Perhaps it's about time I told you more about where I paddle. If you have been reading this blog for any length of time, you have seen me mention "the harbor" here many, many times. "The harbor" is where I keep my boat, and it's the site of a very large percentage of my training.
Here's an interactive map of the Memphis riverfront:
The harbor is the sliver of water that separates Mud Island River Park from the rest of the city to the east. Known as Wolf River Harbor because it was the bed of the Wolf River before an engineering project redirected the Wolf (you can see where the Wolf now enters the Mississippi by scrolling the map to the north a short distance), it is not quite five kilometers in length from its northern end to its junction with the Mississippi (marked as "Joe Curtis Point" on this map). It is between a hundred and two hundred meters wide, on average. It is largely protected from the wind, and it has no current, just like a lake, and that makes it ideal for practicing technique and speed without the distractions of rough conditions. It also affords the paddler a safer alternative to the mighty Mississippi on very cold winter days and times like that.
Three bridges span Wolf River Harbor. The northernmost is the A.W. Willis Avenue (formerly Auction Avenue) bridge, which links downtown Memphis with the Harbortown residential development. The next bridge to the south is the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, which carries Interstate 40 over the Mississippi River. The southernmost bridge is an access way to Mud Island River Park by both foot traffic and a monorail tram.
This photo, taken by a Daily Memphian photographer, offers a panoramic view looking south from about halfway up Mud Island. That's the harbor on the left, with the main channel of the Mississippi River on the right. You can see Harbortown Marina where I keep my boat, with the A.W. Willis Bridge just beyond it.
Many racers know Wolf River Harbor as the site of the last kilometer or so of the Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race, which takes place the day before Father's Day each June. The finish line is next to Mississippi River Park, just south of the monorail bridge.
I keep my boat at Harbortown Marina. If you zoom in on the A.W. Willis Avenue bridge, you'll see Harbortown Marina represented by two rectangles just to the north. The marina is owned privately by its slip owners, like a condominium, and it is equipped with racks where kayakers and canoeists and rowers may store their craft for $100 a quarter ($400 a year). The marina is approximately halfway between the harbor's northern end and its southern end. It's maybe a couple hundred meters closer to the southern end; I know this because at my normal cruising pace, I typically take about fifteen minutes to paddle from the marina to the mouth of the harbor, and about 17 or 18 minutes to paddle from the marina to the harbor's north end.
Public access to the harbor can be found on its east side, using a boat ramp directly beneath the A.W. Willis bridge. There is room to park during both high- and low-water periods.
In the many years I have been training in the harbor, I have established baseline times on several courses defined by permanent objects. For instance, a good time for me from the southern edge of the Hernando DeSoto Bridge to the southern edge of the A.W. Willis Avenue bridge is around three minutes. From the southern edge of the monorail bridge to the southern edge of the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, it's around two minutes. The A.W. Willis bridge has two sets of pilings in the water, and I've broken 30 seconds a couple of times sprinting across the harbor from one of them to the other.
In each of the last several years, I have timed myself over one full lap of the harbor. I've done it in mid-March, a couple of weeks before my first race of the year, as a test of my early-season fitness. My "starting gate" is between two trees at the north end of the harbor; you can actually see these trees if you switch the map to satellite view and zoom in up there. I paddle all the way to the mouth of the harbor, where, lacking a turnaround buoy, I make sure to cross the center-line of Beale Street before turning around. Then I return to the north end of the harbor and finish between the same two trees that marked my starting line. My best time on this course is a little over 50 minutes.
So, you could call Wolf River Harbor my gym... my dojo. It's where I get myself ready for the races I do each spring, summer, and fall. Needless to say, I have spent untold hours there. And there is no question I have developed a relationship with the place.
As in any relationship, there are negatives as well as positives. The harbor has a fairly serious litter problem. After a heavy rain, especially when the water level is low, the harbor is choked with floatable trash that has washed in from the storm drains. The city has attempted to remedy the problem by installing a boom at the mouth of Bayou Gayoso (for some reason it's called Quincy Bayou on this map), but the litter continues to come in from other sources. There's also some evidence of a broken sewer line (i.e., condoms), and I know the problem has been reported, but so far the city has been in no hurry to fix it.
The harbor's industrial denizens have not always been the best stewards, either. Though I enjoy the vibrancy of the barge traffic that comes in and out of the harbor serving the LaFarge, Bunge, and Cargill plants, I bristle at the sloppy practices at the loading facilities that allow grain, Portland cement, and who knows what else to escape into the air and the water. Some stricter enforcement by our city and county authorities is definitely in order.
To put it simply, I sense that these authorities don't consider the environmental health of the Memphis riverfront to be a great priority. I detect an attitude that the Mississippi River is strictly a commercial and industrial waterway and has no recreational value. Certainly, a few more recreational users to demonstrate a contrary argument would be nice--besides my friend Joe and me, I can think of maybe a half-dozen other paddlers who are down there on any kind of regular basis--but the folks with the power in our town could reap some benefit in the long run if they would embrace us rather than shrug us off as a mild annoyance. When I look at southern cities of similar size--Oklahoma City, Little Rock, Chattanooga, Nashville--I see cities that have lovingly brought back their once-decrepit waterfronts and made them destinations for citizens (all of them, not just the ones with money to spend) to enjoy the outdoors on or around the water however they please. In this way as in so many others, my hometown seems to be several decades behind the times.
Well... I love our harbor anyway, no matter how few other people do. I love the turtles that sun themselves on logs along the banks, and file off into the water when they see me coming. I love the beavers that slap the water smartly with their tails. I love the willows that stand in the shallow water up in the north end. I love the birds--blue and green herons, kingfishers, red-winged blackbirds, geese, ducks, gulls, purple martens, eagles--that call the harbor home for at least part of each year. I love the alligator gar that lurk near the surface in the summertime, diving deeper when my boat passes over them. I love the high-water periods, when I can paddle among the trees, and the low-water periods, when I am surrounded by sloping muddy banks. I love paddling from the harbor's relatively clear water onto the silty brown water of the Mississippi River, and back again.
I hope that paddlers visiting Memphis will find this information useful, and that they will value paddling on my home water as much as I do paddling on theirs.
I keep my boat at Harbortown Marina. If you zoom in on the A.W. Willis Avenue bridge, you'll see Harbortown Marina represented by two rectangles just to the north. The marina is owned privately by its slip owners, like a condominium, and it is equipped with racks where kayakers and canoeists and rowers may store their craft for $100 a quarter ($400 a year). The marina is approximately halfway between the harbor's northern end and its southern end. It's maybe a couple hundred meters closer to the southern end; I know this because at my normal cruising pace, I typically take about fifteen minutes to paddle from the marina to the mouth of the harbor, and about 17 or 18 minutes to paddle from the marina to the harbor's north end.
Public access to the harbor can be found on its east side, using a boat ramp directly beneath the A.W. Willis bridge. There is room to park during both high- and low-water periods.
In the many years I have been training in the harbor, I have established baseline times on several courses defined by permanent objects. For instance, a good time for me from the southern edge of the Hernando DeSoto Bridge to the southern edge of the A.W. Willis Avenue bridge is around three minutes. From the southern edge of the monorail bridge to the southern edge of the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, it's around two minutes. The A.W. Willis bridge has two sets of pilings in the water, and I've broken 30 seconds a couple of times sprinting across the harbor from one of them to the other.
Joe Royer took this photo of me as we paddled north from the mouth of the harbor. That's the monorail bridge in the distance.
In each of the last several years, I have timed myself over one full lap of the harbor. I've done it in mid-March, a couple of weeks before my first race of the year, as a test of my early-season fitness. My "starting gate" is between two trees at the north end of the harbor; you can actually see these trees if you switch the map to satellite view and zoom in up there. I paddle all the way to the mouth of the harbor, where, lacking a turnaround buoy, I make sure to cross the center-line of Beale Street before turning around. Then I return to the north end of the harbor and finish between the same two trees that marked my starting line. My best time on this course is a little over 50 minutes.
So, you could call Wolf River Harbor my gym... my dojo. It's where I get myself ready for the races I do each spring, summer, and fall. Needless to say, I have spent untold hours there. And there is no question I have developed a relationship with the place.
As in any relationship, there are negatives as well as positives. The harbor has a fairly serious litter problem. After a heavy rain, especially when the water level is low, the harbor is choked with floatable trash that has washed in from the storm drains. The city has attempted to remedy the problem by installing a boom at the mouth of Bayou Gayoso (for some reason it's called Quincy Bayou on this map), but the litter continues to come in from other sources. There's also some evidence of a broken sewer line (i.e., condoms), and I know the problem has been reported, but so far the city has been in no hurry to fix it.
The harbor's industrial denizens have not always been the best stewards, either. Though I enjoy the vibrancy of the barge traffic that comes in and out of the harbor serving the LaFarge, Bunge, and Cargill plants, I bristle at the sloppy practices at the loading facilities that allow grain, Portland cement, and who knows what else to escape into the air and the water. Some stricter enforcement by our city and county authorities is definitely in order.
To put it simply, I sense that these authorities don't consider the environmental health of the Memphis riverfront to be a great priority. I detect an attitude that the Mississippi River is strictly a commercial and industrial waterway and has no recreational value. Certainly, a few more recreational users to demonstrate a contrary argument would be nice--besides my friend Joe and me, I can think of maybe a half-dozen other paddlers who are down there on any kind of regular basis--but the folks with the power in our town could reap some benefit in the long run if they would embrace us rather than shrug us off as a mild annoyance. When I look at southern cities of similar size--Oklahoma City, Little Rock, Chattanooga, Nashville--I see cities that have lovingly brought back their once-decrepit waterfronts and made them destinations for citizens (all of them, not just the ones with money to spend) to enjoy the outdoors on or around the water however they please. In this way as in so many others, my hometown seems to be several decades behind the times.
Well... I love our harbor anyway, no matter how few other people do. I love the turtles that sun themselves on logs along the banks, and file off into the water when they see me coming. I love the beavers that slap the water smartly with their tails. I love the willows that stand in the shallow water up in the north end. I love the birds--blue and green herons, kingfishers, red-winged blackbirds, geese, ducks, gulls, purple martens, eagles--that call the harbor home for at least part of each year. I love the alligator gar that lurk near the surface in the summertime, diving deeper when my boat passes over them. I love the high-water periods, when I can paddle among the trees, and the low-water periods, when I am surrounded by sloping muddy banks. I love paddling from the harbor's relatively clear water onto the silty brown water of the Mississippi River, and back again.
I hope that paddlers visiting Memphis will find this information useful, and that they will value paddling on my home water as much as I do paddling on theirs.
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