“I thought how nice it must be to have ‘finally decided my future life beyond the yellow brick road,’” Kulick wrote in his journal, quoting a line from the song. “Because I’m coming to the end of my ‘yellow brick road’ and I realize that the apprehension I feel about returning to the 20th century stems from the fact that I have not yet gotten a grasp on what my ‘future life beyond the yellow brick road’ is going to be. This trip has been my ‘yellow brick road’ in that it has held security. Maybe the freedom that I’ve been saying I’ve had in this past year is a false sense. All the rules have been outlined and I’ve known what is to happen more or less each day. Now that the road is ending, maybe this is when I’ll find my freedom. I guess only time will really tell.”
New Orleans, Louisiana
April 3, 1977
The bow of the canoe shot a foot out of the water as it crested a wave and landed with a splash. The strong southern wind chased gray clouds across the sky and turned the river into a choppy froth, like egg whites whipped into stiff peaks. If not for the warm temperature, it would’ve been an absolutely miserable paddle. The men were battling both wind and waves, getting doused repeatedly and having to bail the boats out, which made for sluggish progress. But they had a 2:00 arrival time for New Orleans, and nothing was going to delay them, short of the total destruction of one of the boats by an angry river monster. Towboat pilots had warned them about the wampus cats, but in addition to being mythical animals, it seemed unlikely the cougar hybrids were aquatic.
As the six canoes drew closer to their destination at Audubon Park, a small fleet of powerboats materialized, bobbing around on the chop. A powerboat with a wooden sign proclaiming REGATTA PATROL carried Jorge Garcia, whose right arm was still wrapped in a sling. Neither he nor Steve Marr had been able to rejoin the expedition—Garcia due to his lengthy recovery and healing arm and Marr because the cast that stretched from his toes to his hip would be too much of a liability, not to mention that it limited his range of motion. But both were able to travel in the vans with the liaison team, and they joined the evening presentations. Marr had even found crutches made from uncarved branches to make him look like a historically authentic invalid.
A New Orleans fireboat joined the assembled fleet and fired its water cannons as the canoes came into view. Jets of water arced high above them, glinting in the patchy sunlight and splashing down into the river. On shore a crowd of over one thousand people cheered as the voyageurs arrived in formation. The viewers lined the shore and observation deck, spilling out over the rocky slope down to the river. Cameras flashed and memorialized the moment. Three hundred years earlier La Salle had passed this spot without any fanfare. The land was all marshes and swamps, dense with mosquitoes and alligators. The improbable city of New Orleans hadn’t yet been dreamed up.
The men pulled their canoes ashore with some difficulty, given the density of the crowd. As soon as they had enough space cleared from the crowd, Lewis unsheathed his sword, thrust it into the air, and claimed the land for France. Again. Wearing a ruffled blue shirt, George LeSieutre unfurled a white sheet of paper with the words of La Salle’s original declaration printed across it. Lewis read the speech in front of a tall wooden cross they planted in the ground while the crew members and a huge audience gathered around him. When all the speeches and ceremonies were completed (the men were made honorary citizens of New Orleans, gifted framed copies of a speech made in the U.S. House of Representatives congratulating them on their expedition, and informed that the Illinois Legislature had declared La Salle: Expedition II a Historic Landmark in Illinois), family members and reporters surged forward. The voyageurs were conspicuous in the crowd of men and women wearing T-shirts and jeans and sunglasses. Many of the young men had left their shirts off after arriving; their skin was tanned and pocked with bug bites. Mark Fredenburg wore a skunk hat over his curly brown hair and a necklace of shells. Others had unruly beards and headbands holding back their long hair. Whatever transformation had been anticipated at the start of the voyage now appeared complete. The parents of the voyageurs beamed at their sons’ achievement.
Lewis, always the first to be cornered by a reporter with a microphone, was explaining all the additional trials his crew had faced compared to the original expedition. La Salle never dealt with barge and tanker traffic or water pollution. He hadn’t needed to dodge wing dams and carry water casks between stops. Granted, the men on the modern expedition never had to worry about starvation or attacks from hostile Native Americans like the earlier men had, and they relied on accurate maps to chart their course. They still had their own difficulties to overcome in the “civilized” world of the 20th century.
“I think we have mixed emotions about how things have changed,” Lewis told a reporter from the Associated Press. “In some ways we have made magnificent progress, in other ways we have painfully regressed.” The latter half of this statement was a reference to the environment, which Lewis saw as becoming hopelessly degraded and polluted since La Salle’s era.
Elsewhere in the crowd, reporters had their microphones pointed toward other crew members, asking about the difficulties of the journey and the long winter. Ralph Frese, the amateur historian who had in some ways inspired the voyage, answered questions about the men’s use of wool during the long winter and described Lewis’s mission to bring a living history museum to people all over the country. It was a chaotic, cacophonous gathering, the culmination of a goal the crew had striven to meet for seven months. It almost didn’t matter that they still had more than one hundred miles to paddle to reach the Gulf. They’d made it this far. A few more days of work was nothing in comparison to how far they’d come.
That was, in effect, what Lewis had told Father Loran Fuchs a few days earlier while Lewis was standing on the riverbank, enjoying the peacefulness of the water.
“Do you regret having done this?” the priest asked.
“The time for regret was way farther north,” Lewis responded. Now was time for celebration. Now was time for reveling in their successes. For the past three years, Lewis had dedicated his entire life to the realization of this dream, and now it was almost at a close. Despite all the hardships, the arguments, the badmouthing and gossiping, despite the pain and suffering and privations, despite the doubts about the capability of the leadership and the rupture between the crew and the liaison team, they had made it. Overcoming all the tests tossed at them by nature had been a challenge—nearly deadly at times—but equally difficult was surmounting personal disputes and working as a team. And then there were all the other obstacles, the daily quandaries and problems. How many times had Lewis worried for the integrity of the expedition, worried about the debt they were accumulating, worried about the lasting effect of injuries his crew members had suffered? Now they had almost reached their final goal. New Orleans was the penultimate event before the grand finale at the Gulf of Mexico. The final difficulty would be resisting the intoxicating attractions of the Crescent City and, unlike Odysseus’s men, not succumbing to the spell of the lotus-eaters.
Two members of the group were, unfortunately, forced to leave the festivities in New Orleans instead of accompanying the group to its final destination. Bart Dean, who had paddled with them, camped with them, and photographed their lives for the past eight months, was headed out to Los Angeles to live with his girlfriend and get going on his career as a screenwriter. To thank him for his work and his companionship, the crew signed one of their spare paddles and gave it to him. Cathy Palmer, a member of the liaison team, had been surprised by her parents and brothers by the announcement that the whole family was taking a trip to the amusement park in Florida that had opened only a few years earlier—Disney World. It was a huge deal that the whole family would be going, but instead of feeling excitement at the prospect, Palmer was devastated. She’d come all this way with the men, and now she wouldn’t be seeing them to the end.
The other members of the liaison team, though they planned on staying till the
Gulf of Mexico, seemed to have mentally checked out months ago. Sharon Baumgartner, who’d managed to stay optimistic for much of the trip, struggled to keep her focus as the end neared. She was frustrated with Jan and Marlena, having overheard the two older women dismissing her as “still young.” Back home she’d been nominated as a candidate for the Miss Elgin beauty pageant, and her head was full of ideas for her hair and makeup and what talent she’d present. Jan and Marlena had struggled with the crew members’ complaints since the start of the voyage, and it hadn’t grown any easier to deal with the criticism. Now more than ever they wanted to see the expedition come to an end and return to their lives in the classroom.
As for the rest of the crew, New Orleans presented some of the most tempting opportunities for carousing that they’d seen since departing from Montreal. Bourbon Street called with its easy access to alcohol, and several of the young men got in trouble with Lewis when they tried to go out in their civilian clothes so as to attract less attention. Lewis admonished them for acting like the expedition was over—they had dinners to attend in New Orleans that were being hosted by the French and Canadian consular offices, schools to visit, performances to complete. Yes, there was some downtime to spend with their families, but that didn’t mean they were done being voyageurs. The end, he reminded them, was still a week away.
Pilottown to the Gulf
April 9, 1977
For the first time since they’d departed Montreal, John Fialko had butterflies in his stomach. Fitting, really, to be nervous for the first and last day. He’d eaten a candy bar and an apple for breakfast when they woke up at 5:00, then busied himself with breaking down the campsite and loading the canoes. By 6:10 all the canoes were gliding down a calm river flanked by a small support team—the powerboats held friends and family members. The dense mass of industrial machinery and huge vessels that had dominated the riverbanks since Baton Rouge had given way to vast tracts of forest and marshes. Wispy branches of water hickory and pond cypress drooped over the river as the scattered houses of Pilottown disappeared behind the boats.
The village was inhabited by only thirty people. It had one bar, a school where four students studied, and no stores. The town had no roads and was inaccessible by car—visitors could arrive only by boats and small planes. Strangest of all was the town’s layout. Everything, including the sidewalks, was on stilts. The Mississippi rose and fell every year during flood season and any houses built on the swampy ground would’ve been repeatedly washed away. This far south the Mississippi was constantly remaking itself, and that variation was what brought about the creation of Pilottown in the first place. The houses were mostly occupied by barge and freighter pilots who navigated the ever-changing channels of the river. They hopped on boats in the Gulf, captained them north through difficult passages, then returned control to the ships’ pilots. Or they transported boats in the opposite direction, from New Orleans to the Gulf. Either way, the job required them to have an intimate familiarity with the river. This knowledge made many of the captains dubious of the expedition’s ability to return from the Gulf, which was a necessary post-finale journey unless the men wanted to be stranded on a sandbar outside the Mississippi River.
“Those headbands on your heads don’t make you Indians,” one of the pilots told the crew. Paddling down the river would be easy enough, sure. The little canoes wouldn’t have to worry about shallow spots or sand banks. But turning back north would mean fighting against a strong current. Too strong to be overpowered by muscle strength and force of will, in the pilots’ minds. They gave the expedition a radio to take with them just in case they needed a lift back. One pilot was so certain the expedition would be stymied by the current that he bet them a bottle of whisky that they wouldn’t make it. The crew was less concerned. It was like the St. Lawrence River all over again. Many had claimed that the current was too strong for canoeists, yet they’d conquered it in the earliest days of the voyage. Now they were at their peak of physical fitness. It might take a while to make the fifteen miles back to Pilottown, but no one on the crew had any doubts that they could do it.
In addition to their skepticism, the pilots provided useful information on which branch of the river to take out to the ocean. Of the four channels, the pilots recommended the canoes follow South Pass. Loutre Pass to the east and Southwest Pass to the west were both longer routes, while Main Pass was north of their starting point. It was a beautiful day for paddling, with no wind to speak of and a gleaming blue sky—maybe it was Mother Nature rewarding the men at last for all the grief she’d put them through over the winter.
After two hours of paddling, the canoes were nearly at the Gulf. Farther ahead they could see the line of trees fall away and the water opening up to the ocean. In the distance a buoy was visible on the blue water. This was the mythical end point they’d heard about since before the trip began. The green buoy was a marker to guide tankers into the Mississippi. It indicated the start—and end—of America’s largest river system, its most vital artery.
“As we approached the gulf and actually saw salt water, I thought of the time, the hassles, the hardships, mental and physical, and they all came together for that one instant when we passed the bell buoy and turned north,” Ron Hobart would later write of the experience. “Three years of work and sacrifice have paid off to the highest degree.”
The buoy grew larger as the canoes drew closer. They formed a line and the men pulled furiously at the water with their oars. From the back of his canoe Mark Fredenburg paused to fire his musket, and the group let out a tremendous volley of whoops. The land that had enclosed them on the river for so long opened up to the immensity of the ocean, the dirty brown sediment-laden river water fanning out into the gulf and sinking beneath the cerulean expanse of salt water. Less than a mile out from the mouth of the Mississippi was the green buoy with its flashing green lantern. Here the boats came to a stop.
One by one, each crew member reached his paddle through the metal structure and beat the bell that hung from the top of the buoy. It rang out again and again, everyone cheering and turning to shake hands with their crewmates and open bottles of wine that had been given to them earlier in the expedition. When Clif Wilson got to the bell, he was overwhelmed with emotion. He’d been pretty certain he was going to die in the capsizing off Washington Island, and he’d been seriously injured in the truck accident. And now, despite all that, he was unwaveringly and unmistakably there. The thrill he felt was almost painfully powerful. He never expected to play professional football, but he imagined that the feeling bursting inside him was something akin to winning the Super Bowl.
From the buoy the canoes turned back to the nearby sandy beach. Waiting for them there were the wives, parents, and friends who had supported them throughout the voyage. As they paddled, Terry Cox pulled off his moccasins and cast them into the ocean. The leather slippers had survived everything since the Toronto portage. It was time to return to modern footwear. As soon as they landed, the crew ran straight into the ocean, splashing and tackling and hugging one another. Steve Marr followed behind on his crutches to get his cast wet, and Jorge Garcia waded in. Even Lewis, in his white ruffled La Salle costume, joined the gaiety. Father Loran watched the merriment from shore. He looked somber in his black robe and scraggly gray beard. Whatever he may have been pondering—the significance of their accomplishment, the mirth of a God watching the culmination of a historic canoe voyage for a second time—he suddenly seemed to snap out of his reverie. He raced down to the water, his momentum carrying him in up to the waist. He jumped forward to fully submerge himself, but sank hardly more than a foot. There was a sandbar directly in his path. Those who saw him watched as he emerged, sandy, waterlogged, and laughing.
It was only fitting that the liaison team be thanked for their hard work by being thrown in the ocean as well, so the men formed small groups to carry the women to the water. Baumgartner, in a short-sleeved blouse and long skirt, was dropped onto her back into the waves, grinn
ing from ear to ear the entire time. Jan and Marlena were slightly more reluctant, but submitted to the ritual dousing. They’d survived the trip, too, after all. In some ways, it had been as much a struggle for them as it had been for the crew. They’d had to deal with arguments and logistics and the ravages of the winter. The vans weren’t even equipped with heaters, so they froze while driving over snow and ice. And here they were at the end, on a beach in Louisiana facing the boundless ocean.
After an hour of playing, it was time to get down to business. Randy Foster constructed a tall cross of driftwood and buried it in the sand. For the second time Lewis drew his sword and read the declaration that would turn the Mississippi Valley into French territory. The crew filled the air with shouts of “Vive le roi!” at the end of the proclamation and helped bury a plaque in the ground beneath the cross, a replica of the plaque La Salle carried with him that named King Louis XIV the ruler of the region.
For all the similarities between the original voyage and La Salle: Expedition II, there were ways in which the expeditions were hard to compare. The original voyageurs really were the first Europeans to travel all the way down the Mississippi River and see the delta spreading out like an enormous aquatic fan. Being the first to do any great thing is always remarkable. They were visitors to an already inhabited land, living in a world that would have been hard for their relatives in France to fathom. Their achievement continues to be memorialized today. The name of the state in which the Mississippi River ends was bestowed by La Salle: Louisiana, the land of King Louis. Maybe those voyageurs were brave men or foolhardy men or desperate men. History can’t tell us how they reacted upon completion of their voyage. Did they run shouting into the ocean, hugging one another? Did they think about their wives or parents or the enormity of the unknown world? It’s impossible to say. Metal plaques and the written procès-verbal say nothing about who these people were, their likes and dislikes, their quarrels and quirks.
The Last Voyageurs Page 25
