Plan B: The Wabash

Part One (even if I never get around to writing part two)

From the Mike Kearns put in at Tecumseh to the Ralph Tucker take out at Fairbanks Park, that was the kayaking adventure for John and Dean, aging kayakers July 9. I know that the late Mayor Tucker would have smiled to see us do it and I suspect my old friend Judge Mike Kearns (now deceased) would have given us his ultimate expression of approval, a nod. Entry onto the Wabash was easy enough. The current was quick from the start. The Wabash is muddy here and swift and a little scary for guys who have become accustomed to clear, shallow creek water. Those first few moments on the water, the time when you get your balance and start to feel comfortable, took us hundreds of yards downstream.

There is an auto-salvage yard south of Tecumseh and part of the bric-a-brac used to hold the banks are flattened automobiles. I want a photo of litter of this scale but I have resolved to wait for the delivery of the protective case and will only take a photo when the kayak is at rest on the bank. The image of a bank of cars is in my mind; a single car here and there parallel to the water and then a stack of 10 or more door to door stacked on their noses as if a 5 lane highway ended right there.

Before I could shake that image from my mind, Dean said that he wanted to be on the other side before we reached the power plant. I was beginning to hear the turbine noise and I agreed. When you see the Wabash Valley Generating Station at West Terre Haute from afar, smoke stack wafting sanitized exhaust into the air, it looks friendly enough but close-up from water level it is a monster. Four or more giant pipes spew warm water into the Wabash below a wall of a building and I know that water is being taken in from the river at an equal rate and I don't know where. The currents are hard to read on the Wabash and I don't feel safe. Not even on the far side of the river.

There are a few swirls and some large patches where the water does not seem to flow. More than once, I imagined that I felt something underneath my kayak, an unsettling disruption of the usual flow. It is hard to get comfortable on a 31 inch base on this day on the Wabash. I want to go faster to overcome the uncertainty and I fought that instinct and stayed side by side with Dean for much of the day so that we could talk about what we were seeing.

Dean stopped for a photo on the east bank at a sandy place but I missed it and decided to go downstream and wait. I hope he got a picture of the monster power plant that we depend upon for energy in this region. Mountains of coal are stacked at the edge of the plant and two giant shovels feed the hoppers. The temperature alone (absent of any pollutants) of the four exhaust streams of water merging into the Wabash causes something visible. It looks like a line of water a few feet wide, splitting the river. It glistens on the surface for a mile or more before I stop noticing it.

The slower moving water along the banks contains scum at this point downstream of the power plant. I am increasingly averse to touching it. You have to think that you are capable of surviving an accidental upset, of holding on to your paddle and swimming with your kayak to a shallow place where you can get started again. If you don't believe that, you shouldn't push off in the first place. But it is not something I want to do when there is scum on the water.

"If you see a turd, don't tell me about it", I joked to Dean, kicking off a scatological conversation that I wish I hadn't started.

We cross to the west bank of the Wabash for a while where it seems cleaner.