The Big Muddy

N38° 40.830' W091° 16.927'
There is something entirely inexplicable about rounding a corner and seeing a diamond-shaped hunk of metal and wood screwed to a post and being so elated that you burst into song. Nothing I do or say can possibly communicate to you what a channel marker means after the MR340. Every mark is another mile or two towards your victory, towards proof that you've got more grit than a lesser you.

When Russell and I set out to run the Missouri from Kansas City to St Louis, we knew a little of what we would face. Neither of us are strangers to a paddle, and we work together well as a team, I think. Maybe I grate a little on his nerves, sometimes, but the least he can say is that I make the time fly by. I remember the river, which turn hides a tricky tree, which corner has a good swimming hole. He makes runzas: a sort of dumpling-out-of-broth situation that reminds me of a homemade hot pocket. He keeps the calm. He paddles relentlessly. We make a good team.
We've done thirty miles runs of creeks near the old house on 124. We've spent days together with no other humans in sight, keeping a running tally of the animals we've seen, scudded over, or touched. We've heard the utterly unearthly hum of a swarming beehive filling the air from all directions, coursing through our blood and stopping our breath short. We've seen deer, shocked that we found them so deep in the untrodden paths of earth, jump up and bolt to the bank. We've fallen out, gotten scraped with mud, named unmarked sandbars and slogged through endless gravel bars. The world's longest uninterrupted (an important caveat) river race seemed like the next logical step.

When we passed this particular channel marker, I was asleep in the bottom of the canoe on Russell's mad scientist invention of a pool noodle bed. It will be remembered in the annals of history as one of those discoveries that was only a hair's breadth from a Nobel. If only it were easier to categorize.
I caught a cold on the plane ride to Kansas City, and the combination of camp stress, poor sleep, and an upcoming race converged in my chest as a tightness and a deep muscle ache. By day two, I was downing ibuprofen at the limit on the bottle. By day three, I nearly fell out of the boat somewhere between Washington and Klondike. I slept for thirty miles—a near tenth of our total race—while Russell paddled alone in the gathering, moonless dark.
What comfort must it have been, pulling out the spotlight and raking it across this very spot, only to see the red corners of the diamond shine back brilliantly in the night? What reassurance that his skill is rewarded, that the river is still just exactly where he left it, that the boat is still safe? I don't expect he'll ever be able to fully explain this marker to me, just as I can't explain it to you. I can get close, but you'll never quite know the instantaneous euphoria of rounding a corner and seeing a reminder of the sixtieth hour, the unbidden shout, the heedless song of joy I yelled as I rolled past on my bike.