Getting there involved driving across a swath of the fabled Mississippi Delta. I rarely venture into the Delta because I don't patronize the casinos in Tunica County and most other southward passages through Mississippi are accomplished much more quickly on Interstate 55. So it was a rather novel experience for me, gazing out over the flat-as-a-board landscape as the sun came up. The region is among the most impoverished in the United States, and its denizens probably don't see many cars cruising through with surf skis on top. When I stopped for gasoline in the town of Tunica, the kid ringing the cash register asked me if I was going fishing. I didn't want to get bogged down in a lengthy conversation because I wasn't sure of how much more time I needed to reach the race site, and I replied, "Um, yeah... actually, I'm just going out on the Mississippi River."
"You doin' that by yourself?" he asked.
"I'm meeting some people," I replied as I headed out the door.
Back on the road, I followed that 61 Highway down to Lula before turning westward on U.S. 49. I crossed the Mississippi on the Helena Bridge and glanced upriver at what I figured was the entrance to Helena Harbor, where the race would be finishing.
The First Annual Buck Island River Race was conceived as a fundraiser for the Lower Mississippi River Foundation, a Helena-based organization "dedicated to promoting stewardship of the lower and middle Mississippi River through deep engagement." The main way it actually does that is by offering opportunities for area youth to experience the outdoors on the river and in its corridor. I dropped by the LMRF headquarters for the race check-in. The organizers seemed happy to keep things small in the event's inaugural year: the sign-up list was very brief.
Getting to the start involved following a network of gravel roads up into the Saint Francis National Forest. As I mentioned last Monday, the race would start at the confluence of "The Saint" and the Mississippi River, and the Forest Service had very helpfully placed a sign with that exact bit of information so that I could find my way:
I followed the increasingly rough road to the sandy beach where the two rivers meet. After a quick meeting with LMRF executive director Shannon McMulkin and LMRF founder John Ruskey, ten other boats joined mine on the starting line. On command, we churned through a big patch of squirrelly water out into the main flow of the Mississippi.
By this time I knew my main competition would come from fellow Memphian Adam Davis. Though he'd never beaten me in a race before, I knew better than to take him lightly. Adam has improved steadily over the last several seasons and he raced extremely well in the Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race earlier this year. He took the overall win just a week ago in a race on the Ouachita River down at West Monroe, Louisiana. On top of that, I still wasn't entirely over the bug I'd been dealing with all week, so I knew I had my work cut out for me.
Adam and I put some distance on the rest of the pack and settled into our mid-race pace. I let Adam take the lead, falling back onto his stern wake, and I hoped to hang out there for a while, conserving energy as much as possible before attempting some kind of move in the second half of the race. Adam was paddling a strong pace and it took some work on my part to hold my position. I wasn't feeling terrible but I was clearly not a hundred percent, and I knew that if Adam didn't eventually tire I would have real difficulty going for the win.
At Mile 5 I threw in a surge and took the lead. I kept the pressure on for some 30 seconds to see if I could open a gap, but Adam was sticking right there with me. So I settled down and cruised along with him on my stern, only fair since he'd pulled me for almost a half-hour. We rounded the broad rightward bend of the river with Buck Island to our right and the state of Mississippi to our left, and paddled toward the industrial facilities that sit on the outskirts of Helena.
From our position the entrance to Helena Harbor was not easy to spot, and we ended up paddling side-by-side wondering aloud: "Is that it? No... is that it? No..." I finally managed to make out the near "corner" of the riverbank where the harbor began, standing out ever so subtly against the wooded backdrop. I picked up the pace a little, but Adam stayed right with me. I knew what I had to do: stay on Adam's side wake as long as I could so I'd be in position to take the lead should the race come down to a final sprint. I couldn't tell if Adam was feeling any better than I was, but if he were to throw in a hard surge with a kilometer or more to go, he would drop me.
He didn't do that. As the orange finish buoys came into view several hundred meters up into the harbor, I hung on his right-side wake until I was sure we'd reduced the distance to a sprint I could handle. I began to hammer, and so did Adam. For several seconds I thought he was going to hold me off, but then I realized I was gaining, centimeter by centimeter. My confidence grew as my bow edged into the lead. A hundred meters became fifty, fifty became twenty, twenty became ten, and at last I crossed the line no more than a third of a boatlength ahead of Adam.
At this time I haven't yet seen the official results, but I know our time was a little under 55 minutes. The race had been billed as a 9-miler, but my G.P.S. device measured the course at about 9.73 miles. With the river flowing at a medium-low level of 17.7 feet on the Helena gauge, I think a sub-one-hour finish is not bad.
A 23-foot-long Kevlar touring canoe paddled by Robert Cheek and Scott Shirey took third place overall in one hour, three minutes and change.
I'd paid an extra fee for a race volunteer to drive my car back down from the start, and I availed myself of the dry clothes and water and other essentials that awaited within. We enjoyed a post-race lunch and a brief awards ceremony, and it was time to head home. Since I'd driven down to Helena on the Mississippi side of the river, I elected to make the trip back on the Arkansas side. The Arkansas Delta looks very much like the Mississippi Delta, but the latter seems to get all the attention because it's where Robert Johnson went to the crossroads and traded his soul to the Devil for some wicked guitar skills.
This morning I'm feeling not any worse than I had before, but not any better, either. Lots of coughing and sinus congestion are carrying the day, and now I seem to have lost my voice, too. Please don't call me up on the telephone.
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