A Sense of Place: River Passage

A woman remembers running the rapids.

By Janet Blixt

Nearly home to Duluth on Interstate 35, I see familiar landmarks. The exit signs for Carlton and Jay Cooke State Park appear on my right. To my left, a casino blinks orange and red. Ahead, the white steam of the Cloquet paper mill clouds the horizon.

The highway makes a wide sweep to the northeast and crosses the St. Louis River. Out of habit, I glance downstream at the current as I drive over the bridge. Here, nearly 20 years ago, I first explored the rapids of the St. Louis in my whitewater kayak. That was a day I remember well--memorable, as firsts and lasts, beginnings and endings, in one's life tend to be. C

One bright May morning, a handful of kayakers paddled down a section of the St. Louis River none of us had ever seen before. Its rapids and waterfalls had recently been mapped by other paddlers. I remember putting on my helmet, climbing into my boat, and stuffing gum into my dry mouth. Every time I paddled this river, it would be with a mix of excitement and trepidation, but never so much as on that first trip.

At the start of the run, the river ran broad and smooth, a quarter mile across. The river changed character frequently as we descended toward Lake Superior. The current spread out through wide boulder-bed rapids and funneled into several canyons where the water converged into chains of waves.

Twice, the river split around wooded islands. Among the spruce, birch, and aspen, an occasional white pine rose above the shoreline. We spotted eagles and great blue herons. Almost-vertical piles of gray slate cropped up everywhere, forming ledges, waterfalls, and rapids. With the exception of a water level station and a power line that crossed the river, we saw little sign of humans.

As I paddled, I often wondered: Who else has been here? What was their business? What set the rhythm and purpose of their day? I knew that the St. Louis had been a major waterway, connecting the Great Lakes to the interior of North America, used for hundreds of years by the Ojibwe and Dakota, French and British fur traders, missionaries and explorers. French explorers in the 1700s had named the river for King Louis IX. The Ojibwe called the river Kitchigumizibi, the Lake Superior River.

As I floated down the river, tucked snugly in my boat, I could imagine Ojibwe Indians and French-Canadian voyageurs lugging packs and canoes through the woods to avoid the very rapids I was paddling for adventure.

These long-ago travelers trekked the Grand Portage, a nine-mile detour circumventing the waterfalls and rugged terrain of the St. Louis River. In good weather, the portage would take three to five days; in bad weather, a full week. This route linked the St. Louis River and Lake Superior with the Mississippi River and Lake Vermilion.

The Grand Portage was broken up by 19 pauses, or rests. Each voyageur, carrying roughly 200 pounds, would make several trips back and forth between these rests.

Maple Pause, one of these now-overgrown ancient rests, was located in a sugarbush area about a mile west of the river. Travelers on the Grand Portage described its location as nearly opposite the highest falls--what paddlers now call Electric Ledge--a challenging riverwide drop where the current roars over tilted ledges of slate and into turbulent pools below. I could understand why travelers in birch-bark canoes worked to avoid the falls.

For kayakers, the only place to get safely down the falls was right of center on a tongue of water about as wide as the length of my boat. Paddle too far left and you encountered more rocks than water. Too far right, a churning hole would toss your boat around and spit it out like a toy.

Huddling in an eddy above the falls that first day, I watched each paddler drop over the edge and disappear. A log sticking out of the channel marked the spot where I needed to go. "Paddle like hell," I muttered as I windmilled toward the edge. I glanced to my right as I slipped down the chute. I saw a powerful vortex of black and foamy water, turning over and over on itself. "Paddle like hell," I chanted, making it upright to the bottom of the falls where grinning fellow paddlers clustered in a calm pool.

Often, I would make it down Electric Ledge, only to be flipped over by the waves. Struggling upside down in the surging water, I would pop out of my boat. I could feel the rocks underwater poke at my legs. I would hold on to my boat and paddle as I kicked over to the big eddy, working to keep from going downstream to more rocks and rapids. Electric Ledge became my tension point in the run.

Eventually, I learned to trust the power of water and use it to my advantage. I learned to stretch out low over the moving water with my paddle and lean on it. Using my knees, I would tilt my boat in the same direction. Head down on my shoulder, I pushed off the water. It was a commitment to something I didn't quite believe would work. I did it anyway. In a matter of seconds, I could feel the solid water pushing me back up. That quick movement became an automatic, necessary part of my whitewater paddling.

Sometimes my brace didn't work. The water at the bottom of Electric Ledge was too frothy to hold me up. Over I would go, my heart pounding. One of the goals in paddling whitewater is to stay in your boat; it's much safer than swimming. I knew how to roll; I had the technique down pat in calm water; I had taught others how to do it. But hanging upside down in murky water, knocked about by the current, I would bail out. I had to work to keep a level head and dismiss the panic in order to stay in my boat, set up my paddle, and sweep back to the surface.

At Electric Ledge I did my first combat roll--knocked over by a wave and then reaching up with my paddle to twist back to daylight. A photo in my office reminds me of these struggles: It shows a blue-sky summer day; I am sitting in my kayak in an eddy at the bottom of Electric Ledge, holding my paddle high in jubilation above the silver shining river.

Nowadays, my whitewater kayak lies in semiretirement in my back yard. Though I haven't paddled the river in years, I still enjoy it on foot. My friends and I have a fall tradition of hiking the St. Louis, then feasting on an extravagant potluck. We gather at a house in Thomson near the river, cars pulling in from the Twin Cities. Expectations of a relaxing day and good company season the air with high spirits.

Following the trail, sometimes hauling wide-eyed babies and tiny dogs, we make a chain of laughter and talk. After crossing Otter Creek near the old railroad bridge, we climb up along the south riverbank. We always pause at the first high rocky ridge, where we pick wintergreen to chew, admire the view, and wait for stragglers.

Looking down, I see the river turn eastward, making a broad bend that builds up to another set of rapids that churns under the swinging bridge in Jay Cooke State Park. The river has miles to go before it meets Lake Superior.

Watching the river flow, I miss riding low in the water, immersed in the fast-moving current, waves hitting my face, a knot of excitement in my stomach for the always unpredictable wildness ahead.

The river, of course, is oblivious to my nostalgia. My affection and regard for this river began on my first trip. It was here I learned to paddle well. I learned to trust the power of the water, for its current would work for me or against me. I made lifelong friends on this river; our adventures creating a common history. And as I paddled, my imagination and curiosity were sparked by stories of earlier travelers.

Sometimes, a day on the river would expand to fill a year with its intensity and richness. The river's wildness seemed to slow everything down, a counterpoint to the fast-moving current. Every time I pulled my boat out at Thomson Dam, I ended my passage into a space and time that seemed somehow set apart from the modern world.

Janet Blixt is a free-lance writer from Duluth.