Day Six

Risks, Rewards, and a James Bond Style Mission

5/30/23
Launch: 12:20pm
CFS: 240 at West Blocton
Water Height: 2.32 at West Blocton

Oh I took this morning slow, so slow. 5:30 had me awake but I couldn’t talk myself out of bed for another hour. While it wasn’t as cold as the night previous the dew had fallen hard and soaked all my clothes I had left out to dry. No matter, I told myself, I can take a bit of time to let the sun come up and dry things out again.

I made and tried breakfast but didn’t like the rehydrated bagged breakfast scramble. So, I didn’t make myself eat it. Instead, I opted for one of the apples and Lärabars from my equipment drop the day before. It felt good to bite into something with crunch again. All the freeze-dried meals were akin to a boiled mush of sadness. Nothing beats an apple. Nothing.

My body was sore, and my spirits were low. It had taken a good bit out of me to set up camp the night previous. My body was really starting to feel the weight of what I asked it to do. The backs of my legs were bruised so bad it looked like I’d been in a car accident. I’d developed a mouth ulcer and my feet—which I’d been careful to tend to—had chaffed to raw skin from the perpetual wet and friction of the day before. My hands were swollen, and I’d developed a strange rash of blisters across my knuckles.

I put on John Denver and Don McLean. My maternal grandfather’s favorite song was American Pie, and playing it in this space and time felt like a way to bring him closer. I wasn’t sure what the day ahead would bring me. The Wildlife Refuge marked that last of what I knew of the river. I started packing as the morning wore on and finally got everything tucked away, but right as I felt like I had my feet up and under me and was getting along with myself, disaster struck—or at least what *felt* like disaster. I was all packed up and ready to go when I went to make myself a fresh bottle of water.

Theoretically, my Katadyn Hiker Pro water filter was enough on its own to make sure I could safely stay hydrated without getting sick off river water, but I went a step beyond and packed a rechargeable UV water purification light called a Steripen. It was super convenient, easy to use, and in 90 seconds produced crisp, pure drinking water by destroying the DNA of any viruses that might have slipped through the filter. It made for peace of mind especially being out on flood water on a river with horrible run-off. Well, remember when I said I swamped the kayak a little bit the day previous? It wasn’t anything dramatic, but it was just enough to soak the neoprene covering of my Steripen. It worked that evening but sometime in the night-time hours had decided to give up its ghost to the great beyond. Despite being a product MADE for water it turns out the thing was, indeed, not waterproof.

I wasn’t out of options; I could always boil my water, and somewhere in my gear there were a few packs of emergency iodine. However, I know myself and knew the more time consuming and involved the process for making water would lead to me putting off preparing it and, eventually, to a constant state of dehydration.

Was this the end of the world? No. But I sat there in my fully-loaded kayak beached on the rocks and sulked: my get-up-and-go now got-up-and-fell-flat. Sulking turned to napping in the hazy warm goodness of the sun climbing overhead. And, eventually, I managed to pull things together. Internet searches and calls around Birmingham revealed every store in the area was out of stock of that particular Steripen. That’s where my buddy Adam (from day one and day five) stepped in. He made it his personal mission to make sure I got a replacement.

So, I eventually launched and you remember those two root beers from my buddy Luke I almost turned down the day previous? Wouldn’t you know they sure did come in handy. At least I knew they were safe to drink. With such a start to the day and in the aftermath of the day before, I asked the river for a gentler time. She delivered. The stretch just down from Caffee Creek and right before Pratt’s Ferry is some of the most beautiful parts of the river I’ve seen.

I wasn’t long on the river before my friend and fellow poet, Nickole, sent along symphony #3 by Gorecki, with the instruction to listen to it all at once. It is a deep and slow stringed experience that slowly swells until joined by the angelic soprano of Dawn Upshaw. At the crescendo, I rounded a bend and was immediately eclipsed by the grandeur of high-rocky cliffs stretching out in front of me. The afternoon sun from the right hit their face and made them pop. Down where their base met the water you could keep on following their line beyond the surface where they didn’t end but rather disappeared into deep, deep water. These are ancient walls carved deep by the flow of years. The whole experience was achingly beautiful. To quote directly from my journal: I wish I could crawl into this moment and live here forever.

Farther down river, I ran across a number of birds swooping in and out of muds nests encrusted on the underside of a tall bridge. I pulled out my camera to try and capture the activity which I’d never had the chance to witness in person before. In my lack of attention to the river I let my kayak be pushed into a sandbar. The passage ahead bottlenecked, and I wasn’t yet done reviewing my camera footage. When I finally looked back up, I caught a strange sight. There, in the middle of the river, in the middle of nowhere, a man’s head popped up out of the water. My senses immediately set on edge. That’s not exactly something you find in the wilderness and certainly wasn’t anything I wanted to have to navigate. He disappeared below the surface again and stayed down for a long, long time.

I didn’t want to startle him. I didn’t want to interact with him at all. But the only way to get down the river was either to traverse the water above him or get his attention and let him let me pass by. He resurfaced and we made eye contact. Another deep breath and he disappeared again. I lit out fast as I could past him. I don’t know what he was doing or what he was diving or looking for. I don’t need to know. Sometimes you need to let the river keep its mysteries. Not everything needs an answer.

The river widened as the day wore on. It was mostly a long and lazy float. Things got a bit rocky again as I approached the Fall Line in Centerville, but I only had to unstick myself from the rocks twice. I started to fret as the evening grew long, and I still had not found a place to camp. There were too many people here. Too many back yards. And then, there was nothing. The change in landscape after the Fall-Line was stark. One minute there was the rocky river and then the next the river was smooth and flat with inaccessible banks. Nowhere looked good for setting up camp.

Word came from Adam that he was able to find a battery-operated replacement Steripen, and a bit of relief seeped into my body. The catch was I wasn’t going to be in a meet-up accessible place for another 17 hours. So, he planned what we call The James Bond Drop. I picked the next bridge on the map and give him the coordinates. He then drove two hours outside of the city: off-roading his Porsche through the Talladega National Forest.

I got a dusky photo of a Dollar General bag sitting on top of a bolder in the middle of a small clearing beside the bridge. I wasn’t sure how I felt about it chilling out in the open. I felt like we could have maybe played hide-and-seek a bit. The well-spring of spiraling thoughts bubbled up: What if someone comes and takes it? It looks like trash, someone might come along and throw that away. I wonder if raccoons out here are acclimated to dig through Dollar General bags and will carry it off? But I was grateful and figured that was just the anxieties of the days catching up with me. I was very tired. It would surely be fine sitting there overnight for me to grab tomorrow.

I paused at a few places I thought I might be able to pitch camp, but nothing felt right. The sun was starting to go down. I had whiled away all my light at the beginning of the day and now here I was at the end of it wishing I had used my time better. Eventually, I rounded a bend and noticed a sand bar with potential. Upon inspection turns out it was on the back side of an active cow pasture. Hoofprints sank deep into the sand. I didn’t need to wake up to cows like that.

Turning around to get back into the kayak, I caught sight of a high-rocky outcropping on the opposite bank. It had a secluded little inlet with slabs of rock and trees good for hanging the hammock. The place was, uh, more biodiverse than my other spots. I crawled up its bank and every step on its plateau sent a fan-spray of dozens of frogs jumping out in front of me. I had never seen such a thing! Where there’s frogs like that you gotta know there’s also snakes—which I found and gave a nice wide berth.

I set up camp in the dark and slung my hammock between an elm and sycamore. The moon rose bright and crisp in the clear sky, and I fell asleep to frogs on the peep and the deep lowing of cows across the way.

Miles traveled: 13.5
Total miles: 92.6
Take out time: 7:12