Translator: Tanya Cushman Reviewer: Peter van de Ven
I was raised in the cornfields of Ohio,
where I had a dream to get to know the real America
from head to toe
and see what big water was all about.
I always wanted to experience
the truly mammoth scale of America's mightiest waterways
firsthand.
So in 2015,
my hometown friend Alex Ross, a talented wandering artist, and I
had this crazy idea to paddle 2,500 miles down the Mississippi River,
documenting everything we saw along the way
through scientific data and Alex's artwork,
some of which you'll see today.
We were joined by our friend Shea Selsor,
an aspiring whitewater guide.
We wanted to engage with the natural world
and interact with our public lands and waterways.
So, we piled our three-man crew and an overabundance of supplies
into one big canoe,
a 1972 Grumman freighter canoe -
20 feet of shining aluminum from bow to stern
that we had christened "Calypso."
We did not have an emergency radio;
we did not bring a GPS.
I wanted to navigate the river using only my compass
and Army Corps of Engineer navigational charts.
We wanted to remember what it was to drink fresh water,
sleep under old trees
and feel the mud between our toes.
And I dare say
we were young enough to try this thing
and just old enough to pull it off.
As a geomorphologist,
I know that rivers shape the surface of the earth,
building and eroding landforms across time and space,
circulating sediment.
And the Mississippi River
is at the very heart of America's circulatory system.
All of the water in this shaded area -
this huge drainage basin -
ends up in that river.
Rivers and their drainage systems take a long time to evolve,
but human influence can lead to rapid changes.
We wanted to appreciate
the coevolution of these natural and human systems.
So we brought instruments
to measure water chemistry, quality and biodiversity indicators.
And we brought open minds,
to connect with America
and get to know her diverse lands, waters and peoples.
We started 100 miles south of the Canadian border, in Minnesota,
where the river is but a trickle spilling out from Lake Itasca
and we could jump from side to side.
Throughout the Upper Mississippi River area,
there is tremendous engagement with the outdoors.
This is a beautiful landscape.
Everyone is engaging in water sports,
hunting, fishing and environmental tourism,
which are mainstays of local economies.
The river here is a haven for wildlife,
and everyone we encountered along the way told us,
"The next 12 miles are pristine majesty,"
or "Welcome to the most beautiful stretch of the river."
We had many unexpected encounters with local wildlife.
(Laughter)
There were bears and wolves prowling our campsite.
We had beavers chase us out of camp,
and we saw ospreys fight off bald eagles right in front of us.
This area was teeming with life,
and we saw creatures and critters of all sizes.
And throughout the Upper Mississippi River,
the residents understand that the health of these ecosystems
reflects the health of the river as a whole.
And for this reason, the upper states - Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa -
prepare an annual state of the river report
that summarizes the health of the river.
This report is not only scientifically sound,
but it's widely distributed and it is accessible.
And that is so critical
because it helps keep not only natural resource managers but the public
accountable for the health of the river.
As we moved from the Upper Mississippi River
to the Lower Mississippi River,
things began to change.
We'd already been blown away by the scale of the river.
The river's over 16,000 feet wide in parts of Wisconsin,
and the sheer size of the 29 locks and dams
that we passed through between Minneapolis and St. Louis
was truly overwhelming.
By the time we met up with the mighty Missouri River -
which brings waters from as far away as Montana -
in St. Louis,
we thought the river couldn't get any bigger,
couldn't get any wilder.
But when we met up with the Ohio River,
the Mississippi's largest tributary,
almost doubled its size at the confluence.
We started moving so fast that we felt like we were out of control,
and maybe we were.
Because there's a fundamental difference in the Upper and Lower Mississippi.
The lower river is free of locks and dams,
which means that the river is free to flow as it wishes
towards the Gulf of Mexico,
save for the levees and revetments built by the Army Corps of Engineers.
This means that there's wide-spread flooding
as it slowly bends and twists its way towards the Gulf of Mexico.
It was 32 feet above flood stage in 2015,
which meant that we were dodging capsized barges and massive trees
and refrigerators that were flying past us around bends.
The landscape was more human.
We were encountering more towns and cities.
Shipping traffic was picking up,
and we were moving out of the way of massive tows and barges,
like this one, laden with soy.
We were starting to wish that we had a motor ourselves.
Where the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers converge,
there is town called Cairo, Illinois.
And this is also where cultures collide.
Floodwaters were making it very difficult to navigate,
but we were in desperate need of supplies.
These floodwaters brought us directly into town,
where we soon realized that we had overshot our mark by 15 miles.
We made our way to the one gas station and store in town -
that no longer sold gasoline -
where we found there was no transportation,
there was no communication.
There wasn't really much of anything,
save for a 30-mile round-trip hike for us.
We set out that night in the rain and made it to the outskirts of town
where we slept in a baseball dugout at an abandoned school that was for sale.
That night, a young mother and her child
came out in the rain to offer us sandwiches,
mistaking us as homeless.
And in the morning, we began our trek
out into the overwhelming white, rural surroundings,
and we realized that we were passing through a community that was divided
and still segregated.
And we felt a creeping sense of lawlessness
that stuck with us the further south we ventured.
Cairo used to be a bustling city,
full of people and places that you'd want to be.
Now, Cairo isn't a ghost town, but it felt like one.
It's a town that died of racism
and of white flight following the Civil Rights era.
And we encountered more and more towns like this
the further south we traveled,
where we saw the power of the river to build societies
but also the power of people to bring them down.
Towns that were hollow shells of their once bustling selves,
slowly dying of self-inflicted wounds,
loss of jobs, investment, wealth,
opportunities.
And as a consequence,
fewer funds are available for river stewardship and care.
Strangely, this had led to rewilding along many stretches of the southern river -
this overwhelmingly green and brown landscape
slowly bending and twisting its way towards the Gulf of Mexico,
where it is hot and sticky,
and we fell asleep and woke up drenched in our own sweat.
We endured thunderstorms in our metal boat,
our 20-foot lightning rod.
We had Asian carp jump in with us,
and we had wild boar run through camp.
This is an otherworldly landscape,
and one which is truly unique to the American cultural fabric.
We saw its importance reflected in the arts and cultures
of the regions that we passed through in the South.
The river here is celebrated not only as a path to freedom
but as a source of livelihood for many families,
as a source of inspiration for many artists.
We were welcomed in Mark Twain's hometown, Hannibal, Missouri.
We listened to Johnny Cash and the Delta blues,
and everywhere we heard reverence and reference to the river,
as the Father of Waters,
Old Man River,
The Big Muddy.
However, its importance is not reflected in the way the river is treated.
Down South, water is a utility,
and the river is a means to an end.
There were times in which dark clouds of smoke obscured the sky
in this region where industry titans reign supreme,
and we often paddled past industrial sites
that were actively dumping their waste directly into the river
with little or no consequences.
There is a fundamental difference
in the cultural landscapes between the North and the South.
Whereas in the North, the impact of the river on the people is huge,
in the South, the impact of people and of industry on the river
far outweighs the impact of the river on the people.
People mostly engage with the river
through work and through hunting and fishing.
And just like in the North,
where people use wildlife as a gauge of the overall health of the river,
so to does that happen in the South,
and this has led the hunting and fishing community
to be, perhaps, the most engaged in environmental and stewardship
throughout the southern regions.
I don't want to say that there's an absence of pride in the river,
but people certainly aren't swimming in it.
That's not say they're not drinking its waters though.
And whereas in the upper stretches of the river,
we encountered, time and time again, people who would tell us,
"This is the most beautiful stretch of the river,"
down South, and especially the last 300 miles,
between Baton Rouge and the Gulf of Mexico,
we heard, "Welcome to Cancer Alley,"
where you'll find not only the highest cancer rates in the USA
but also the most contaminated drinking water.
And it was these waters that brought us to the Gulf of Mexico
after three months of paddling.
These waters, which transport over 12 million pounds of pollutants
that are dumped into the Mississippi each year -
herbicides, pesticides, coal ash, mercury -
from waters as far as Montana to New York to Columbus, Ohio.
These are the waters that we paddled as we entered the Gulf of Mexico.
These problems may seem distant,
but they're closer than they appear.
You might be surprised to learn
that it's not the Mississippi River that's the most polluted,
but it's the Ohio River, for the 12th year running,
where almost double the amount of pollutants
are dumped each year -
30 million pounds,
largely herbicides, coal ash and mercury.
So it's critical that we recognize
what is in our streets and our fields
is in our streams
and in the drinking water of the residents of the lower basin.
These cultural landscapes are in a state of continual evolution,
and we have the power to mold them, going forward.
This is because we are interconnected with these natural systems
and connected to each other through these systems,
so what you flush and what you spray ends up in Cancer Alley.
We have to realize we are all stakeholders
in affecting the outcome of these natural systems.
I believe it is imperative
that we all become stewards of our public lands and waterways.
And I think we can do this in three primary ways.
One, please respect natural systems.
Help preserve the integrity and beauty of these natural systems
by finding ways to minimize your individual impact.
Two, pay it forward.
Leave what you find, and respect other visitors' experiences.
Three, if you pack it in, pack it out.
Take what you bring and minimize waste,
or don't bring it in the first place,
especially micro-litter and micro-plastics.
I'll add a fourth.
Get out there.
Because in order to build a better, more resilient future,
it's imperative that we engage our curiosities
and share what we discover,
share our stories with one another,
and allow ourselves to be captivated by nature.
Take a step towards the unknown.
Follow a curiosity from its spark to its source.
This can be as simple as wondering
where that creek in your parent's backyard goes,
to what happened to that snow mountain in OSU's parking lot,
to what my friends and I did,
travelling down the Mississippi River.
I want to ask all of you to think about the journey of water,
think about what happens to rain after it falls - one drop.
We followed the water from Lake Itasca, at its source,
2,500 miles down to the Gulf of Mexico -
water that falls as rain,
surges past boulders,
irrigates our crops,
passes through creatures and plants,
fills our drinking glasses
and shapes the lands and peoples across America
from source to sea.
I encourage you all to think about where our water comes from
and where it's going next.
Thank you.
(Applause)