Some simple observations:

We are in Louisiana now. We crossed over from Arkansas yesterday. We have now been out here for fifty days, and have paddled through Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, and now Louisiana. We will be in New Orleans in two weeks or less.

One thing you learn after a while is that the river always flows fastest around the outside of a bend. Even though it may seem faster to take a shorcut and paddle straight across, or hug the inside of the turn, it's almost always the other way around. This is something you simply come to accept. Yet even though we know this, we still will manage to mess it up. We stare across and the other shore looks so close, and we think to ourselves that if we just cut across here, we will save ourselves such trouble. And so we cut across, and the current dies, the other canoe flies past, and we relearn the lesson all over again. The interesting thing is that the person most likely to forget all this is the person steering in the back of the second canoe, playing catch-up to the first. They see the bend, and the first canoe so far ahead, and a chance to make up lost ground. And in doing so they fall even further behind. This is what is called a metaphor.

It is still humid, but slightly cooler now, balmy even, and there are pelicans, and you can feel the ocean in the air. You are getting closer! it says, you are so close you are almost there! Meanwhile, water levels have risen dramatically, to the point where most sandbars have disappeared, and bends in the river have turned into bays. The Arkansas River poured in at floodlevels, carrying the load of the thunderstorms down, the water a strict and muddy pink from the caved-in shore. We paddle alongside branches of trees, logs, the trees themselves, still living, bobbing in the froth of the current, and Ryan tries to climb one. He fails, but in his attempt he tilts the canoe enough that Mippi's cage slips off and into the water. The cat floats with a panicked look in her eye, wondering how she ended up with owners so stupid, bewildering really, and perhaps also if this is it, if this is how she is going to die, slowly and helplessly sinking into the Mississippi River, goddamn t!
wenty-one
year old idiots, keep me locked in this cage all day and can't even keep the cage out of the water, and now I am paying for their carelessness, with my life, no less, how horrible, how fitting and horrible, bastards... We fish her out and she settles down. In half an hour, she can't even remember what happened. And the tree keeps floating downstream.

P.S. to the Marrinin's: if you are reading this, please email danny so he can get his sweatshirt back. He appreciates this greatly! His email is danielprosenberg@gmail.com.