AN EPIC ADVENTURE
WRITER SEEKS TO TELL THE AMERICAN STORY ONE EPIC JOURNEY AT A TIME
Rinker Buck is eating lunch at a Litchfield restaurant talking about his new book Life on the Mississippi: An Epic American Adventure when a small plane appears overhead. Buck pauses, glances skyward and listens intently to the whine of the engine.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “If a plane flies over, a pilot is always going to look up.”
Piloting small aircraft is among the longtime Connecticut newspaper journalist’s skills. At 15, he and his brother flew a Piper Cub from New Jersey to California in six days, an adventure he recounted in his first book, Flight of Passage. Buck also knows wagons and draft animals, an expertise he put to use for his 2015 bestseller, The Oregon Trail: A New American Journey. The book chronicles his and another of his brothers’ (Buck has 10 siblings) journey from St. Joseph, Mo., to Portland, Ore., in a mule-drawn covered wagon.
Now the Cornwall resident has added another skill to his repertoire: boat captain. In 2016, Buck piloted a reproduction of a 19th-century flatboat 2,000 miles from western Pennsylvania to New Orleans, retracing a migration and trade route that he says did more to create America than its better-known covered-wagon cousin. Life on the Mississippi: An Epic American Adventure, which came out in August, mixes the story of his four-month trip down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers
with a big dollop of American history. (This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.)
How did you settle on the idea of taking a flatboat from Pennsylvania all the way to New Orleans?
I’m interested in subjects where the real history can be taught. When I was getting close to the end of the Oregon Trail trip, we came into this town called The Dalles on the Columbia just east of the Cascades. I learned the wagons were in such bad shape when they got there that the pioneers turned them into draft boats and floated the rest of the way to Portland. According to a memoir I found in a local history room, they could do that thanks to three generations of river skills they’d learned on the Mississippi and Ohio.
I started researching and found out that 400,000 people crossed the plains during the covered-wagon era, but 3 million went down the Ohio and Mississippi during the flatboat era, and they created the American economy. I figured if I don’t know this, nobody else knows it. If I go there — build a flatboat, take it down the river — I’m going to learn something.
What did you learn?
First of all, I had no experience in boats. I learned I could be quite good at it. I learned to edit fear. I was told I was going to be swept under in a whirlpool and I was going to come up dead without my underwear on. Absolutely untrue, but everybody believed it. One of the reasons they believed it is, along the Ohio and the Mississippi, so many people have family members who’ve been killed in tug boat accidents. People are very afraid of the river. So what I learned is not to listen to the experts — not to be brash or unsafe — but the truth out there wasn’t what I was told.
That misinformation extended to river traffic as well, right?
The rivers are operated solely as a commercial avenue for tug boats that push strings of barges. There are few marinas, and pleasure boats stick close to them. I was told a tug was going to run me over. That was also untrue. If you are careful, follow the rules and use common sense, you are fine.
What else did you learn?
Why don’t many Americans understand — something both parties are having trouble with — the anger and resentment of all those working-class people in mill towns along the river who have been laid off ? Well, one answer is you don’t see it. Because of the way those towns were built up along the river with the mountains behind them, you can’t see it. But you get out on a boat and go down the river, you do see it.
What stands out most about the trip?
The contrasts. You get to a spot where industry has taken over and then there’s a stretch that’s beautiful wilderness. It was romantic, but it was also tough. We tied up and camped every night. Tying up was a challenge because of the strong currents. Sometimes we ran out of food and had to eat canned chili for dinner.
You traveled through a deep-red part of the country. What kind of reception did you get?
Except in a few situations, it was fine. There was a guy in Mississippi who wanted us to run with the flag of Mississippi. At that time, Mississippi was the only state with the stars and bars in its flag. I said no. But in the main, people were friendly and more interested in the drama of the trip. A lot of people were surprised and concerned we weren’t carrying firearms.
What’s next?
I spent a lot of time the last few years living in Tennessee to finish the book, but I’m moving back to Connecticut [full time]. I don’t want to be too specific about my next book. It’s about a particular group in America that’s really interesting. I don’t want to become one of these formula writers. I don’t want to be known as someone who is just an adventure writer. I swear it will only take me three years. My agent says I’m an incorrigible liar.