Mississippi Solo by Eddy Harris.

What a grand adventure and such excellent writing.  I could not stop reading.  Check out the website too http://www.eddyharris.com/books/mississippi.htm

Since I have paddled the upper 1000+ miles and I have been on boats all the way down to New Orleans the places and sights were familiar and like an album in my head, but the experience that Eddy has was singular in many ways.

The river has numerous challenges - wind, current, meanders, barges, ships, boats, snow, rain, and rising and falling levels - that affect the most accomplished paddlers. This is a river that Mark Twain struggled to define in Life on the Mississippi and even with all the levees, locks, dams, wing dams, and control structures that give the sense of human's being in charge - it will always be the river that makes the final decision.  It is relentless and timeless. Into this maelstrom Eddy chose to test himself.

He did not own or know how to canoe when he began.  He just knew he wanted to do this and as all adventurers can attest - explaining why you are going to do something is more difficult that tell the story afterward.

It is a voyage of personal discovery.  Eddy learns the canoe, becomes one with the river and shares many of the people he encountered along the way.  His adventure is cloaked in philosophical enlightenment.

I can only suggest that you grab a cup of coffee and slip in to his adventure.  Better yet - sit by the river while you read!

Here is an excerpt.
"  A red fox scurried down to the edge of the water and ran along the shore. He kept pace with me and seemed to be watching me, keeping up with me. I had never seen a fox in the wild before. I didn't want him to ever go away. I didn't want this day to go away.

This feeling. Just a few years longer. Just a few more hours, minutes, moments. I hope that when I die I have those words on my lips: just a minute more. Not out of fear of death or out of wanting to live on and on, but because I will have been so thrilled with this life with all its ugliness and pain which does not in the least overshadow the warmth and glowing of peace and joy and moments like this morning on the river, and I will ask for just a few more minutes of it. The fox knew I was there and kept looking my way. Agile and funny little creature. And then he was gone."