Big Muddy Adventures Ruskey and Clark Expedition 2002

Tuesday, October 29
JR from near Oswego, Montana

dear reader, here are a couple of entries direct from my morning writing, which is usually done in the predawn light, around 5am, next to a fire on the bank of the river, i hope you enjoy this. before this transcription, let me take the opportunity to thank my sister jenny, and my nephew, her son ian, who brought me birthday steaks, a bottle of wine, and presents: a box of smoked salmon, a flannel liner for my sleeping bag, home-made granols, and then left all of her extra food with us. let me thank myy sister mary for all of the warm winter clothing she sent me with. let me thank my sister lori for the birthday hat she knit from two different kinds of wool and has not left my head since receiving it, and some woold socks. its good to have loving sisters in this world, especially as winter approaches.

gentle north breeze, the wind was blowing hard last night making the trees groan and at times scream & moan, but now it has quieted down, there was a sunrise and now layers of darker clouds are drifting in and the sun is a pale obelisk seen through a fuzzy atmosphere, there is a distinct layer of blueness, a pale ashen blue, laying on the horizon away from the sun -

the beavers didn't swim last night but the geese flew, huge flocks of geese with hundreds of voices in the marching chorus, small flocks of geese with just a few voices, i could pick out individualsd just by their voices, some had a little tremolo, others abrupt screams, a few had a little riff with five syllables, what a feeling it must be to be on the river, the weather getting colder and colder, the ice beginning to form in the still water, the hunters and their booming sticks getting closer, circling in, driving their pickups through the fields, every bush, every tree might produce a crashing boom from behind it, then the winds change, the clouds come pressuring down, snow begins to fall -

at first the wind drops, then curls in little harbors made by the trees, in the cut banks of the river, nautiluses can be seen carved into the water surface, as if hesitating, uncertain in its direction, the weathermen describe it as Òlight and variable," the geese congregate on the narrow sandbars and the shallow places at the heads of the islands, yelling and screaming, mike and i are paddling along looking for a good campsite, then it happens -

at first in short bursts, gusts of air, the cottonwoods rustle here and there in short bursts, gusts of air, the cottonwoods rattle here and there in response, fields of ripples flush the steely grey river complexion, the gusts get stronger and more sustained, and then, perhaps its from some distant stand of cottonwoods across the river, a loud roaring can be heard, the river ripples turn to waves and shortly later begin to whitecap, cold blasts shake the cottonwoods incessantly and the russian olive howls, and our faces and chests are hit with the full force of the north wind, and then its on -

the geese chorus rises in intensity and you can hear flocks screaming and making commotion in many quarters, then you hear the rush of air as hundreds of beating wings can be heard, like an intense gust, the sound roars, even above the powerful north wind, a rush of air and the flock is afloat, risign above the treeline, there is some group confusion and then arguments about which direction to take, stragglers cut off in various groups and then later rejoin the majority, there is much screaming back and forth -

who is more upset: he who takes his own direction or he who stays with the flock?

mike and i find ourselves cornered by the wind, and like the geese paddle with uncertainty to find our camp, darkness settled in and a snowstorm approaching, eventually we backpaddle upstream a mile, maybe less, its hard to tell at night, back around the point, a landing i had before noticed, nothing more than some trails the beaver made where the bank had collapsed, the bank top criss-crossed with fallen cottonwoods, our second camp made by beavers, we haul our gear up the muddy embankment anbd find some shelter in the scrubby bushes and tall grasses growing at the feet of the cottonwood forest, a thin forest, a lot of space between the trees, but thick enough to break the wind and afford us a campfire that doesn't blow smoke in our faces, our tents up, our supper of missouri river garlic chicken cooked,l we can now enjoy a cup of tea and still the flocks of geese are passing and we can't see them, but they are clearly heard -

they sing because of the voyage ahead, they sing to be flying again, the mass exodus fleeing the cold, fleeing the hunteres,, fleeing the freeze, fleeing the river beginning to become ice, they sing to be flying again, singing for the sheer joy of taking to wing, not alone, but with your partner, your wife for life, your faithful husband, your kids, your extended family and friends all taking to wing and screaming and singing, the group dynamics are fascinating -

they ride the wind until they reach exhaustion and then they descend (after much fighting and arguing amongst themselves, stragglers sluffing off in all directionsw, some want to rest, others want to keep going), they settle again to the earth, perhaps on some section or tributary of the North Platte, or some muddy floodplain in the valley of the Kansas, the Kaw, the Little Missouri - who is the leader and who follows? all leaders eventually fall to the rear, drafting one another across the sky in the v-lines of a canoe passing through water, their wings fingering unseen air currents and propelling themselves forward with the wind, faster than the wind! they race the north wind, the arctic storm front, the jet stream, what the weather forecasters are naming "the Big A," they race the wind across the great plains, the praries, over the ridges, over the darkened plateaus and mesas, overe the Black Hills, the Bearpaws, the Little Rockies, over the Whitecliffs, the Missouri Breaks, over the Bighorn, the Yellowstone, the Musselshell, the Milk -

later, after mike has gone to sleep, i sip tea and listen, my mind is wandering far off with their song, back to my home and a lady with a lamp burning low on the fifth chickasaw bluff - then i bank the coals around the coffeepot and i too go to my tent and lay for a long time in the warmth of my sleeping bag and lay listening to the cottonwoods howl and the songs of the high altitude travellers above, pickinbg out individual voices in the choir, tryind to determine what makes one voice distinct from the other -

Monday, October 28
JR from Fraser, MT

wind out of the east again this morning, we've been paddling with a triple whammy, oncoming storms, wind out of the east, and cloud cover, its the clouds that keep us from the sun, our only source of heat besides the campfires we have been making on the side of the river - the river is starting to freeze in the back waters, the edges of the channel are beginning to freeze into its muddy banks, its time to be getting south and still we are winding our way endlessly east less than a hundred miles south of the canadian border -

some geese calling this morning and i hear ducks so we are not left completely alone, the wind making the cottonwood leaves, now withered and brown and dry, cluck with a melancholy clattering, i hear one of the big flocks of geese taking to wing somewhere downstream, i feel the cold wind through my scarf, hitting my neck, my feet are starting to get a chill -

its a grim day, overcast and heavy, the world expressed in gray tones, some yellow showing through on the grassy plain, the whistle of the northern railroad begins to blow somewhere through the trees, more geese are honking, and now the weight of this journey is hitting me, i feel alive, in the present moment, that is one of the beauties of the snowstorm, it always forces you into the present here and now -

a fog rolling down the river and then being blown up it - with the low cloud ceiling the mountains are hid and now it looks no different here than the mississippi delta, i keep mistaking the deep throttled rumbling of deisel freight train engines to be tugboats, they both have the same rumbling, its a liquid sound itself somehow -

the river here is making the same luxurious loops that it does several thousand miles downstream in the mississippi delta, perhaps the pattern upon which the loops and meandeers of the mississippi are built are found here in montana - i know one thing for certain, there is a generous proportion of montana mud in the mississippi delta.

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Saturday, October 26
JR from Fort Peck, MT

The Missouri Breaks brought us a lot of wildlife, wind, cold weather and spectacular scenery, in places it looked like the deepest mountains of glacier national park, but instead of shale and granite, these mountains were composed of layers of sedimentary mud, sandstone, and gray earth. Grey is the predominate color, all tones of gray, a dark gray almost like a coal, a creamy gray, a cinnamon gray, a reddish gay, at one point i was looking at a series of lumpy prominances (coming to a rounded top instead of pointed) and i wrote in my sketch book "purple," but then i looked back and saw with new eyes that it was just another tone of gray. Is this gray depressing? Not in the least. its not New York City gray, or the gray of Dallas freeways, but a million tones of it, laid in layers, intertwined with layers of yellow, ochre, some soft oranges, some reddish earth tones, and then covered with vegetation, and sculpted into a wild landscape: deep intricately carved canyons, messy landslides, layers melting into one another. the land is carved by water predominately, it seems, althoughh the wind must certainly have a hand in it.

The cold has been miserable at times, mostly just an annoyance. when will it be unacceptable? when i can no longer paint. when i can't do my work then i cease to of use on this expedition. my watercolors have been freezing, i can't paint at night, in the morning, after sundown. even at mid-day they have been freezing in the shade. fortunately i have pencils and oil pastels. i ordered two fresh boxes of pastels from my friends at Memphis Art Supply. Thank you Karen! Thank you Tom!

the annoyance of cold is most noticeable in the morning when you're trying to get up out of your warm and cozy sleeping bag, and it just seems so miserable to leave it, put on layer after layer of clothing in cramped quarters, pull on icy boots stiff with frozen mud.

i have been trying to remember those furnace hot days of july when we were out in the mississippi sun building the dugout, swinging the adze in the delta sun, wishing for the cold, or at least some cloud cover - with no luck.

Wednesday, the 23rd, we still had some head wind, but it was a gentle breeze, and we paddled steady for five hours, at the end of the day found a camp in the wash of a coulee entering the river from the southeast, a steep ridge above us yielded wind protection. out of the wind it felt immediately warmer, and we enjoyed the unusual layout of our camp, the land around us dropping in grassy escarpments to the river's edge, collasping in landslides and layers of sculpted mud & sandstone. above us were situated three prominant pyramids, mountains coming sharply to points. so we imagined we were in Egypt below the great pyramids at Cheops. We were at mile 106 of the Wild & Scenic section.

A Bald Eagle flew out of the coulee at our approach, and then i noticed two deer feeding on the shore opposite, so it seemed like it might be a good camp. i always take the presence of wildlife to be a good sign.

Thursday the 24th of October, started out cloudy and cold, but the wind had almost died. It was ideal paddling & painting weather, because i could paddle along until i was met with some striking image, some particular arrangement of mountains, mesas, canyons, muddy river banks, and the river itself, reflecting all true to its own way of making reflections. then it was possible to cease paddling and sketch, do pastels, or paint, (warmth permitting).

The landscape today you could describe in triangles: all the coulees, ridges, escarpments, mountain tops and valleys seemed to form the vertices of various triangles, all haphazardly placed one over and adjacent to one another. This was interesting: the next day the land would be more rounded, not at all so geometric, the round places resolving themselves into long extensions to the horizon, the lines of the tops of the mesas gently rolling down to the horizon's edge, undulating as assorted other ridges fall down to the river.

Bighorn Sheep! today we were greeted with three different herds of Bighorn Sheep. Is the proper term here a "flock," or is it a "herd?" So the Water Ram finally meets its namesake in the wild. Indeed, they seemed to be quite untroubled by our presence, and our canoes overloaded with gear in brightly colored drybags. It is the rut, so the males were all jockeying for position, clashing horns, following the ewes around like heartbroken men, generally uninterested in anything else about them. Only the lambs were attentive. They paused in their grazing to look up at us with curiosity, and watched us for a while. Eventually they too seemed to lose interest and resumed pulling up the grasses down by the water's edge, tall and still green. I saw a lot of rams chasing ewes, but none of the females were submitting. Women are the same everywhere, and men as well.

by the way, i need to share a funny but useful saying my nephew Ian shared with me the week previous. it comes from one of my other nephews, Albert, and goes something like this: "If you can't tie the knot, tie a lot."

We camped below a sheer white cliff which fell to the river's edge, a narrow shelf of dried mud and grasses found at their base, on this shelf we built our camp, witha fine view of the sweep of the river around the bend, the distant mesas and grand plateaus we had just paddled through visible one direction, the sheer white cliffs the other.

Friday the 25th we made an early start and paddled without break five and a half hours to reach Kipp Landing at the Robinsonville Bridge (24 miles). Here we lifted our work horses, our canoes, out of the water and i got on the highway and stuck out my thumb for a ride. i had my paddle still in my hand, i don't know why, i suppose a riverman never should let go of his paddle.

Six vehicles later, about fifteen minutes, Brett Koppel pulled to a stop in his 4x4 deisel extended cab truck. "There are two of us and we need to get to Ft. Peck," i explained. (we were shuttling around the reservoir, as we will do around all reservoirs on the river). He was silent for a moment, as if gauging the situation, which must have struck him unusual, to say the least. "Hop in!" he said a moment later. Later, we were driving down the highway at 70 miles an hour, the canoes softly bouncing to the rhythm of the road in the truck, a mountain of gear on top, and Brett's cell phone rang. It was his wife, wondering where he was. "Guess what?" he asked her, "I've picked up Lewis and Clark!"

Wednesday, October 23,
JR from mile 106 of the Wild & Scenic section (about 600 miles from our start at three forks),

note: this is john the artist writing, so there will be limited punctuation and lower case "i" for me, myself and you know who:

we paddled into the wind today, finally came upon a bend of the river swinging to the north which cut the wind, we found a coulee to camp in, and have made a neat little kitchen smack dab in the middle of the wash extending out of the coulee - a coulee for those of you who live in the southwest is just another name for "arroyo," or if you live in the midwest its what you might call a wash, or in the mississippi delta you might say "ditch," although this ditch comes out of the mountains and carries with it rocks, sand and mud and spreads wide out into the river, oftentimes rapids are formed at the places where coulees run into the river.

i made spanish garlic chicken for supper, all of our greens and vegetables are frozen, tha bananas we bought two days ago are blak and covered with ice crystals, so mike cut up the chicken and placed it in the olive oil with onions and garlic, and we ate, and then later i added all of our remaining frozen vegetables, and now we will have some leftovers tomorrow. i can see my breath quite well, in the flashlight it steams all over my face, and now i've made a cup of tea and am setting down next to the fire to write, the moon is just rising over the ridge above us.

so, what's the river like? its been mostly clear so far, we haven't encountered none of the "big muddy" from which it gets its name. well, its not crystal clear, but kind of greenish, and you can see maybe two feet into it. the current moves along at about three miles an hour, and sometimes pools up, you'd almost think it was a lake in places. the missouri is big from get-go, lewis and clark described it to be as wide at the musselshell river as it is at the confluence at st. louis. the musselshell is 2,000 miles upstream of the st. louis! we've paddled 106 miles from ft. benton, we're around 600 miles downstream of where we started in three forks, and we're about 850 miles downstream of the place we first encountered the drainage of the missouri, at none other than old faithful in yellowstone nat'l park. every time old faithful erupts it sends 7,000 or 8,000 gallons of water into the air, which then drains into the firehole river, the firehole joins the madison, the madison tumbles out of wyoming into montana and down through the mountains and joins the jefferson at three forks, and this was our route getting here.

it was difficulty getting up this morning into ten degrees weather and the wind already blowing. part of the annoyance is just the time it takes to put on all of the layers of clothes necessary to stay warm. it took me half an hour just to get dressed. i am wearing three pairs of socks, three layers of leggings (long johns, fleece, and wool army pants), and three upper layers (turtle neck, fleece1, fleece 2, wool top) - i like wool, it cuts the wind and it keeps you warm. i just can't get used to those high tech wind breakers that make so much rustling noise every time you move. then, of course, you've got gloves, mittens, etc. i've got a pair of fingerless gloves for my painting and sketching. well, its ten o'clock, and i got up at 6am, and i'll probably do the same tomorrow. so' i'm going to say goodnight. hope you enjoyed what i wrote. good night!

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Friday, October 18
JRuskey from Great Falls MT

We have been blessed with good weather and today was no exception. By noon I was in my shorts and had taken a swim in the river. We passed a Pelican near the mouth of the Judith River. There has been a flock of Pelicans roosting on the river at Ft. Benton and the local citizens are wondering why they have stayed so long. I hope this is an indicator we will have a mild winter. I noticed in the Great Falls paper that the maintainance of "Going to the Sun" road in Glacier National Park has been extended beyond its normal shut-down date of October 21.

We reached Judith Landing at noon and awaited Mike and Meredith Gregston for our shuttle. Fare well Jenny and Ian! Thank you for joining us on our expdeition. God speed and God bless!

Thursday, October 17
JRuskey from Hole in the Wall, Mile 81

Back on the river this morning we experienced gusting side winds. But after we reached "The Sentinal" which is a massive volcanic dike located at an elbow in the channel, the river direction shifted eastward, and the wind became a tail wind. Side winds are my least favorite. I would much rather have a tail wind or even a head-on wind. Side winds are unpredictable and require a great amount of effort to maintain direction in.

The scenery in this days' journey was spectacular. If there was any day Could go back and float over again, it would be this day. Here the White Cliffs gradually crumble away and new layers of rock and earth uplifts appear, disappear, and reappear in the ridges and cliffs and buttes accompanying our river. There are ribbons of volcanic rock that have been laid like massive walls. These walls thread their way over ridges and down into valleys, and are broken into geometric cracking and patterns as if they were ancient walls composed of mis-sized bricks like the walls at Cuzco.

As we were floating into the bend at mile 81 of the Wild & Scenice section below Ft. Benton, Mike and I were discussing where to camp for the night. As if in response a bald eagle started screaming and grunting in its high-pitched way (similar to the Elk Cow in the Rut), so there was our sign. We pulled to shore on a stretch of river with a wall of cottonwoods, in one were keeping vigilance our eagle, and a companion. They flew off as soon as we landed. We bar-b-qued rib eye steaks on the open fire, and roasted sweet potatoes. Jenny and Ian brought a bottle of wine, and we called it an early birthday supper, for me.

Wednesday, October 16
JRuskey from Eagle Creek, Mile 55.5

We spent the day at camp (Eagle Creek, a Lewis & Clark camp), hiking and exploring the White Cliffs.

First, it was bacon and eggs for breakfast, a pound of bacon, and I ate four eggs alone, over easy, fried in bacon grease. I did some writing and painting, and then Jenny and Ian and I went for a hike up Eagle Creek, into the heart of some White Cliff country, a land of contoured sandstone, broken by volcanic dikes and cliffs, in places topped with layers of dark earth and clay. The white sandstone is highly erodable (if there is such a word). We found curvy canyons and chimneys with just enough room for one person to pass. eagle Creek had some water in it, and was flowing within its deep canyon walls, pooling in places, at others you could jump it with a hop, skip and leap. We never located the petroglyphs we had heard about earlier.

We returned to camp for a swim, and then got into the canoes for some river time. Mike went fishing while we explored some of the amphitheaters carved into the white stone wall that is known as "the rampart," opposite our camp. They are hollowed, it seems, by the effect of dripping water and the wind. In one particularly deep hollow we found a sensitive resonance and pulled out the guitar and beat on stones to make some music. Mike reported that he heard us clearly from a mile away.

Tuesday, October 15
JRuskey from Eagle Creek, Mile 55.5 National Wild and Scenic Missouri River

We camped on the last of three islands, an archipelago of towheads, sandbars and gravel bars loacted thirty miles downstream of Fort Benton, and awoke with a hard freeze settled on everything in camp. I was glad I put up my tent tonight! In the morning sun everything sparkled brilliantly and a fog was rising in small fumeroles over the river. For wildlife, we have been seeing more eagles than anything, bald eagles and golden. the Golden eagles are enormous, some of the biggest birds I have seen, and the bald are not much smaller. Coming around the long bend into Virgelle we floated in the gentle current along a line of dead or dying cotonwoods, which seem to be a favorite roost. There were perhaps a half dozen Golden eagles. Mike was behind me perhaps half a mile in his (yet un-named) canoe.

Suddenly I heard a loud "snap!" and the eagle I had been watching plummeted out of the tree, the branch upon which it had been resting broke! It gained its wing, made a long graceful arch, and realighted on another branch. As i approached closer, buoyed by the current, it flew off again to another branch on the next cottonwood downstream. It still held the broken branch in its curved talons. Again the current carried me close to its field, and again it flew off, this time across the river and over a line of collapsing grey cliffs opposite. The branch was still with him has he flew.

This set me into a line of thinking. At first I assumed the broken branch was a mistake. But then, why didn't he release it? By and by and got to thinking: "how does an eagle build its nest? How does it gatther the twigs?"

We met my sister Jenny and nephew Ian at Coalbanks Landing, directly below Virgelle, and floated the rest of the afternoon into further descending layers of cliff, grey, brown, and now a chalky white sandstone. We were descending into the striking "Whitecliffs" section of the Missouri River, a section protected as a National Wild and Scenic River.

Monday, October 14
JRuskey from Three Islands, Mile 31.5 National Wild and Scenic Missouri River

We pushed out at 11:30 from Ft. benton and said our goodbyes to Dave Henry. I was almost in tears with this farewell, so accustomed i had become to his genuine and benevolent presence. From now on it is just Mike and I and the wilderness of the American West. We said a prayer and pushed off.

We are in two canoes now. We just couldn't squeeze enough gear into the Water Ram to satisfy the requirements of this expedition, one of which is being prepared for the oncoming Winter weather. This means extra clothing, extra warm sleeping bag, four season tents. Winter gear weighs more. We are also carrying two "steamer" neoprene suits, for those days when its blizzarding and we just have to keep paddling, and 5 mm neoprene is heavy. Another requirement is the technical gear, the laptop, batteries, sattelite phone and solar panels.

So, we located a used canoe in Ft. Benton. It is a 16 foot Old Towne "Prospector" that came from Mike and Meredith Gresgston's outfit, Adventure Bound. Mike and Meredith rent canoes, and do guided canoe trips through the Wild and Scenic Section of the Missouri River, the section we were now descending into.

It was an ideal day, a lot of sunshine, wind at our backs 10 to 15 mph, the river moving calmly along, in no rush to get anywhere. We descended out of Ft. Benton into a steadily deepening canyon. This canyon would consistently deepen for the next week.

Imagine being on a river twice the width of the Yazoo at Vicksburg flowing through a landscape of mesas, buttes, rolling scrubby sagebrush covered ridges, and cliffy canyons. That is the Missouri River here. It is a big river for a western river of the Great Plains. The Platte, the Arkansas, the Red, the Canadian, and all of the other Great Plain rivers pale in comparison.

I awoke this morning to a display of the northern lights, a gentle arc of luminescent slivers extending 40 degrees across the northeastern horizon. I kept thinking about the display of light during the day, and about the river we were riding. This is the kind of place i receive my inspiration, the places where the rivers run free, and the sky is uncluttered by artificial light.

My most vivid memory of the day is bald eagles, geese and the never-ending winding of the river through the canyons of Montana. A couple of firsts: my first visual sighting of a beaver. I had been seeing their dams and lodges, but no animals; also: our first birch, a river birch, I believe.

(an artist's impression of camp, with stream of consciousness style writing that I will employ from time to time, using creative grammar, such as the lower case "i"):

Fort Benton, the moon scraping the top of a mesa opposite our camp, the edge of the mesa being undercut by the river, a series of cliffs defined like fins sliced perpendicular along its length, one of the prettiest skies i have ever seen, a passing system of storms reeled off the arctic cold front which just passed over (and left more snow here than anyone's seen in four years - drought years), geese crying as they come flying in for their landings, the moon at first quarter, the sky glowing orange at the horizon, yellow above, and finally a vault of prussian blue overhead, some rapids below us making gurgling splashing sounds, i will sleep good tonight.

i visited the C. M. Russell Museum in Great Falls, a beautiful museum, and was particularly interested in a gallery full of his sketches and letters to a friend of his named "Trigg."

In one letter i found an episode worth repeating. Mr. Russell was visiting the 1903 St. Louis World's Fair, of which he wasn't much interested. This was the fair that boasts the first hot dog bun, the first hamburger, the first ice cream cone, the great ferris wheel. Mr. Ruseell was unimpressed by all of the show, but did find interest in a live exhibition of american wildlife, in which he met an old friend (transcripted verbatim):

"they have a verry good collection among them a coyote who licked my hand like he knew me i guess i brought the smell of the planes with me i shure felt sorry for him poor deval a life sentence for nothing on earth but looks an general principales. but you cant do nothing for a feller whos hol famely is out laws as far back as aney body knows eaven if he is a nabor of yours if he could make hair bristles it would bee a hol lot easier but with nothing to do but think of home"

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