Floating the Mighty Free and Easy (Cont.)

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Outside Magazine November 2001

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Floating the Mighty Free and Easy (Cont.)

THE CHARACTER OF the Missouri changes abruptly 39 miles into the float. At first it's just as one might
expect: a big, slow-moving river meandering across
a high plain, with mountains shining in the far distance. But at the ferry-crossing town of Virgelle, the river changes direction, sweeping almost 90 degrees from northeast to southeast. The Missouri straightens out and floaters find themselves, for part of the rest of the trip, in a canyon several hundred feet deep. It is a relatively new thing, this canyon. The Missouri used to flow north, toward Hudson Bay, but glaciers grinding down from Canada during the Ice Age blocked the northward run and formed a dam that turned the river south and east. The Missouri spun about in a rage and shot through soft rock to the south, tearing up the land in a fury of frustration. The rocks were and are soft because this area of Montana was once a vast
inland sea. Dinosaurs romped along on its banks, especially to the east, near the final stretch of what is now the classic Wild and Scenic float. When the sea finally receded, 65 million years ago, it left a legacy of sedimentary rocks—clays, sands, silts, a dried-out sea bottom, essentially—and the Missouri, diverted by massive ice sheets, cut through this soft stone like a hot knife through butter.

Meanwhile, tributary streams flowing into the Missouri from either side formed their own small canyons, which cut into the main channel of the river. It is a strange, crumpled landscape, odd and alien and vaguely disturbing. The land seems not at all as it should be; it looks somehow shattered, broken, and anyone who sees it will know immediately why the area is known as the Missouri Breaks.

There was no one else on the river at all, and when I blasted out ahead of the others, paddling like a bastard, it was easy to imagine that I was the first to see the stretch.

Ten miles into the canyon, sandstone parapets rose on the riverbanks, and the vertically striated columns stood out like eroded statues in Egyptian temples. The canyon walls—all battlements and spires like broken teeth—enclosed us as we floated farther downriver, eventually camping for the night near Eagle Creek, at the Lewis and Clark campsite of May 31, 1805. "The hills and river Clifts which we passed today exhibit a most romantic appearance," Lewis wrote in his journal that day, almost two centuries ago. "The bluffs of the river rise to the hight of from 2 to 300 feet and in most places nearly perpendicular; they are formed of remarkable white sandstone."

I was reading aloud from the journal now, and what we saw in the dusk directly across the river was the exact sandstone wall described by Lewis. "The water in the course of time in
decending...has trickled down the soft sand clifts and woarn it into a thousand grotesque figures..."

"Exactly," said Scott.

Lewis, with "the help of a little immagination and an oblique view," saw "eligant ranges of lofty freestone buildings, having their parapets well stocked with statuary." He saw "collumns standing almost entire with their pedestals and capitals." He saw stone "in the form of vast pyramids of connic structure bearing a serees of other pyramids on their tops."

"What do you see?" I asked Scott.

"That one over there looks like the skinny Laurel and Hardy guy. Stan Laurel."

We declined the opportunity to make fun of Scott's vision. Not only was he a great big huge powerful guy, he was the best cook on the float. This evening he'd made pad thai on a camp stove, and it was delicious. "Stan Laurel," I said, hoping Scott would cook for the rest of the trip. "Anyone could see it."

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