Middle of Day One

Matt made it to the Natchitoches town center at around 2:30pm. That’s later than he had predicted. The wind is very brutal. If he relaxes for a few seconds, the winds drive him back several feet. So his struggle to move forward is immense. He will need to continue poling until after 10pm if he wants to make it to his desired camping spot.

He was a hit downtown. Several shop owners knew to expect him. Matt’s dad visited shops Matt had requested to invite them down to see him. He called in an order for a pizza delivery at Beaudoin’s Famous Pizza. When the owner found out who it was for and what the project included, he delivered it himself and accepted no payment. When Matt’s dad told the hardware store owner that Matt was moored on Front Street, he dropped what he was doing and came to visit him. The gift shop owner was manning her shop alone, so she stuck a note on the door that said she’d be back soon, and locked the door.

It’s interesting to see how excited many of the town’s people have been. The hardware store owner has helped Matt throughout the raft preparation project.

Several people who were at the waterfront asked Matt questions about the project, and expressed bewilderment or a desire to do something similar.

Refueled and refreshed by the pizza, Matt climbed aboard and resumed his intense struggle against the wind.

The NeoHuckFinn Launch

Conditions: 70 degrees, strong southerly wind (head wind for Matt). Skies are overcast.
Forecast: 30% chance for rain today, 80% chance for thunderstorms tomorrow. Wednesday should begin to turn much cooler and clear.

Nearly thirty people attended the early morning launch of Project NeoHuckFinn. Matt was very pleased with the turnout. Several people from church, including the missionary elders, came. Also attending, some from work, some neighbors, and a television crew.

Matt read a Huck Finn quote, “We said there warn’t no home like a raft after all. Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft don’t. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft.” Then he said a prayer with his family and told us all good bye.

To board the raft, Matt had to make a six- or seven-foot leap. The raft heaved a little as he leapt onto it. He shoved off and started his long journey.

Once he got fifty yards out, we saw three people running down the hill—the television crew from Alexandria had arrived too late to interview him and to film the launch. He was still close enough to respond to our shouts and it was decided that they would meet a ways ahead. The crew interviewed Matt’s wife, Julie, and his four kids before heading to the rendezvous site.

The crew interviewed Matt for about twenty minutes and filmed the kids waving good bye as he launched again.

Shortly after Matt’s first launch, a wonderful Southern lady joined us. She had seen Matt’s article in the paper and wanted to see him off. Her son had a similar adventure nearly forty years ago. He had built a barge and floated about fifty miles down the Red River from Shreveport with several of his buddies. They planned to float to the Mississippi, but one of the boys stepped into a red ant pile and suffered several bites. His allergies put him into danger, so they had to abandon the barge.

When Julie and the family arrived home they had a phone message that a close friend from church had passed away. Since Matt serves as bishop of the congregation, he will have to interrupt his trek to work on the funeral. Details on this will follow.

Watch for television coverage all week at the following websites:

www.thetowntalk.com and www.KLAX-TV.com

Hopes and Fears for the Project

I have many hopes for the project, and they mostly stem from the origins of it.
For one, life is incredibly busy: all forms of communication must be satisfied; there are all sorts of media and other distractions. I hope for six days of quiet contemplation—six days to regroup, refocus, and really focus on the essentials. That’s really important to me with this project. It’s a little selfish, just get out there and enjoy some quiet, some physical work, and some peace.

I also want to draw attention to the historical sense of the Cane—that it was navigated very slowly. “Slow” is a very essential element of this project. That is an element that people continually try to dissuade me. “You could hide a little trolling motor on the back. Nobody would see it. It wouldn’t be noisy.” But the slow pace of the travel is an important thread that winds through this project.

Also, I see it as an artistic practice. I see the raft as the vehicle for the art. If you make art with welding or painting, then the torch and the brushes become the vehicles for the art. The outcome isn’t a visual piece of art—in the long run it’s what we call a happening or an event. I see myself out there on the river as a visual element. Every time I’m spotted, I think people will feel it’s kind of a romantic sight—this guy out there quietly and slowly poling his way down the river. It’s kind of like the gondolas of Italy or Huck Finn and Jim floating down the Mississippi.

Matt’s Pre-launch Fears
· Cold rain.
· It’s been instilled in me a fear that snakes may climb onto the raft.
· Alligators
· Headwinds the whole way
· Lightning
· The main fear is not accomplishing the project

Why the Cane River is Essential Today

Today Natchitoches is one of the few towns intersected by a beautiful fingerlake like the Cane River. It's a tourist draw, it greatly increases the value of real estate on its banks, and it accommodates recreation like fishing and boating. There are boat parades on the Cane. It draws the essential tourists to Natchitoches which depends on that boost to its economy. The Cane is the center of most city activities—the City of Lights display, the concerts, and the Green Market (farmers market and arts & crafts fair).

The Cane River Lake dominates the ambiance of the city. It’s the city’s defining feature.

The Origin of the Project

There is an initial spot that the idea was created. When I first moved here to Natchitoches I was reading River Horse: Across America by Boat by William Least Heat Moon. Moon traverses the United States, from the east coast to the west via the waterways. He wrote of the importance of these rivers and lakes to our country’s heritage. We originally traveled to a town by river. Now they are mostly covered up-we rarely see them except when we cross over them by bridge. While the people in the cities used to depend on the rivers, now we almost hide from them and the industries that have built up around them.
The book stirred my heart with appreciation and a sense of adventure.
As I crossed the Cane River going to and from work, I began to realize its importance, past and present, to this area. So I started thinking, "What if I found a way to experience it?"
It started gelling in my mind-maybe I could make a canoe or a pirogue. A pirogue (pronounced PEE-row) is a flat-bottomed canoe that was brought to this area by the French.
So I started talking to people about my ideas. I have a friend, Brad Ferguson, who had built a pirogue. He said it was very tippy and unstable. I wanted something that I could stay on and that would carry my gear adequately. So I decided I would build a raft.
The raft idea dated back to when I was a teenager in Houston. My friend Matt Reynolds and I were walking along a bayou and decided we would build a raft to float on the bayou. What a wonderful adventure! We never got around to that, so this project sort of satisfies that original idea.

The Cane River's Importance
Natchitoches was originally settled in 1714, and is arguably the oldest permanent settlement west of the Mississippi. It was at least the oldest settlement of the Louisiana Purchase.
The Cane River, as part of the Red River, flowed through Natchitoches and became the center of travel and commerce. If it hadn't been the offshoot of the Red River that came through this area, then there wouldn't have been this settlement.
There is a lot of history behind this river. There was a giant logjam, called the Great Raft. Once the Great Raft was cleared around 1830, the Red River found a shorter course to the gulf and abandoned the city. The Cane River began to dry up, the authorities built a dam on the south end to create this beautiful finger lake. As far as I can tell, they did this to maintain the aesthetics of the area.
That's how rivers were the essential element of the settling of a place. To settle in an area there had to be fresh water, and flowing fresh water was the most desirable.

Here is a map of the trip. Each color symbolizes the proposed length of each day of poling. I plan on traveling 6 miles a day at an average speed of .5 miles an hour.
Since June, I have spent time on Oscar practising the art of poling, sweating and freezing. Propelling a raft with a pole is about the slowest means of transportation known to man (I hope someone will post a comment that will tell me otherwise. I imagine a piggy-back ride on a three-toed sloth might be a touch more sluggish for example).
The Cane River Lake is, well, a lake. It was dammed at both ends to fascilitate proper aesthitics for the lovely downtown Natchitoches. As such, there is no current. Almost all movement on this river-lake is up to me.

Just over two years ago, I was reading a book entitled RiverHorse by William Least Heat-Moon. While absorbing his experience crossing the U.S. by rivers, I began to notice the small river-lake that crosses through Natchitoches, Louisiana, the town we live in. It's called the Cane River Lake. Within this time of contemplation, I decided that I would experience our little, historical river-lake from the vantage point of the water.

I began to design a simple raft to propel me down the current-less Cane, and plan my trip with absolutely no prior experience in this area.

On February 4th, 2008, my raft Oscar Bitley (Choctaw for "in the cut-off cane") and I will start the 36 mile trip down the Cane River Lake. I expect it will take six days and five nights.