NOTES FROM BOOMERANG CREEK
Evening on Missouri River recalls friend’s cross-country adventure
By CATHY SALTER
Published Monday, October 23, 2006
Recently, Kit and I drove to Cooper’s Landing with three friends. We sat at a table near the circle of people gathered around an open fire pit. The warmth of the blazing fire had attracted most of the folks who had come to spend the crisp fall evening near the river’s edge, enjoy a plate of Chim’s spicy Thai food and listen to local singer Lee Ruth.
Dressed in layers to keep us warm, we turned to face the river as the October sun slipped down west of Perche Creek.
A rainbow marked the sun’s path and guided my eyes to the confluence of the creek at a gentle meandering curve in the Missouri River. From there, my thoughts traveled back to a river voyage, a gutsy little boat and the book that relates its story.
Three years ago, author and Boone County resident William Lewis Trogdon - know nationally and internationally by his pen name, William Least Heat-Moon - presented the Boone County Historical Society with his C-Dory craft and a generous $10,000 gift. The boat that he had named Nikawa, an Osage word meaning "river horse," was powered by two Honda outboard motors.
Since then, the society has worked diligently to raise another $75,000 to design and construct a permanent home for the boat that Heat-Moon describes as his "sweet little river horse."
"Just imagine," the author says of Nikawa, "a Maine lobster boat crossed with a turn-of-the-century harbor tug."
The River-Horse Pavilion, an outdoor, all-weather pavilion housing the boat, is located just north of the parking lot on the grounds of the Walters-Boone County Historical Museum. The pavilion will officially open after a dedication ceremony and talk by the author at 3 p.m. on Nov. 4.
Visitors from near and far will be able to view the C-Dory craft that made a transcontinental voyage by inland waterways - the journey that was the plotline for Heat-Moon’s best-selling book, "River-Horse: A Voyage Across America," published in 1999. The pavilion will also house historical and contemporary exhibits relating to the Missouri River in Boone County.
Sitting by the river just below Perche Creek, Kit and I recalled a chilly spring morning in April 1995 when we drove to Will Trogdon’s home.
The author and his photographer friend, Bob Lindholm, were set to leave with Nikawa in tow. We wished them Godspeed as they headed for the East Coast to begin what would be a journey of more than 5,000 miles going from New York Harbor to the Pacific Ocean. It was a moment Trogden had been planning for years.
Twenty years earlier, Will had driven alone across America and recorded his adventures in "Blue Highways." In this earlier book, the author noted "the web of faint azure lines, a varicose scribbling" in his atlas.
"They were rivers," he would later explain in "River-Horse." "I began tracing a finger over those twistings in search of a way to cross America in a boat."
On his 1995 river voyage, Trogdon - accompanied by various co-pilots he would collectively characterize as Pilotis in "River-Horse" - not only followed the course of the 1803-1806 Lewis and Clark Expedition, he also navigated from New York and New Jersey up the Hudson River and along part of the Erie Canal, across Lake Erie to the source of the Ohio River at Pittsburgh.
From there, like the earlier explorers, he continued on to the Ohio’s confluence with the Mississippi River west of Cairo, Ill.
Looking out over the Missouri River, Kit and I recalled two episodes penned by the author in "River-Horse." The first was the author’s description of Nikawa’s passage on Lake Erie, just west of Buffalo.
"We were being pitched around like a couple of beans in a bowl, but we were yet afloat, the most beautiful word I knew. The console over the instruments tore loose, the screws ripped out, but the welldeck was wet only from spray, and the motors held steady."
The second recalled a calmer moment aboard Nikawa near Ste. Genevieve.
"Pilotis, relaxing in the late sun, said, ‘When this little ol excursion trip isn’t beating our brains out, it gives us one sweet and grand tour.’ "
The Boone County Historical Society is proud to give Nikawa a permanent home in Boone County - the place where her journey was first imagined. Like Lewis and Clark’s expedition, William Least Heat-Moon’s voyage across America by boat links Boone County with American ambition and desire to connect both sides of the country through the rivers and richness of the heartland.
Through maps and exhibits in the pavilion, the museum will continue to explore aspects of Boone County’s geographic, historic and economic ties to the Missouri River.
The public is invited to the pavilion’s dedication ceremony at 3 p.m. on Nov. 4. A limited number of hand-engraved copies of "River-Horse" signed by the author are available at the museum. Be on deck for what promises to be a splendid event.
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Cathy Salter is a geographer and columnist who lives with her husband, Kit, in southern Boone County at a place they call Boomerang Creek.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For full text, visit http://www.columbiatribune.com/2006/Oct ... ife003.asp
Evening on Missouri River recalls friend’s cross-country adventure
By CATHY SALTER
Published Monday, October 23, 2006
Recently, Kit and I drove to Cooper’s Landing with three friends. We sat at a table near the circle of people gathered around an open fire pit. The warmth of the blazing fire had attracted most of the folks who had come to spend the crisp fall evening near the river’s edge, enjoy a plate of Chim’s spicy Thai food and listen to local singer Lee Ruth.
Dressed in layers to keep us warm, we turned to face the river as the October sun slipped down west of Perche Creek.
A rainbow marked the sun’s path and guided my eyes to the confluence of the creek at a gentle meandering curve in the Missouri River. From there, my thoughts traveled back to a river voyage, a gutsy little boat and the book that relates its story.
Three years ago, author and Boone County resident William Lewis Trogdon - know nationally and internationally by his pen name, William Least Heat-Moon - presented the Boone County Historical Society with his C-Dory craft and a generous $10,000 gift. The boat that he had named Nikawa, an Osage word meaning "river horse," was powered by two Honda outboard motors.
Since then, the society has worked diligently to raise another $75,000 to design and construct a permanent home for the boat that Heat-Moon describes as his "sweet little river horse."
"Just imagine," the author says of Nikawa, "a Maine lobster boat crossed with a turn-of-the-century harbor tug."
The River-Horse Pavilion, an outdoor, all-weather pavilion housing the boat, is located just north of the parking lot on the grounds of the Walters-Boone County Historical Museum. The pavilion will officially open after a dedication ceremony and talk by the author at 3 p.m. on Nov. 4.
Visitors from near and far will be able to view the C-Dory craft that made a transcontinental voyage by inland waterways - the journey that was the plotline for Heat-Moon’s best-selling book, "River-Horse: A Voyage Across America," published in 1999. The pavilion will also house historical and contemporary exhibits relating to the Missouri River in Boone County.
Sitting by the river just below Perche Creek, Kit and I recalled a chilly spring morning in April 1995 when we drove to Will Trogdon’s home.
The author and his photographer friend, Bob Lindholm, were set to leave with Nikawa in tow. We wished them Godspeed as they headed for the East Coast to begin what would be a journey of more than 5,000 miles going from New York Harbor to the Pacific Ocean. It was a moment Trogden had been planning for years.
Twenty years earlier, Will had driven alone across America and recorded his adventures in "Blue Highways." In this earlier book, the author noted "the web of faint azure lines, a varicose scribbling" in his atlas.
"They were rivers," he would later explain in "River-Horse." "I began tracing a finger over those twistings in search of a way to cross America in a boat."
On his 1995 river voyage, Trogdon - accompanied by various co-pilots he would collectively characterize as Pilotis in "River-Horse" - not only followed the course of the 1803-1806 Lewis and Clark Expedition, he also navigated from New York and New Jersey up the Hudson River and along part of the Erie Canal, across Lake Erie to the source of the Ohio River at Pittsburgh.
From there, like the earlier explorers, he continued on to the Ohio’s confluence with the Mississippi River west of Cairo, Ill.
Looking out over the Missouri River, Kit and I recalled two episodes penned by the author in "River-Horse." The first was the author’s description of Nikawa’s passage on Lake Erie, just west of Buffalo.
"We were being pitched around like a couple of beans in a bowl, but we were yet afloat, the most beautiful word I knew. The console over the instruments tore loose, the screws ripped out, but the welldeck was wet only from spray, and the motors held steady."
The second recalled a calmer moment aboard Nikawa near Ste. Genevieve.
"Pilotis, relaxing in the late sun, said, ‘When this little ol excursion trip isn’t beating our brains out, it gives us one sweet and grand tour.’ "
The Boone County Historical Society is proud to give Nikawa a permanent home in Boone County - the place where her journey was first imagined. Like Lewis and Clark’s expedition, William Least Heat-Moon’s voyage across America by boat links Boone County with American ambition and desire to connect both sides of the country through the rivers and richness of the heartland.
Through maps and exhibits in the pavilion, the museum will continue to explore aspects of Boone County’s geographic, historic and economic ties to the Missouri River.
The public is invited to the pavilion’s dedication ceremony at 3 p.m. on Nov. 4. A limited number of hand-engraved copies of "River-Horse" signed by the author are available at the museum. Be on deck for what promises to be a splendid event.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cathy Salter is a geographer and columnist who lives with her husband, Kit, in southern Boone County at a place they call Boomerang Creek.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For full text, visit http://www.columbiatribune.com/2006/Oct ... ife003.asp