OutdoorsIncJul03

The wilderness over yonder

by Elmore Holmes
July, 2004

     Where I live the Mississippi River forms the state line between Arkansas and Tennessee, but it's more than just a geopolitical boundary. The opposite banks of the Mississippi at Memphis are two different worlds.
     The Tennessee bank within the Memphis city limits is, well... for lack of a better word, bleak.
     Now, don't get me wrong. I believe there's beauty in every landscape, and over the years many features of this riverbank have caught my eye. And the city deserves credit for revitalizing the riverfront in the last ten or fifteen years, developing a nice riverwalk and a lovely greenbelt park.
     But this section of the Tennessee bank has a couple of drawbacks that I'm not sure anybody can rectify.
     The city of Memphis is situated on the outside of a large bend in the river, and our friends at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have lined the bank with concrete revetments and tons upon tons of mined rock to stop the river from eroding the bank and encroaching upon the city, as rivers naturally would like to do.
     Furthermore, the city sits atop the great Chickasaw Bluff, which follows the Big Muddy's basin from Kentucky down to Mississippi but rarely overlooks the river itself. The early settlers of this region founded a community here because it was one of the few points where the bluff did meet the river, meaning that they could be next to the river but safe from its impulse to flood for weeks on end. So it's a great place for a city. But the bluff puts a limit on what areas a paddler can explore: there are no low-lying areas that get inundated, and therefore open to paddling, during high-water periods.

Elmore's columns appear monthly at the
Outdoors, Inc.,website:
www.outdoorsinc.com

     So lately I've been paying more and more attention to the far side of the river. The Arkansas side consists of forested bottomland, sparsely populated because of the annual flooding. Because it's on the inside of the bend, the Corps has paid little attention to it other than to build a few dikes here and there to direct the flow for the barge traffic. Eddies and slack water are plentiful here. And when the river rises above 30 feet on the Memphis gauge, it spills out of its banks and spreads westward for a mile or more, opening up a whole new world for explorers in non-motorized craft.
     Even though I am no nature expert, I have become more closely acquainted with the denizens of this river environment as time has gone by.
     Blue and green heron can be found all up and down the Mississippi and its tributaries, but they seem particularly abundant along the Arkansas bank across from Memphis. As I paddle up the bank, hopping from one eddy to the next, I often see a half-dozen or more of these birds taking flight when they see me approach. Their long, crooked necks and impressive wingspan make them hard to miss. Other birds that hang around the Mississippi are the red-winged blackbird and the interior least tern, an endangered species that nests on the flood-prone sandbars.
     Turtles number in the thousands along the Arkansas bank. They like to sun themselves atop driftwood logs, which are much more common on the Arkansas side than on the Tennessee side because of the gentler current. I've seen as many as a dozen turtles lined up on one log, and I always get a kick out of the way they file off into the water when they see me coming. And here's a fun fact: some species of turtle have a 120-year life span.
     Where there are trees and quiet water, there are beavers. The beavers tend to stay out of sight in the daytime, but occasionally I see one swimming along. Beavers are given to slapping their paddle-shaped tails on the surface of the water, making a loud popping sound. I used to think that was really cute, that it was their way of frolicking about and having a good time in the water, but I've since learned that their tail-slap is a warning signal to other beavers that danger (of the human variety) is coming. Oh well, I still think it's cute.
     Most people think of snakes when they think of swampy bottomland, but in many years of exploring the Mississippi I have encountered very few. The most common poisonous snakes in this area are the copperhead and the water moccasin. Copperheads are timid and flee for cover whenever humans approach. Moccasins have the reputation of being aggressive, but as of this writing I have had no such encounter with one. I'll keep you posted…
     Few people are aware that our part of the Mississippi River basin, particularly the sparsely-populated Arkansas side, is home to coyotes. Several years ago my friend Joe and I were paddling upriver in mid-winter along the Arkansas bank between the Frisco Bridge and the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, and we saw a coyote standing there looking rather forlorn on that dark, drizzly day.
     As a woodworker, I take note of the tree canopy wherever I go. Where the Arkansas bank has not been plowed under for farming, dense forest prevails. Cottonwoods and willows are the dominant species. Occasionally the Mississippi basin supplies my woodworking needs: a couple of years ago, I found a cottonwood felled by high water and lugged home a section of its trunk for bowl carving. Mostly, however, I just enjoy the shade. The summertime heat and humidity can be oppressive here, and I welcome any relief the bottomland forest can offer.
     Because the Arkansas shore lies low, it floods frequently, and when the high water recedes, it drains back into the river via a number of small creeks. As I paddle along the bank, these creeks deliver a rush of clear water that contrasts sharply with the muddy water of the Mississippi. Sometimes I just have to stop and gaze downward, mesmerized by this ongoing clash of sediment-free and sediment-loaded waters. Fishermen gravitate toward the mouths of these creeks, hoping to catch those fish that seek relief from the silt.
     If I weren't such a busy guy, I think I could spend all day lounging on one of the sandbars that the river has deposited in the slack water of the Arkansas side. There's one sandbar, dubbed "West Palm Beach" by local boaters, that affords a wonderful view of the M-shaped Hernando DeSoto Bridge with the Memphis skyline in the background. Another little beach I like is on the far side of the giant Loosahatchie Bar, where one can sit back and listen to the water flow over a Corps of Engineers dike known as Holmes's Ledge (after an intrepid Mississippi River explorer).
     Whenever I'm out on the river with a less-experienced paddler, I try to point out the phenomena that are common to all rivers, and eddies are a central feature. Over on the Arkansas side, where the Corps has not straitjacketed the entire riverbank, the river has carved "hollow" places in the bank where eddies swirl. They're not the strong eddies with crisp, well-defined eddy-lines that one finds on a whitewater river, but they're eddies just the same, and an ideal lesson for the greenhorn paddler that all river water does not flow straight downstream.

* * *

I would guess that I have spent 90 percent of my days on the Mississippi River near the Tennessee shore. When I get together with my training buddies, we have a standard course along this bank that we have done many times. It's a good, reliable course that works well for us: it offers us several different kinds of water to paddle on, and since we typically run on tight schedules, we like having a familiar route we can complete in a predictable length of time.
But all work and no play makes Elmore a dull boy, and we can't have that. I enjoy going out and training hard, but I don't want my paddling to be nothing but training. I think it's important sometimes to go out and relax and take in the beauty of the places we paddle. For me, the far side of the Mississippi affords a captivating glimpse of the world that lies beyond the pavement.

Click here to return to the Paddling Page