The Headwaters

The Milk. Missouri. Yellowstone. Platte. Niobrara. The Republican. The Canadian. The Red. These and dozens of other rivers all empty into the Mississippi River Basin, the largest and longest in North America. We’ve crossed waters that flow into this river from many different states already, and will continue to do so throughout the fall, winter and spring. According to the EPA, water from 31 U.S. states and 2 Canadian provinces drain out to the gulf of Mexico.

So after our brief foray into Canada vis-à-vis the International Peace Garden, it was on our list of adventures as we started meandering south again. Meandering is something the Mississippi does well up here, moving north out of Lake Itasca, then wandering eastward for a while, then south, then west before finally settling on a southerly direction. Small wonder then that it took multiple attempts prior to explorer Henry Rowe Schoolcraft and chief Ozawindib’s party to trace it’s source in 1832.

Lake Itasca is a large lake. ‘Why isn’t the headwaters that little stream that feeds into Lake Itasca?’ ‘Why isn’t a tributary that starts in Montana, or Wyoming, or Saskatchewan the “true” headwaters?’ We discussed as many many others do who visit. And as we’ve since crossed the Mississippi countless other times on our journey, is it ever possible to step in the same river twice?

“The Mississippi’s mighty, but it starts in Minnesota at a place that you can walk across with five steps down…” or so sang the Indigo Girls about the headwaters of the Mississippi. The iconic little foot bridge is just as described in the song, but had several people idling about upon it. How to enjoy the location during a pandemic? Wade out into the reeds and cattails on Lake Itasca, away from everyone else.

The ‘musketoes’ back in the Schoolcraft/Ozawindib days might have been pretty terrible, but we weren’t particularly bothered by any.

Lake Itasca State Park is a pretty impressive, and large park. Later we took a lovely bike path several miles along the lake, stopping here and there along the way to see the sights. At Preacher’s Grove we stopped to hike around a bit. Here we finally found my constant terror: the ‘voracious, long-billed, dyspeptic muketoes’ as Schoolcraft described them 188 years prior.

After a brief look around, we hiked back to our bikes, and returned finally to our rig after four or so hours of our own, tamer exploration. The cool waters of Lake Itasca had long since dried on our bodies and we were fully ready to turn the AC back on high (as evidenced perhaps by Quincy’s face above?) We hopped back into the car and turned the air on, only to be greeted by a horrible racket–the blower motor was going. We chanced running it a few minutes anyway, the vibrations so great you could feel them even through the backseat. An unwelcome massage, given at any moment it could fly off, taking a chunk out of the radiator, slicing off a belt, or wreaking other havoc on the engine block. Late on a Sunday afternoon, in rural northern Minnesota, we were unlikely to find any solution today. We finally found a campsite for the night in the City of Menahga. Hopefully we can get the AC fixed soon.