Kayaking the Mississippi River
Robert Meyer
ISBN 978-1-57087-760-5 200 p. $18.00
Hard Cover
Professional Press. Chapel Hill, NC 2011

Millions of people have dreamed the Huck Finn dream of traveling downriver, on the Mississippi river’s terms, but only a few, like Robert Meyer, St. Louis, have paddled that dream.
In An Epic Voyage, Meyer, 81, recounts his trip, mostly alone, but with the almost daily hospitality of “river rat” strangers along the way, paddling his homemade kayak and camping his way from Lake Itaska Minn., to New Orleans.
The book is based on the journal he kept during his 65-day trip, began in 1986, in which he recorded his chance companions, the ordeals and triumphs of the day, the weather and survival challenges along the way.
The reader gets to know both Meyer and his adventure well. Writing in first person present, laced with occasional later commentary, Meyer keeps the story rooted in modern reality. It’s not Twain’s river that he paddles, it’s America’s workhorse, complete with greasy, noisy, rude barge tows, riverbanks rocky with riprap, without places to camp, cities hidden by floodwalls.
Meyer steers a deft path between the grit and the glory, the bright glinting sunlight on the water, and the dangerous indifference to man of the sullen river in flood. If the book has a fault (and it’s more a fault of the actual weather) it’s that the last few chapters are rather gray– the story of Meyer’s coping with high water, poor weather, and the industrial nature of the southern reaches of the river.
When you finish, you’ll want to sponge out the boat, find a hot shower, dry clothes and meal, and await the next adventure.
The book is available at Traveler’s online bookstore, at our office and from other booksellers.