississippi River? If you can’t get the guide alone, you blurt it out in front of everyone and wait for the dead silence at the foolishness of the question.

“Can I swim it?”

“Sure”

“ok”

That could be the most unusual question I’ve ever asked someone. Followed by thoughts of doesn’t the river current need to be right, does it need to be a certain time of year, can we do it from any location? Shouldn’t the factors be perfect to swim? I mean, how do you answer a question like that with “sure”?

Choosing a Spot

Ruskey knew I was serious but didn’t think I would do it. Similar to the people that are going to start the gym next Monday – they are serious at the time but never do it. Ruskey tells me you can swim the river anywhere and anytime. Where’s the logic in that? But the best place to swim is to start on a straight of way that leads into a river bend. Start on the same side of the river as the inside of the bend. As the current is pushing you down stream it will tend to push you from the starting bank (bank on the inside of the bend) and send you to the opposite side (outside bank).

Within ten minutes of getting on the River we stopped on a sand bar. Rusky said this is a good place to swim. Shouldn’t we look for a better place? You’re telling me we are going to be on the river for 6+ hours and within 10 minutes this is the best place you can find? Do you settle on a girl at 10pm when the bar doesn’t close until 6am? (a reference to long time ago – long, long time ago). Oh well, here we go.

The Crossing

The first thirty feet feels like a lake – no moving water. Then I hit the channel where the river is moving 200 – 700 thousand cubic feet per second making it the tenth most powerful river in the world. Underwater sounds like a bunch of crackling – like not catching a signal on an analog TV. A river guide said it was the multi trillion sediment particles hitting together but that is about as scientific an answer as Ruskey saying “oh yeah, this is a good spot ”. At this point in the story, let me clarifier a few questions in your head – no I didn’t have a life jacket or safety device, I didn’t train for this (other than CrossFit which trains one for whatever life throws at you or swimming the Mississippi), I had only swam about half this distance in my life. Anything that would make this decision seem less foolish, I did not do.

Thirty minutes prior, the thought of swimming the Mississippi was non existent.

I oriented my body towards the opposite bank so my motions were as if I were swimming straight across but the current was driving me down stream.

Turbulence

Growing up in a small City on the Red River, I was familiar with the vision from a bridge of turbulent flow in a river. I’m not saying it is ok to jump in a whirlpool, but it is possible to swim through the turbulence. Now Ruskey – with all the reassurance he provided up to this point - said that it may pull me under but it would shoot me right back up – that made me feel safe. The movements you see in the river are eddies and boils. Boils look like boiling water from the surface and are caused by water rebounding off the river bottom. An eddy is a place where the water is moving in a different direction or speed than the main current. Eddies are made by rocks, outcroppings along the side, behind logs, bridge pilings, and on the inside of bends or along the side of the river. The boils knocked me around and even threw me into the side of the canoe that Ruskey followed me in.

Halfway

You want to experience a surreal feeling? Stop halfway across and tread water…in the middle of the Mississippi River. I don’t think anyone timed this event but it was about 25 minutes to get halfway across and the river had brought me downstream about 1 mile. The width of the river was ¾ to 1 mile.

The finale

I get 30 ft from the river bank – finish line – and I wasn’t going to make it. The harder I pushed, the more the distance to the finish line increased. A boil was pushing me back. I had just come within two minutes of swimming across the third largest river in the world. Rusk hollered to fight through the current. With all my remaining energy, I pushed through the boil and it shot me out the other side. A tree branch was close enough to grab and pull myself to the bank – actually, I never made it to the bank. I justified the tree was connected to the bank so I was finished. The guys pulled me into the canoe, I laid out and Rusk casually paddled on because swimming across the Mississppi is a normal occurrence. Half an hour later at the next sandbar stop, Ruskey came over, shook my hand and offered his congratulations. 

“You know in 30 years of being out on this river, I’ve only known half a dozen people to do that”.

“Really? Really!? Because, you made it sound like it was no big deal when I decided to do this nonsense!”

Then he clarified “No, maybe a dozen”.

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“Books may inspire, but it’s the actual doing – the physical participation – of something that’s the real teacher.” John Ruskey