Riverland Saturday

Ohio waters (left) meets Mississippi (right)

Shrugging off sleep, Nancy and I packed up for Clarksville and anticipated a day of parts unknown. But first, there was the matter of a trail race I registered for. I hadn't run a trail race in years, and from what I knew of Clarksville, it was unlikely to be a flat course.

Until we arrived at the steep confines of Clarksville’s Rotary Park, I had no idea what to expect. 

 I heard a few women behind me talk about the four-mile route, I had no clue what distance we faced. Granted, I expected no more than five miles. We got four miles that would feel like 10 in my present physical condition.

The course challenged me more than any race in recent memory. Trail races are always different; the ground affects feet and muscles in ways that pavement cannot. During the second and third miles, the course crisscrossed a creek, cut across thin ice, down narrow rocky chutes and through a terraced forest. One river crossing even included cables and just a handful of dry stones. Clarksville’s running club plans several more this year, and after getting a grasp of the course, I want to try again.

We debated the best way to Paducah, but rather than jumping to the quick, inoffensive interstate, we wound below Fort Campbell, past its giant landfill that could have doubled as a bird sanctuary, and through a few towns that survived as crossroads. Little disrupted this northern tier of Tennessee on a Saturday morning.

Signs of life blossomed in Dover, which clung to the marshy stretch of the Cumberland River south of where it swells into Lake Barkley. The town served as a southern gateway to the Land Between the Lakes, the giant inland peninsula formed by reservoirs on the Cumberland and Tennessee rivers.

Past Dover, we turned north on The Trace, the road traversing the entire inland peninsula. Following a ridgetop, it resembled the Tennessee portions of the Natchez Trace 100 miles away. After passing a clutch of small rural homes, the pastures and forests of Land Between the Lakes emerged. Cars vanished aside from the occasional patch of hunter vehicles marking a trailhead.

Sleep did not make them seem any less dangerous.

Turning a bend far from anywhere, LBL’s massive bison enclosure surprised us. The prairie housed a herd at least 50 strong behind a fence built to withstand ramming by an angered bull. Our encounter never came to that. 

Most of the herd showed little interest, the occasional sentry gazing at us. But we knew when the time to leave arrived. One of the larger bulls had a mask of grass and dirt matted on his huge skull. He sauntered up to several females drinking puddled water, and abruptly kicked to move them off. As long as we stood there, his eyes never left us. Even with the fence, 40 feet between us and him seemed painfully short, so we left them to their grass and puddles.

Despite the share of bison we already observed, I bought a pass to the Bison & Elk Prairie that LBL maintains. The native prairies host about 50 bison and more than 40 elk. The fenced enclosure recreates the native prairie that once stretched across the Great Plains to Kentucky’s western corner.

I contemplated the need to pen in the elk. Remembering the hunter trucks at the forest’s edge, I thought better. Let elk roam freely, and they would not last a single hunting season. Sure, you could prohibit hunting of elk, but how many times would law enforcement hear, “I thought it was a deer” as an excuse? I wouldn’t confuse them, but someone in a tree stand eager for a trophy might. So keep them in the pen for a generation or two, until populations return to some part of their historic ranges.

Caught mid-lick.

Last time, we glanced at two elk hidden in deep summer foliage. We had no problems this time. Without the leaves, they were easy to see. The challenge was grasping how many sat just 20 feet away. Thanks to a sloping hill, what originally appeared to be three or four grazers turned into a harem of 13 elk. Around the corner, another group sat near the forest. The bulls had shed their horns except for a few with splintered remnants still s

Young and gangly but still majestic.

The prairie bison were a lot less active than their comrades in the penned range. They all lounged on meadow, stretch on both sides of the road. Some looked dead until the car motor grew close.

The near-wilderness of LBL gave way to the dams and heavy machinery filling the coal barges. A quick interstate turn led us to downtown Paducah. Paducah added some light to the overcast Saturday. Founded where the Tennessee flows into the Ohio, Paducah celebrated deep ties to seminal American moments. The ornate murals on the waterfront told the city’s story from Indian times, Gen. William Clark’s role in the city’s founding, its critical position in the Civil War and its industrial history. With metal bridges in sight, it was hard to imagine a day when a river crossing relied on ferries or a pontoon bridge built by Ulysses Grant’s army. Clark (as in Lewis & Clark) named the town after inheriting the land from his brother. A museum now sits on the site of Clark's custom house from the early 1800s.

Mural detail of Grant's pontoon bridge.

After stroll through downtown, lunch beckoned. Apparently the local restaurateurs colluded to close for the first weekend of 2013. We settled on Shandies, a restaurant that made the signature lemonade and beer concoctions. On a cold afternoon, we opted for coffee and excellent burgers. Nancy went with the Moroccan burger (cinnamon and honey-glazed tomatoes and onions topped with goat cheese) and I went for the bistro burger (sauteed portabello mushrooms and onions cover in Brie). The food was far spicier and exotic than anticipated.

On our way toward the edges of the Jackson Purchase, we skimmed Lowtown, the city’s arts district. There were a surprising number of homes for sale. Many of the older homes had been restored with some replacing porches and sitting rooms with galleries.

At this point I considered turning toward Tennessee but Nancy urged us forward. We would knock off two more states in just 35 miles of Saturday driving. From Paducah, we had designs on the Mississippi. The road to the river narrowed at Kevil, and broke into a stretch of farms and occasional tiny towns. One sign pointed south for Future City. The dot it received on the map was too generous.

High and narrow runs the road to Missouri.

At Wickliffe, houses and farms dropped away. The road stuck to a narrow stretch of high ground above broad flood plains of the Ohio (north) and the Mississippi (south). River commerce might have faded, but the influence of the Mississippi and its tributaries will always define the heart of the country. Barges still traverse and moor around Cairo; a look a Google Maps’ satellite view illustrates how frequently they pass.

Soon we hopped a quick bridge from Kentucky to Illinois’ southern tip. A second bridge tied Illinois to Missouri. The bridge across the Mississippi was taller and narrower. At this entrance, the Show-Me State offered only winter’s abandoned fields. Unseen power plants belched smoke along the river’s heavily treed horizon.

Maybe Cairo would have benefited from a sunny day and leaves on its trees. Well, probably not. Cairo bore the archaeology of the heyday of America’s river economy. Two centuries ago, when the Ohio River hit the Mississippi around Cairo’s Second Avenue, Lewis and Clark (yes, those guys again) camped there.

Now it felt like a piece of the country that had been passed over. Really, with the decline of manufacturing and industry, too many American small towns have that feel in the 21^st century. At the tip of Illinois, Cairo felt like the distillation of all of them. Only the liquor stores and the police department seemed to be in business on a Saturday afternoon. Even Cairo’s historic block of homes felt like an advertisement for turning around.

An egret takes flight at Illinois' southern end.

What we wanted from Illinois’ southern end was not on Cairo’s main drag. Fort Defiance, the state park at true tip, sat at the end of a short deserted train. Scenery worked in its favor; a beacon warned river traffic away from the point.

A single egret waded at land’s end, where the currents gently collided. The murk and the oil embedded in both rivers stripped anything monumental away from the confluence.

Calling the land surrounding that point a park would be too generous. Grime and decay had afflicted it as much as it had Cairo. Aside from viewing the current of the Ohio and the Mississippi mingling into one, there wasn’t much to recommend about this water.

A fast turn and a bridge returned up to U.S. 68 to Kentucky and its bizarre course above the Ohio floodplain. In a few short hours, we had seen Western Kentucky’s homages to its past, from bison to barges, and ample evidence of a hardscrabble region fighting for a future that won’t get any boost from Future City.