Category: Wanderlust

Paddling to find what America means

On By Neal MooreIn Americana, Ethnicity, Freedom, Identity, In the News, WanderlustLeave a comment

By Richard Sayer

8 & 322

Oil City’s Gale Boocks wanted to present a gift he received from a famed paddler to Neal Moore, who is paddling across the U.S. Moore made a stop here in the Oil region this past weekend. They met up and this is an account of this connection.

This past weekend a wanderer came through Franklin. A seeker really, a documenter, a man alone but among many; a former missionary on a different kind of mission, a paddler.

Neal Moore set out from Oregon on the Columbia River in a red 16-foot Old Town Penobscot Royalex canoe right around the time the Coronavirus was hitting the states. Being alone in a canoe was taking social distancing seriously, but that wasn’t his motivation. This world traveling ex-patriot author and super curious self-identified middle-aged man was going to explore his country of origin after having been away for so long.

“What I’m trying to do traveling across America is to listen and learn,” Moore said about why he is traveling in what would seem an erratic pattern of 22 rivers across the continental United States from Oregon to the Statue of Liberty where he hopes to land in the middle of December.

His stop in Franklin is 19 months into his journey. Along the way he has chronicled his encounters in dozens of handwritten journals, a blog on his website, and instagram account and countless stories that meander in and out of topic like the rivers he paddles.

In fact, he appears to crave meandering. From the swirls sent behind his paddle that mix and move with the current as they become one with the rhythm of the stream, to the mixture of bird calls intertwined with far off car horn reminders that civilization’s hustle and bustle hasn’t stopped during his journey.

“I think a lot,” Moore said about his average 25 miles a day paddling on the rivers. Each place he visits gives him even more to think about, more people to weave into the fabric of his memories, more conversations about life to ponder the similarities we share despite the differences we hold in our outstretched hand stopping ourselves from getting too close to one another. “Once we put the party politics aside we have so much in common,” he said about his many stops along the way meeting people of all walks of life and political ideologies. “I just try to listen, no judgement.”

When he landed on the shore of the Allegheny near where French Creek comes in this weekend it was the same day an article appeared in The Derrick and Hews-Herald about his stop down river in Emlenton a day or two earlier. Oil City’s Gale Boocks, an avid paddler himself back in the day, saw this article and knew he wanted to meet Moore. The next morning he went to where an old paddler would think to find Moore, but no one was there. He, on a hunch, tried the local B and B appropriately named Peddlers & Paddlers and lo’ and behold there was Moore sitting on the front porch talking with new friends.

Boocks sat and joined the conversation and after chatting awhile it dawned on him that he had something he wanted to pass on to Moore. A paddle he used many times on many rivers that was a gift from a person that could be described as a forefather to the modern paddling world. Moore was very familiar with this legend. Verlen Kruger  paddled over 100,000 miles in his lifetime, spoke many times about paddling all over the world and authored books on the subject. Moore said he had read Kruger’s books and admired him greatly. Boocks, a preacher, performed Kruger’s wedding vows.

Boocks invited Moore over to stay with he and his wife and sit out back to talk about life and the spirit that moves people to do what they do.

Neal Moore sits in Gale Boocks back yard this past weekend during his stop in Franklin and Oil City.  Encounters like this one with Boocks and many others along the way are helping in the journey still to go. Boocks said the main reason he wanedt to meet Moore was to share his knowledge of the upper Allegheny. “It’s not hospitible in places,” Boocks said. “And know where those places are.”

And that’s what they did.

Boocks presented a treasured paddle he had received from Kruger to Moore as a gift. Moore said he never met Kruger. This was quite an honor for him to receive this and vowed to use the paddle as well as eventually find a younger paddler to pass it along to in order to further pay this gift forward. 

Moore departed the next day adding Franklin and his encounters to the list of treasured memories and his scratched notes in his journal.

His goal is to get up north while its still milder temperatures knowing it is best to beat the famed western New York first snows of the year on his way to the Hudson. He is hoping to reach the end of his journey, the Statue of Liberty, by December 14. “I’m approaching her from the American side,” he said, adding that this country is so filled with those whose ancestors approached her from the other side, and that many still are. Adding again to the fabric of who each of us are as Americans.

Moore might realize the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, but straight lines are boring and zigzagging is more fun and allows more time for reflection and encounters. Making connections is exactly what this journey is all about for him. How we are connected by water, how we are connected by similarities and sometimes even differences, how we connect to strangers and friends alike. That is what hours alone with one’s thoughts can do, find those connections and add them to ones personal spirit that has grown from the experiences.

Moore embraces serendipitous moments, like meeting Boocks and adding him to his tribe. And he added several other Franklinites as well in his short time. Some, like Chamber director Jodi Baker Lewis also want to meet him again along the journey and join for a few miles of paddling and help him celebrate his arrival and end of this part of his journey.

Given his objective, his journey won’t end at Lady Liberty. He is on a journey to seek beyond his own tribe and try to better understand the tribe of humankind. 

Photo courtesy of Jodi Baker Lewis who met Moore and now wants to paddle along with him during part of his journey sometime after Applefest is over. Connections, fabric, stories. Moore left the next day from Franklin and began posting more photos on his Instagram account.

Not his first try

This was Moore’s second attempt at this journey. The two time cancer survivor set out in 2018, but once in a century flooding brought that journey to an end. He said he is self funding this journey and tries to live minimally, often pitching his tent where allowed or a spot offered. “When you need help and help is offered, it becomes a part your life and your journey.” He said he’s learned over time that people want to help and he also like to help others. He and Boocks talked a great length about the spiritual strength of being in the service of others, a definite shared bond found beyond just the love of paddling on a river.

Understanding America’s heart and soul


Understanding who we are as a people with each stop along the way, Moore examines further the complexities and simplicities that makes Americans, Americans. Sitting on a patio in the back of Gale Boocks‘s house on a Sunday night, waiting for roasted corn and a couple of slabs of meat off the grill, Moore and Boocks shared an experience that can only happen when someone is accepting of a wayward stranger on a long journey. These encounters become beautiful to witness and experience. The many encounters we have in life we take for granted, family, friends, neighbors…. sometimes it takes a stranger to remind us of that we have so much more to learn about each other. And sometimes, how little we know about ourselves.

Moore is getting to know people and by doing so, he is understanding the culture of a place and how each place is different while being the same.

Moore and Boocks inspect the Kruger paddle that Kruger himself made. It is a kevlar paddle that Boocks said” if you were being attacked by a bear and you swung this paddle and hit him, the bear would stop and the paddle would still be able to be used.” When I asked Boocks why he wanted to give this paddle to someone he just met, he said “It just seemed like the thing to do when I found out he was a foller of Verlen.” Moore said he was humbled by the gift adding, “The power of this journey, the people I come in contact with and the nature around me. It builds. I’m in the best shape of my life at 49. I feel stronger everyday.” He said he has be fortunate to stay healthy and during the height of the pandemic last year he was very careful and as soon as he could get the vaccine he found his way off the river to get it.

Carrying people with him and how to follow his journey


Moore has been collecting signatures on the canoe. Some have faded or washed off in the journey, but many remain. All who signed are with him in his strength to go on. He has written also a quote from Richard Bock, the famed auther of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, “Bad things are not the worst thing that can happen to us, nothing is the worst thing that can happen to us.“

Moore tells a story like following a map of rivers with tangents and off-shoots. He has a penchant for describing adventurers of the highest caliber as “badass.” At 49 he is in the best shape of his life and his body and mind have allowed hime to stay focussed for thousands of miles of hard paddling. He is earning the badass title.Follow his journey on his website at https://22rivers.com/storytelling/ or on instagram at ​https://www.instagram.com/riverjournalist/?hl=en

Oregon man canoeing across country makes a stop in Pittsburgh

On By Neal MooreIn In the News, Wanderlust1 Comment

THE PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE

By JOANNE KLIMOVICH HARROP

Neal Moore is traveling 7,500 miles from Oregon to New York City — in a canoe.

He will cross 22 bodies of water, two of those in Pittsburgh — the Ohio and the Allegheny rivers.

As of Thursday, he had traveled 6,600 miles to date. His goal is to document America from the water.

Moore paddled 890 miles on the Ohio, averaging two miles an hour. He arrived Wednesday and plans to leave here on Monday and travel the Allegheny.

“Yes, it’s a little bit crazy,” said Moore on Thursday as he stood under the Roberto Clemente Bridge on Pittsburgh’s North Shore. “The view here is spectacular from this vantage point.”

He said Pittsburgh’s rivers appear to be cleaner than they used to be.

“I want to experience my home country and experience it by seeing so many parts of it up close and personal,” he said.

He said exploring the waterways will give him the opportunity to connect with the people across the country in a unique way.

“Your body adapts to the river,” said Moore who will turn 50 on the trip by the time he finishes at the Statue of Liberty. “I feel like I am in the best shape of my life.”

Moore was raised in Los Angeles but moved to Africa as a teenager where he lived for three decades before returning to the states. People can follow his journey on Instagram.

He has packages sent to various parts of the country to people he has connected with –called River Angels. Items he made need such as a wet suit will be waiting in Buffalo, N.Y. when he gets there.

He eats freeze dried food and drinks lots of water. He said there have been times other boaters have offered him an ice cold beer or pop and “it’s wonderful.”

He doesn’t own a home and sells African art to make money. He has a cell phone and marine radio. He doesn’t have any family. His brother died when Moore was 13. His mom died when he was 19. He said he didn’t have a relationship with his father who died in 2012.

Moore began the journey on Feb. 9, 2020. Moore barely made it out of Oregon 30 minutes before the governor locked down the state because of the coronavirus. There was a nine-day stretch where he didn’t see anyone.

“It was surreal,” he said. “I could have sheltered in place because of the pandemic but for me sheltering in place was canoeing on the water.”

The plan is to dock by mid-December where he hopes to paddle around the Statue of Liberty. Along the way, he has stayed in hotels, camped and with others such as Trish Howison of McCandless, an avid kayaker who heard of Moore’s travels when she was on a trip from the Ohio River to Louisville. She invited him to stay with her.

“Complete strangers will help you out,” she said. “It’s about paying it forward. I love being on the water and I will follow his journey the rest of the way. This is in his blood.”

A kayak would travel faster but Moore likes the analogy of the open canoe. He said it was an early mode of water transportation. He paid $650 for his canoe which weighs 60 pounds and is 16 feet long. He uses paper navigation charts as well as Google maps.

Moore wears muck boots, shorts, a T-shirt, baseball cap and a personal flotation device.

People he meets along the way write messages in the vessel.

“Canoeing I have to endure everything that nature throws at me,” Moore said. “And I have been through hell and high water in it. When it turns the river can become wicked you have to be cautious and know how to read the water. I respect the water.”

New York seemed like the perfect place to end the journey.

“I chose to end at the Statue of Liberty because her hand is extended to every American,” Moore said. “We as Americans know if we fall we have the strength to get back up. I want to find what unites us. Because we all know what divides us. “

Traveling Through Appalachian Rivers By Canoes And Coal Barges

On By Neal MooreIn In the News, Status Update, Wanderlust3 Comments

INSIDE APPALACHIA

West Virginia Public Radio

View from along the Ohio River, headed toward Pittsburgh, entering the Willow Island Locks & Dam. Courtesy Neal Moore

This week’s episode of Inside Appalachia is all about how we interact with water and our rivers. We’ll hear from people who make their living on the water — like Marvin L. Wooten, a longtime river boat captain. He started working in the riverboat industry in 1979. “I got two job offers the same day, and I took this job,” Wooten said. “My dad always said the river will always be there. So that’s what I’ve chosen to make my living at.”

And we’ll meet Neal Moore, who’s been canoeing for 17 months, on a journey that will cover 7,500 miles coast to coast. Moore hopes to wrap up his 22-month-long trip this December at the Statue of Liberty in New York. Recently, he made his way into Appalachia. “For many days, I’m in the canoe from from first light until last light,” Moore told Inside Appalachia producer Roxy Todd on a recent stop along the Kanawha River in Charleston, West Virginia.

“I sort of have to find my landlubber legs when I when I step onto a dock like this at times. But for the most part, I actually feel pretty strong,” Moore said.

Neal Moore Paddles On, Through a Changing America

On By Neal MooreIn Americana, In the News, Wanderlust1 Comment

Explorers Web

By Martin Walsh

Neal Moore’s voyage of discovery has survived a close call with a barge and a pandemic. This year, he should complete his 12,000km canoe journey across America. We caught up with Moore while he waited out some rough weather in a Kentucky cottage on the Ohio River.

You have spent nearly 18 months on this trip. How mentally/physically challenging have you found the journey?

Starting over

Hanging up my paddles in mid-2018 on the first attempt at this route was rough. [A] friend said, “You do realize, Neal, you’re gonna have to start over now.” That took my breath away. But then I thought, Hell yes, what a pleasure to see the Columbia again, to make my way through Montana, to be granted the chance to truly earn my eventual view of Lady Liberty.

The thing is, my crazy route from coast to coast has the chance to be continuous. That is, if my strength, mental state, bodily health, and the flooding, derechos [windstorms], twisters, and COVID –- all the Acts of God that the natural environment might hurl my way — don’t derail me.

I’m stronger now physically and mentally than I’ve ever been. I truly feel that I am in the moment, positive and determined.

We last spoke in November when you were on the Mississippi. What route have you taken over the last eight months and where are you now?

I hopped off the Mississippi at New Orleans. It was just me and a lone waitress at the Clover Grill for Christmas. The place was empty.

After New Year’s, I paddled the Gulf of Mexico between New Orleans and Mobile, Alabama, skirting the Mississippi-Alabama barrier islands just off the coast. Then I came up the Tensaw, Mobile, Tombigbee, and Tennessee-Tombigbee to the Tennessee. Here, I changed directions and came down the Tennessee, making my way back to Kentucky, to the Ohio River.

Moore’s mammoth route across America. Photo: Neal Moore

Floods and twisters

Has your route changed from your original plan?

My original route would have taken me up the Tennessee. From there, I’d have taken the Emory to the New River and on up to the Dix River to the Kentucky. Eventually, I would meet the Ohio near Louisville.

I had planned on 50 miles of portaging along historic Byway 27 (the original roadway from Florida to Chicago). I was excited to witness, paddle, and portage this stretch of rural Americana. But en route, I holed up in Demopolis, Alabama. There was flooding before I even arrived, and then two twisters passed through. The first one narrowly missed the historic downtown. These storms swept across multiple states and the flooding was intense. Folks were drowning in the floodwaters up in Nashville.

Historic Ohio River flood level markings outside Ginn’s Furniture Store, Main St., Milton, Kentucky. Photo: Neal Moore

I called a canoe/kayak outfitter in Knoxville and asked about conditions on the New River in the spring. Sure, it would be gnarly, with multiple class rapids in West Virginia, but I was not sure about her passage through Tennessee and Kentucky. I was told that I might be able to paddle just a mile or two in my open canoe. This would stretch my planned portage of 50 miles to 175 miles.

Avoiding drug dealers

I also spoke with long-distance paddler Towhead Steve, who had come down the entire Tennessee in 2020. He reported that the paddle between the confluence of the Tenn-Tom at Pickwick Lake and Knoxville had super high embankments. This meant that one could only camp at boat ramps. Here, kids were dealing drugs throughout the night.

A makeshift memorial to drug-related homicide victims. Big Branch, St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana. Photo: Neal Moore

Alternatively, he said that the paddle from Pickwick Lake to Paducah had glorious sandbars and friendly folks. This new diversion would keep me 100 percent on the water to reach the Ohio.

Are you still on track to reach the Hudson in December?

I had been budgeting an average of 10 miles per day to clear the Erie Canal before she closes in mid-November. Unfortunately, this year she will close early, on October 13. Beyond the now-rushed schedule, high water and flooding mean that locks 8 to 19 (of 34 total locks) are closed. So I might ask permission to navigate outside the season.

With a little luck, I’ll be paddling and locking through a portion. Most days on the Ohio, I’m covering between 20 and 25 miles, so I should make it. If I’m delayed, I’ll be portaging or pulling between Upstate New York towns to the Hudson, probably in snow. No matter how it goes down, I’ll complete the journey.

Open water. Photo: Adam Elliott

Sold down the river

You said that COVID curtailed the personal storytelling aspect of your journey. Has this changed as the U.S. has lifted restrictions?

Yes, I’m busily meeting characters left, right, and center. The country has opened slowly, and where I am right now, Kentucky, claims to have always been open.

I’m keeping to my mantra of documenting the folks I meet along the way. I’ve dropped the need to walk into a town with a camera to “pull off a story”. Actually, I only have one story in sight. Two river terms we all know, to be sold down the river and to be sent up the river are both negative. In NYC, “the river” is the Hudson, and Sing Sing [Prison] is the destination. I want to try to meet with an ex-offender on their release, to detail and document the gates opening for them to the big wide world, from their perspective, and to see who is there to greet them. To encourage them. To help them fly right.

Has the journey changed your perception of America or Americans? What has surprised you?

Yes, this second attempt was planned to chronicle the year leading into the national elections. I reached Memphis halfway, at 3,750 miles, on November 3 [election day]. The vast majority of the map I’m plying on this journey is solid red. Minus a few blue dots between Portland, Oregon, and NYC.

Funny, I just paddled past my very first Republican flag on a boat on the Ohio River the other day. It featured simply an elephant and the word “Republican”. It is the first Republican banner I’ve seen on this expedition that didn’t scream Trump. Or include a Confederate Flag on the same pole. Or shock with catchy expletives.

The first Republican flag not to mention Trump. New Richmond, Ohio. Photo: Neal Moore

A changing America

I think we are coming right as a nation. I took a ride over the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway Bridge, the longest continuous bridge over water in the world, as the inauguration played out live. As Amanda Gorman delivered her poem of hope, The Hill We Climb. And what I found on the streets of New Orleans later that day were kids of color in motion, laughing and pulling wheelies on their bikes along lower Bourbon Street. The city, the nation, I myself, could breathe.

I’ve found that folks from all political persuasions appreciate the idea to look for what binds us together as Americans as opposed to what tears us apart. And this is what I’m truly on the lookout for. To highlight, to underscore, to celebrate.

You can follow Moore’s journey on Instagram.

Partial to Home: A day on the Ohio

On By Neal MooreIn Americana, In the News, Wanderlust1 Comment

By Birney Imes 

The Dispatch

A recently completed mural in Madison, Indiana, a small town on the Ohio River, touts what seems to be a community mantra. Recently, screened yard signs have begun appearing around town bearing the phrase, “Just be kind.” Birney Imes/Special to The Dispatch

I’d been paddling for several hours when I stopped to check in with Neal. He was in Rising Sun, Indiana, at a hamburger stand called the Patty Wagon eating an ice cream cone.

Readers may remember Neal Moore, who appeared on the front page of this newspaper back in April. Slim Smith interviewed Neal during a stopover in Columbus on his 7,500-mile coast-to-coast canoe trip across America.

From Columbus Neal would continue up the Tenn-Tom to the Tennessee and then on to the Ohio River.

Before leaving Neal invited me to join him at any point in his journey.

Maybe on the Ohio, I said. There is a lovely stretch of river between Cincinnati and Madison, Indiana, I’ve wanted to paddle.

Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1785: ”The Ohio is the most beautiful river on earth. Its current gentle, waters clear, and bosom smooth and unbroken by rocks and rapids, a single instance only excepted.“

Jefferson was writing before the age of power plants, casinos and barge terminals, which now clutter the banks of a stream that gets its name from the Seneca meaning “good river.” While stretches of the Ohio are heavily industrialized, the river retains much of its pastoral beauty. Grassy pastures, thick forests and quaint river towns, storybook reminders of another time, slope to the water’s edge.

And so it was on Tuesday under an unrelenting sun and in 90-degree temperatures, I was paddling downstream on the Ohio to meet Neal who, when he was not eating ice cream, was slowly and steadily working his way upstream.

Neal is over 6,000 miles into the journey he started in February, 2020. Our plan was to meet on a small island where we would camp for the night.

A friend had dropped me about six miles downstream from Cincinnati on the Kentucky side of the river at Anderson Ferry, a car and pedestrian ferry that has been in operation since 1817.

Our rendezvous point was 24 miles downstream.

Finally, around 5 p.m., the rain showers I’d been hoping for all day materialized. Only, these were accompanied by wind and lightning. I took refuge at a landing at Petersburg on the Kentucky side of the river.

I was exhausted, the weather had turned bad and I still had six miles more to paddle. Maybe with a few energy bars, some rest and clearing skies, I could make it. Prudence suggested otherwise.

I walked up the steep, unpaved landing and found at the top several blocks of houses and a historical marker commemorating a long defunct distillery from the early 1800s.

I knocked on the front door of the first house I came to and stepped back. A wide-eyed young woman accompanied by a young girl, opened the door. I asked if there was an inn, campground or a B&B nearby. She said her fiancé would know; he was in the backyard.

There I met Shawn Munday, who was washing and waxing a large maroon pickup and a Jeep. We talked for awhile and though he was friendly, he had no ideas about lodging. I thanked him and made a loop around the small settlement before heading back to the landing and my boat.

Shawn in his giant pickup met me at the landing. “Can I give you a ride somewhere?” he said.

I asked if he could take me to nearby Rabbit Hash, Kentucky, a couple miles downstream from our island meeting place.

On the way to Rabbit Hash, Shawn said he was spurred to action when his fiancé’s daughter asked him, “Are you going to help that man?”

Camping opportunities at Rabbit Hash (a movie set of a town arrayed around a 19th century general store; the town has a dog for its mayor) turned out to be non-existent.

I phoned Neal. He said there was a small hotel on the riverfront at Rising Sun across the river. He would call. I apologized to Shawn, who, by now, was committed to seeing us settled for the night.

In anticipation of my having to paddle across the river to Rising Sun, Shawn took me to the landing for the ferry that serves that town’s riverboat casino.

Turns out the hotel was full, but the woman who owned the Patty Wagon said we could camp on a slab of concrete next to her sister’s dock below the hamburger stand. Neal’s ice cream stop turned out to be more fortuitous than either of us could have imagined.

Shawn helped me get my kayak to the river’s edge. By now the wind and rain had subsided. Across the way the lights from the riverboat casino twinkled in the dark. The village of Rising Sun lay several hundred yards downstream.

“Let me know when you get settled,” Shawn called as I paddled out onto the dark river.

I crossed the river, paddled past the riverboat casino and at the public landing and pulled the kayak on the shore.

As I waited for Neal to emerge from the darkness, a family with young children brandishing fishing gear chattered happily as they clambered over the riprap at the water’s edge. Out in the channel a towboat festooned with colored lights pushed its tow soundlessly upstream. The rain-scrubbed air felt cool and clean.

A long, hot day with its measure of uncertainty seemed headed toward an agreeable conclusion.

Birney Imes

Birney Imes III is the immediate past publisher of The Dispatch.

A Peace Of My Mind (Podcast)

On By Neal MooreIn Americana, Freedom, Identity, In the News, Wanderlust2 Comments

APOMM

By John Nolter

A Peace Of My Mind: Building community and bridging divides through portraits and personal stories.

Neal Moore is paddling 7,500 miles across the United States. Photo by John Nolter, taken in Columbus, Mississippi.

Neal Moore is a journalist, an adventurer and an expatriate. He is in the midst of a two-year journey, paddling 7,500 miles across the United States. I met him in a coffee shop—by chance—in Columbus, Mississippi and we found time the next day to do an interview.

“So the big idea is to travel from sea to shining sea, connecting the waterways. I’m looking at 22 rivers. The idea is to touch 22 States and make my way across 7,500 miles from the Pacific Coast, to the Continental Divide, to the Gulf of Mexico, to the Great Lakes, to the very feet of the Statue of Liberty. It’s a two year journey.

I’m attempting to connect waterways, but also to connect the stories of everyday Americans, to listen to folks and try to understand what the commonality is, the thread between us that can spin positive and speak to our mutual experience.

I’ve been an expatriate on and off—mainly on—for 30 years. I’ve been living between Africa and East Asia for this time and this is a chance to come back to my own backyard, and to experience it up close and personal. This is a unique way to see the country.

The canoe is the first form of transport and these rivers and waterways are the first thoroughfares in this land and they absolutely connect. And so, to unfurl the map in your mind and then to try to plot out your course, it took a year just to plot the course.

When I look at rivers, when I look at water, I’ve always found that this is sort of a stabilizing substance. Our bodies are +/- 70% water. The surface of the earth is +/- 70% water. And I think there might be a correlation there. When I was younger, I went to school in Hawaii. Then when I transferred to the university of Utah, I would take off every winter quarter and go back to Capetown. And for the three months I was there—which is their summer—I would just be surfing in the water every single day.

I had all this stress. I had lost my brother as a boy. I had lost my mom. And when I came home, my dad had moved on. It was just me, and I found, when you submerge yourself, and even when you’re near a waterway, that stress washes off.

So, the idea was to paddle the year leading into national elections, and then the full year after, no matter how it would have turned out. What would we look like as a nation the year after national elections?

___

I identify as liberal. I sort of identify as very much as flawed, as well. So I understand that I don’t have all the answers. And the moment that I think that I do, that’s when everything sort of goes topsy-turvy and my personal life sort of gets messed up. And so for me, when you you do unfurl that map of America, and you look at my route, this route that I’ve selected, these 22 rivers and waterways, it’s by and large, all red. The country is very red in these rural locations that I’m finding myself paddling through and stopping off to, to meet folks.

So my thinking going into it is sort of like George Orwell and his masterpiece, Homage to Catalonia where he’s a journalist based in London. This was before his fame, of course, with Animal Farm, with 1984. Well before that, and he puts himself onto a boat and he disembarks in Barcelona and he attaches himself to the losing side of the Spanish Civil War and to an anti-fascist faction known as the POUM. At the end of chapter one, he finds himself on the front, taking a shot at another human being for the first time in his life.

What he says is, “understand that I am biased, but also understand that I am here.” And this is the age before the green screen. But what he’s saying is we have New York journalists, the big name ones, and we have London journalists, the big name ones who say that they’re there during the Spanish Civil War in Spain, and they’re not. They aren’t there and they’re still biased. But as he says, I’m biased, but I’m here.

And so my thinking, looking at the map in that vein and with that exclamation point is to see the country and to learn, and really try to take off the mask of these monikers that we sort of throw on to ourselves. The things that if we let them, can separate us, be it identity politics, be it race, be it religion.

What I’m looking for is that common thread, from coast to coast. What I’m really looking for is the common humanity, and I’ve seen it. I’ve seen it with individuals. I’ve seen it with families. I’ve seen it with communities. And when you see it, and when you’re able to document it, it just blows you away. It’s so profound.

When you add up all of these stories, everybody has a story. My thinking is by the time I get to the Statue of Liberty, and approaching her from a rarefied view, coming the wrong way, from the West Coast to the East Coast, I feel like I earned these towns, that I earned the chance for these stories. I want to earn that view. And to really properly understand it, I need to first understand who we are, and what we’re about and how far we’ve come.

___

I think the big surprise for me has been the wildness. A journey like this by and large, you’re pushing yourself out into the wild. And then in so doing, you get to embrace the wildness within. As Max finds out with Where the Wild Things Are, the monster is inside of us. And so to be able to understand that, embrace that and try to deal with that on a personal basis, in concert with nature. When you’re in your canoe, you’re down low in the water, and you see it, you experience nature from a wholly different vantage point.

Every day that I’m out there in nature, every single day, I find myself laughing. It’s this care-free laugh of, I really should be clocking in or clocking out somewhere with a proper job. And I’m not. I’m out here in nature and I’m free. I’m positively free. And there’s something beautiful about that.

I’m generally up an hour before first light. I’m deflating my air pad and rolling up my sleeping bag. I’m packing up inside the tent and taking the tent down. It takes about an hour to an hour and a half. And then I put all of my worldly belongings into my canoe. And I push off. And in that exact moment, it’s just pure perfection.

There’s something so beautiful about that moment where you step off from Terra Firma into the water. Whether I’m headed downstream with the current or whether I’m fighting like hell going upstream, you’re in the moment. I don’t travel with with earbuds in my ears, listening to books on tape or listening to music. Nature herself is my orchestra.

And when you’re paddling, you’re looking out for obstacles at all times. So you’re listening to the water. You’re watching out for boulders. You’re watching for hanging tree limbs.

Whether it be the pandemic or whether it be the headwinds and the tornadoes and the two derechos. There are hard times, but you understand that it’s temporary. You understand that around the bend, that we’re going to be okay.

In many cases on this journey, I’m risking my life. I’m putting myself completely out there. And there’s a strange thing that happens. There’s this strange phenomenon that takes place, when it’s touch and go, when you realize that you’re in a situation that can absolutely end your life, it’s when you feel like you really live. You have to focus. You cannot freak out and you have to see your way through.

And so whenever you have tribulation, you have to have to experience that. Be it the loss of loved ones, be it nature’s temporary fury. You have to soldier through. And by making your way through the hard times, on the flip side of that, when you make the safe harbor, when the sun comes out nice and bright and beautiful, then it’s all the sweeter. It’s all the sweeter because you’ve earned it.

___

I think our greatest strength is empathy. When you stop and you take away these labels that we like to identify ourselves by. When you strip all of that away, what we’re left with is something beautiful. And it’s something I think that we can all connect to. We can all relate to. And if we let ourselves, we can all love in a positive way. That is our common humanity. That is the natural desire to help, to have empathy for our brothers and sisters. And I think from coast to coast, what I’m finding doesn’t always work out that way, but when you’re looking for it, you see It. You see it.

And when you do see it, it strengthens your belief in mankind. And I think it makes you—the would be traveler in this life—a very happy person.”

Discussion questions:

-What is the boldest adventure you have ever embarked on?

-Have you ever placed yourself in harm’s way?

-When have you pushed your physical and psychological limits?

-Have you experienced water in a healing way?

-Do you agree with Neal that empathy is our greatest strength?

-When have you offered empathy? When have you received it?

-When have you had a clear sense of our common humanity?

-When have you experienced wilderness?

-What does Neal mean by the phrase “the wilderness within?”

-If you could set off on a journey, what would you hope to find?

Six Historic Paddling Expeditions To Follow This Year

On By Neal MooreIn In the News, Wanderlust5 Comments

by Conor Mihell

MEN’S JOURNAL

From the High Arctic to the Southern Ocean, human-powered paddling feats over wild, open water will mark a 2021 for the books. A handful of paddling expeditions are launching in the months ahead, ready to mark new chapters in the annals of the sport. Notably, two trans-Pacific Ocean crossing attempts will be setting off from the mainland U.S. to Hawaii, plus bids across the Drake Passage and through the Northwest Passage. Meanwhile, other endurance paddlers keep plodding novel extended courses closer to home, day by day, including one man‘s circuitous 7,500-mile crossing of North America and an unprecedented, multi-year effort of one woman to paddle 30,000 miles around the entire North American continent.

Chris Bertish’s Trans-Pacific Wing Project

Big-wave surfer and motivational speaker Chris Bertish is following up a 2017 standup paddleboard crossing of the Atlantic Ocean with a bid to make the first-ever trans-Pacific journey by wing foil. You read that right: hydro-foiling across the Pacific Ocean. Bertish plans to set off from Half Moon Bay, CA, in June, on an estimated 3,000-mile, wind-powered trip to Hawaii. Bertish upgraded the super-sized “Flying Fish” SUP he paddled across the Atlantic with hydrofoils for his TransPac Wing Project. Bertish plans to follow prevailing winds and currents in the north Pacific, covering between 40 and 80 miles per day.

Cyril Derreumaux’s Crack at a Legendary Crossing

Cyril Derreumaux giving his custom, 600-pound kayak craft dubbed ‘Valentine’ a winter shakedown prior to his May 30 launch from San Francisco, aiming for Waikiki, likely 70+ days and 2,500+ miles south and west, outside the Gate. Photo by Teresa O’Brien Photography

France-born American Cyril Derreumaux will get a head start on Bertish, departing in May for a solo sea kayak Pacific crossing from California to Hawaii. Derreumaux, who set a Guinness speed record for rowing the same route as part of a four-man team in 2016, will attempt a paddling feat that’s only been accomplished by Ed Gillet (sea kayak) in 1987 and Antonio De La Rosa (SUP craft) in 2019. He’ll paddle a custom-built, live-aboard, solar panel-clad sea kayak that’s sleeker and far more seaworthy than the modified off-the-shelf tandem Gillet piloted over three decades ago. Derreumaux anticipates spending 70 days on the water.

Freya Keeps Paddling

The global pandemic forced Freya Hoffmeister to take a year off from her attempt to paddle around the North American continent. Instead, she spent 2020 sea kayaking in Norway and Sweden. But the German super-paddler, who has already circumnavigated Australia and South American, got an early start this year, tracing the Sea of Cortez and much of Mexico’s Pacific coast. Pending COVID regulations, Hoffmeister could eclipse the 600-day mark of a 30,000-mile expedition she anticipates will take up to a decade to complete.

Neal Moore’s Final Act

In February, we caught up with long-distance canoeist Neal Moore, who has spent the pandemic year adrift on America’s rivers. After descending the Mississippi River, Moore is headed north, linking waterways up to Lake Erie. This year he’ll aim to complete the third and final “act” of a 7,500-mile solo sojourn at the Statue of Liberty via the Hudson River.

Norman Miller. On the Missouri River in the Gates of the Mountain, Montana

Arctic Cowboys: Northwest Passage

A trio of Texans are waiting out COVID to finalize their plans to make an epic sea kayak journey through the Northwest Passage. West Hansen (who led a National Geographic-sponsored expedition on the Amazon River in 2012), Jeff Wueste and Jimmy Harvey, aka the Arctic Cowboys, will attempt the first documented single-season kayak transit of Canada’s arctic archipelago, with no land crossings—departing from either Pond Inlet on Baffin Island or Tuktoyaktuk at the mouth of the Mackenzie River, depending on COVID regulations. Either way, the journey will span some 1,900 miles with the goal of documenting how climate change is reducing polar ice coverage and opening up the passage of a mythical northern seafaring route. Along the way the team will travel the frigid waters that gave birth to kayaking, exploring waters that have never been paddled in modern times, and making open-water crossings up to 60 miles long.

De La Rosa’s Next Big Ocean Epic

Spanish adventure athlete Antonio De La Rosa has plotted an ambitious triathlon for the austral summer, traveling by standup paddleboard, sail, and overland in Antarctica. De La Rosa will SUP 600 miles from Patagonia to the Antarctic peninsula, across the feared Drake Passage. Then, the recent Eco-Challenge Fiji racer will retrofit his custom-build ocean board for sailing, making a 1,200-mile passage to South Georgia Island—emulating the path of Ernest Shackleton. De La Rosa will then follow Shackleton’s footsteps across mountains and glaciers to finish at the remote outpost on South Georgia’s east coast.

“All the places I haven’t been before”

On By Neal MooreIn In the News, Wanderlust1 Comment

By TERESA BLAKE

Tupelo Daily Journal

FULTON – Neal Moore smiled as he glanced down at the 16-foot Old Town canoe sitting on the banks of the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway.

“I call her ‘The Shannon,’” Moore said. “She’s named after a now-defunct bar in Taipei.”

Moore stopped briefly in Fulton at the end of April, roughly 5,000 miles into his canoe trip. He dropped a visitor off on grassy terrain – a small toad – that had hopped aboard along the way, before heading to a tour of the Natchez Trace.

Moore is on the last and final leg of his 7,500-mile expedition across America, paddling 22 rivers across 22 states. It was Feb. 9, 2020, just prior to the pandemic, when he launched his red vessel into the icy waters of the Columbia River in Astoria, Oregon.

“The end game is the Statue of Liberty,” Moore said.

A native of Los Angeles, the 49-year-old freelance journalist describes himself as an internationalist, a nomad of sorts, having lived in America, Africa and East Asia. He typically spends his time traveling between Taipei and Capetown. That is, until he set out to rediscover America … backward nonetheless, from the Pacific west to the Atlantic east.

Hailed a “modern-day Huck Finn,” he spent a year planning the expedition, completely mapping it out using detailed paper navigational charts. He said that although he has it well planned, he has gotten off track once or twice.

“I have cheated every now and again with Google maps,” he said.

The Shannon is loaded with supplies, some 500 pounds worth. Freeze-dried food, water, a tent, and a two-wheeled contraption he uses to harness the canoe to himself and pull it across areas of dry land.

“There are areas that I have to cross to get to the next body of water,” he said. “So, I load the canoe and harness it to myself and pull it to the next destination.”

Moore said at one point he will have to carry the canoe some nine miles, but he has faced tougher circumstances. His canoe has been hit by a shark, smashed into jagged rocks, and had  close calls with a barge and roughly 1,000 pelicans.

In spite of it all, he is determined to reach his final destination, the Statue of Liberty. But it’s not really about the destination, it’s about the journey.

Moore is documenting his river voyage, discovering places, and meeting people along the way. His end game is to write a book.

“You make connections along the way through what’s called river talk,” he said in a previous interview documented on his website, www.22rivers.com. “So there is a long-distance traveling community that I’m pretty well tied into. People have really opened their arms. But at other times, it’s the stumble-upons, people, and stories that you encounter. As a storyteller, I love those.”

Moore’s style of journalism has been described as “slow and low down from the view of a canoe.” For two years, he wanted to come face to face with America’s soul and find stories to unite.

Moore has authored two books, including his 2009 journey through the Mississippi River in “Down the Mississippi,” and “Homelands,” which recounts his experiences as a 19-year-old Mormon missionary in Capetown, South Africa. His work has been featured in The New Yorker, Der Spiegel, a German-language publication, and on CNN International.

He is chronicling his 22 rivers expedition on his website and via Instagram @riverjournalist.

He’ll continue his journey up the Tenn-Tom, through the Great Lakes, and on to the Hudson River.

Until then, he is taking in all the sights and documenting his adventure. While in North Mississippi, he has enjoyed a Paul Thorn concert, been introduced to the press at The Commercial Dispatch, and toured the Natchez Trace.

When asked about his favorite place out of his worldly, nomadic travels, Moore was quick to answer.

“All the places I haven’t been before.”

An Ode to the Ambitious Traveler

On By Neal MooreIn Freedom, Literary Reverie, Wanderlust2 Comments

By Neal Moore

The one and only Trips magazine

I picked up my first copy of TRIPS magazine at a “safari & travel” Banana Republic store of yesteryear. I was a kid, it was the late 1980s, and I can say – as oddball as this might sound – that I’ve spun the globe with it ever since. Its mantra of what travel can (and should) look and feel and taste like, open-mindedness-wise, sense-of-curiosity-wise, and being-alive-wise – “to get as deep inside a culture as constraints of language and understanding will allow” – has helped form my take, my very own spin on this world.

There was only ever one issue produced – so the Spring 1988 edition serves as both the debut and finale edition. I lost my original copy a long time back and have since given away many more, so I try to snag one every chance I get (thanks eBay). I like to think of TRIPS as a bible of adventure, a relic of expedition, and an unadulterated view into the “safari & travel” vision of Mel & Patricia Ziegler, founders of the long-abandoned (original) Banana Republic. 

Tara Sendelback of GPF in the Travel Books section of Banana Republic (March, 1988) – Photo by Richard Lee, Detroit Free Press.

The Zieglers, both retired journalists with the San Francisco Chronicle, hired their friends, established ink-slingers to write the magazine’s copy. It was clearly a labor of love.

Flip the pages, and the articles will transport you in search of the soul of Hawaii with National Geographic journalist Marguerite Del Giudice; hurl you into Apartheid-era South Africa with Rolling Stone, The Village Voice, and Esquire writer Mark Jacobson; bike alongside His Majesty, the King of Tonga with screenwriter, actor and novelist Charlie Haas; and Ride to the Back of Beyond (of Australia) with photographs by Hakan Ludwigsson and text by Newsweek’s Tony Clifton.

Mel Ziegler, Banana Republic founder and editor-in-chief of TRIPS magazine on a trip to Burma (in 1988). Photo credit: Patricia Ziegler.

The magazine was likely the first to introduce The Thorn Tree Forum into print, an idea picked up and popularized by Lonely Planet eight years later in 1996.  “…It was, effectively, Kenya’s first postal system,” explains the Zieglers, referring to an old thorn tree in the courtyard of the New Stanley Hotel in Nairobi where travelers used to pin their urgent, cryptic messages. “We borrowed the name for this column. Items will be culled from letters, news clippings, documents, anything concise and interesting that crosses our desk. Travelers’ tales, tips, observations, complaints, and cultural artifacts are welcome.”  

To get the oddball rolling, first-hand travel tips from veteran travelers were offered – from “How to turn a golf ball into a drain plug for overseas bathtub,” to “Create a travel journal as you go: Mail postcards to yourself!”

I love them all – the sketches, the travelogues, the photos, the irony, the off-the-beaten-track discoveries. One of my favorite travel tales, penned by Sports Illustrated/human interest writer Gary Smith, whisks the reader onto a Portugal-bound train chockablock with banana and fish smugglers.

Patricia Ziegler, Banana Republic’s founder, on camelback in the Australian Outback (in 1988). Photo Credit: Mel Ziegler.

I’ve hiked with TRIPS across Tigray, Ethiopia, adventured with it into the dusty dorps of the Klein and Groot Karoo of Southern Africa, listened to the call to prayer through wooden shutters with it in Islamic West Luxor, and gotten lost with it in the back alleys of Bangkok, Hong Kong and Taipei — some of the places I’ve called home. These days, I find myself canoeing with this tried and trusty and true companion across America, most days carefully stowed away in my dry bags, and on days like today, taken out to peruse and inspire.

After all this time, the magazine remains a jolt to the system. It hurls one back to a now-bygone era when travel was fun – to the late 1980s, to be precise, before Banana Republic was taken over by the Gap – when the company had a climate desk “so that no matter which way the wind blows, you’ll arrive becalmed,” along with a travel bookstore, “to attract the ambitious adventurer – with or without armchair.”