The old river

I'm really enjoying "Up on the River" (John Madsen). He writes quite lyrically - I can picture the upper reaches of the Mississippi even though I've never seen them, from his description of how he canoed down it with his daughter.

It's the kind of book I love: he interweaves his current experiences and nature-writing about the river with history of it, with information that allows you to kind of situation what you're reading in your mind, fit it in with other stuff you know. (In a way, he's a bit like Simon Winchester, another writer I enjoy).

The book makes me happy, because in along with the new things I am learning, there are the occasional familiar names. He speaks of Henry Schoolcraft, probably the European-American with the likeliest claim on finding the river's headwaters. Schoolcraft County was one of the counties in the Upper Peninsula that we drove through to visit my grandmother. (It was the next one east of Delta County, where she lived).

And he speaks of some of the other early explorers, names I dimly remember from some of my American History classes.

But there's other information in the book - the sort of odd little facts that stick in my mind, and, if I'm lucky, there will somewhere be a time where it's appropriate for me to trot them out and then people will look at me like I'm really smart because I happen to know that.

For example: Lake Itasca, the putative head of the Mississippi? Is not named for a Native American word (Itasca does not occur in any Native language in the area), but rather, it's a contraction of veritas caput, meaning "true head" in Latin, indicating that Schoolcraft believed this was the true headwaters.

He also cites the origin of the phrase "bull pines," which is snicker-worthy, at least if you're in touch with your inner 12-year-old:

"...lofty crowns of white pines that were already a half-century old when Schoolcraft first passed them - the kind of trees called 'bull pines' by some timberjacks. (I once asked an old Swede woodman why this was so, and he roared with laughter. 'Vy? Because dey ain't never been cut yet, dat's vy!')"

(It could be that I find that funny in part, because my northern Michigan relatives - despite their British/Scots/French heritage - lived in a heavily Scandinavian area and their senses of humor were influenced by the Swedish and Finnish people living there. And Madsen's reproduction of the accent there is actually something you still do occasionally hear up that way. Or "over by dere," as we'd say. (I used to be able to mimic a Northern Michigan accent pretty well. I think it's been too long since I've been up there for me to be able to slip into it again)

Madsen is literary, in addition to having known the human and natural history of the area. In one place he speaks of being upset about something and "tarnishing the welkin" (cursing at the sky, and I only knew what "welkin" was from having read it in Shakespeare). What a great phrase that is.

He wrote that although the Lower Mississippi certainly has its beauty and interest, he prefers the upper reaches:

"[the bayou reaches of the river] are just not the same as our upper reaches where the River cuts deep into bedrock.. It is country that stands on its hind legs and shows its limestone muscles, rising sublimely over a river that flows in broad running lakes and the tangled multitude of sloughs, cuts, and side channels that wander through a fastness of wooded islands and floodplain forest"

(Now that I reread that passage, I strongly suspect that Aldo Leopold - another favorite writer of mine - had to be an influence on Madsen.)

Madsen used unusual turns of phrase - at one point, he speaks of canoeing in the uppermost reaches of the river: "an infant river that purled along happily, chuckling to itself now and then..." (Of course, as a knitter, that phrase caught my attention).

Sadly, there will be no more from John Madsen other than what is now published (He died in 1995). But he does have several other books, including "Where the Sky Began," which is about the prairie and one of those books I always meant to read but never yet got to (now that I see how Madsen writes, I will be getting to it).

I know some scientists might dislike the floweriness of his language, or his way of meandering from subject to subject. But his writing cheers and comforts me - I can picture the places where he has been (and now I kind of want to go and see the headwaters of the Mississippi, something I never even contemplated before). And his writing makes me more curious about the natural world and our history in it.