Dispatches from Nikawa

Well, it turns out that River Horse is a very interesting book! It's a travelogue of sorts, being the chronicle of William Least Heat-Moon's journey across America by watercraft (mainly his C-dory he has named Nikawa, an Osage word meaning river-horse).  He starts at the mouth of the Hudson River and ends at the mouth of the Columbia River, staying on rivers the whole way except for two places where he portages his C-dory for some miles, in New York and in the Rocky Mountains.

So far I've read about the Hudson River, the Erie Canal, Lake Erie, and the Allegheny River. The author describes the trip down (or up) each waterway, bringing in history and geography about the river and the surrounding areas. The first surprise I got was that the Erie Canal is still open, although no longer being used for commercial shipping.  There were interesting descriptions of how the locks work and what the towns along the way look like.

I was also surprised to learn that Lake Erie was rough sailing.  Heat-Moon and his pilot had such a tough time going across it, in fact, that they decided to get out of it sooner than they had planned.  The reason, apparently, is its relative shallowness, along with the winds that rake across it constantly.

As someone used to traveling by car or plane or train, I was struck by the different perspective one gets from a watercraft--seeing the backsides of towns, as it were.  And also striking was the realization that the country is no longer set up for water transport as it was long ago; the car has taken over as our means of getting from one place to the next, and all the commerce is geared toward attracting motor-vehicle-borne travelers.  I would imagine that in the old days, billboards and other signs could be found just outside a town, but facing the river!

Heat-Moon gives us all the details of the trip, from the technical aspects of sailing through locks to his more poetically-expressed thoughts about what he sees.  He's a man who loves words, so he uses plenty of them, yet I never get the sense that his prose is wordy in the pejorative sense. And since I love words too, I don't mind!

Next is the Ohio, which is a long river with many towns and cities along the way. Should be interesting!  Stay tuned for more dispatches from Nikawa.