Day Ten

And miles to go before I sleep

6/3/23 (Day Ten)
Launch: 6:20am
CFS: N/A at Suttle
Water Height: 4.3ft at Suttle

The start of day ten left me in a particular situation. I was somewhere around 50 miles out from the end of all things—where the Cahaba River meets the Alabama river at the Old Cahawba Archeological Park just outside of Selma. In order to be picked up at the take-out the park had to be open, or I would have to hike the yak and all my gear to the front entrance—which I heard was a great distance from the river’s edge. I’d never been to the park but the Googles said it was closed on Mondays.

I’d been averaging around 16 to 18 miles each day and the day before (day nine) saw my longest day at 20 miles. Here I was on Saturday staring down the long-end of things with three-day’s worth of paddling that needed doing in two days. My people were already planning to meet me on Sunday sometime between noon and 3pm. All of this meant I best kick things into gear. (Granted, I had backup plans on top of backup plans, but I didn’t want to disrupt too many real-world schedules.)

I got an earlier-than-usual start to the day. When I launched the fog was still on the water. The willow blooms were so heady and intoxicating on the cool morning air. They smelled fresh like dewy allure. Their scent clings the way musk does but not as heavy. No, more like a light oil, slick and shiny. Almost like magnolia but without the bite and heaviness. I think it is my new favorite smell and my second favorite tree.

I had been camped out on a little sand bar just north of the Sprott launch. Approaching the bridge, birds swirled over my head and when a car passed by, they tumbled out of their mud wattle nests and swooped around me. The Sprott stretch was alright but much of the same with the sand bars and trees down everywhere. However, the red-tailed hawks were particularly vocal this morning as well, and in many ways, they felt like the audible voice of the river.

After Sprott is the Radford stretch, and I fell in love with this portion of the river—granted, I was already madly in love with the entire river, but this section felt particularly magical. There was a distinct change from the previous segments, and the coastal shelf became very obvious. Low-striated rock walls layered with crumbling shale and chert piled up with ferns and other vegetation yawning over the edge. Water dripped down these pock-marked rock faces carving out new dimples and paths. Hairlike tree roots dangling in crevices caught cascades and wore away spaces that had been widening for eons. Little by little the run-off, the bank, and the tree will all eventually be in the river.

layers of the ancient ocean floor

The sandbars are made of a variety of pebbles nice to walk on, and the banks were so, so green with these lovely spacious overhangs. It felt very ancient. The Blueway said there might be fossils. So, I go out and kicked around a bit looking for shark’s teeth. I didn’t find any, though, but have since been back to waters of Lower Alabama and have found many.

The most wonderful bit of this stretch was the willow trees. After days of research, I finally managed to narrow down this sort of willow as the Carolina Willow (aka Coastal Plains Willow). They gird the shore rushing right up to the water’s edge and reach out over the water as if asking for a kiss. All in a blossom, their white tufts would snag the wind and let loose swirling all around me in golden sunlight before floating down and landing so delicately on the water’s surface. Meanwhile, bees in the water willow set the whole place to thrumming and it was energizing to be alive in this place alongside so many green and growing things.

Water Willow (plant) in the foreground and Carolina Willow (tree) in the background

I got to witness my favorite tree (sycamores) in a new way. One of the facts I love the most about sycamore trees is how the grow so fast they quite literarily burst through their bark. That’s what lends to their showy-white tops. What I didn’t know is just how explosive these shedding events could be. They sound just like a firecracker popping off and the noise is accompanied by a gentle drifting down of freshly-shed bark. Fun fact, sycamore bark floating on the water looks EXACTLY like an alligator head from a distance—yes, I had many false alarms.

Ever since Centreville, I had been braced for running across alligators. And today was the day it finally happened. I saw my first gator just south of the Suttle launch. It went okay. My heart only stopped for a full three minutes. There’s something incredibly disconcerting coming eye to eye with a sharp-toothed being twice the size of you. Sitting in a kayak you’re basically eye-level with the river. That’s not a lot of distance between your soft parts and the comp-chomps. When the gator caught sight of me it slowly sank beneath the surface, and I found out just how long I can hold my breath. I didn’t hardly dare to paddle either for fear I would disturb it. An hour later when I passed the next one, I pulled off a stunning imitation of driftwood.  

Suttle changed the landscape with bluffs, and I was really getting to see the bed of fossilized shells from the historic ocean floor. The banks alternated between medium-high and sandy and low-slung solid rock. The right bank was smooth like the Pratt’s Ferry cliffs while the left side was all crumbly rock. As I neared Highway 50, I started to feel the wearing of the day in my body. I had done a good day’s work and had less than 20 miles left until the take-out. That was manageable enough I figured I could rest. I asked the river for another place to lay my head. And just after Highway 50, the river pushed me into a little sandbar where I was greeted by a monarch sitting on a willow—a good sign. Okay, I said, works for me!

Beef stroganoff was dinner, but it wasn’t delicious. I listened to good music to make up for it. I felt changed. I already knew my body was radically different. The pants that had been comfortably snug when I set off a week and a half ago were now playing hula-hoop around my waist. However, I knew things were different on the inside too. This was the absolute adventure of a lifetime, and I knew things were changed in ways I wouldn’t understand until I was back in the other world. You don’t come away from these sorts of things the same.

If I didn’t die or something wild didn’t happen, I would be spending the night in my own bed tomorrow night. Tomorrow meant home. Which was strange to me. Wasn’t home here? However, those sorts of thoughts take a body out of a moment, and I wanted to be as here and present as possible. Tonight was one last night on the rocks, and I felt like the river wanted me for her show.

As I got camp ready to tuck away for the evening, I thought about how I might best honor my last night on the river and the soon-rising of the full moon. Not just a full moon but a super full moon at that. I couldn’t have planned things better. And truly, I didn’t plan it. So, many moments of beauty and wonder perfectly aligned on the trip. I figure more people would find these sorts of moments if they learned to look for them. I firmly believe that you find what you look for. If you look for the magic and wonder in life, you’re going to find it around every corner. That doesn’t mean you won’t have hard times. But if you learn to be amazed by small wonders, you’ll find them all around you. Listen. Look. Be astonished.

After putting in 30 miles, a bath before bed sounded nice. I was camped out on the back side of someone’s property and while I couldn’t see them, and they likely would never know I was there, I wanted to wait until dark to bathe. Besides, a bath in the full moon just sounded story-book enchanting. So I laid down to nap for two hours while the moon got to rising. When it was at its zenith, I gathered my things and made my way down to the water’s edge. That’s when my mind started racing circles.

You know, this could be alligator water. What if you got eat during the rinse-and-repeat. I scanned my flashlight across the surface of the water looking for the glint of reptilian eye. Nothing. The coast was clear. Or was it? What all lurks in a river at night? There’s an awful lot you can’t see in that kind of darkness. And you are—after all—very alone. The chill of the evening breeze picked up, and I my muscles relaxed as I remembered that as a cold-blooded species, gators would likely, probably, just maybe be on sunbaked shore where it was warmer in the evening than in the cool river. My first few steps into the river were cold but the deeper it got the warmer it got contradicting my original thought. NOPE!

I snatched my things up and made my way back to my tent. I’d scrub by the light of morning. There’s a reason why things are in storybooks and not real life. No sooner was I laid flat out on my back in bed than a text from a friend came through:

“I hope you’re getting some good use of this moon.”

Dagnabbit. I heaved a sigh and knew I had chickened out. I also knew I would be disappointed in myself if I didn’t do the wild thing. So, I gathered everything up again, went back to the water, stripped down completely, and stepped on in. It was exactly as vulnerable and scary and thrilling as you think it would be. The water was just chilled enough to be uncomfortable, and this, compounded with the breeze and the blustery mint of Dr. Bonner’s Eucalyptus, set my heart to racing. In the middle of it all, I looked up at the moon in its fullness as I’m buckass naked and said, “You better fix my life.”***

And what a moon it was—big and magical, blinding in its brightness. When I made it back to shore to towel off, I was grateful for the moment. I felt clean in the sort of way that you look back on in life and point to and say something happened there, I don’t know what, but something. Maybe storybooks are real life after all.

I slept without the rain fly on the tent that night so I could have every bit of the full moon. It was a deep and beautiful sleep.

Miles traveled: 30
Total Miles: 158.3
Take out time: 5:49

***Now, a year and a half later, I am happy to report this actually worked. I highly recommend hollering at the full moon nekkid in a river. If nothing else, it doesn’t hurt. Well, that depends on which body of water you’re in and the ratio of gator to human.