Plan B: The Wabash

Part 3 (wherein I finish this story)

When we put in at Tecumseh, a fisherman warned us of tough currents on the west side of the railroad bridge. Take the long way around, he said. I call the railroad bridge Allison-Rudell because over the years the name of the railroad corporations that use it change from time to time but the two men who were killed in separate accidents on it are still dead and should be remembered. For a moment in 1959, I thought I was going to perish on or under this bridge and I think of this when I pass under it for the first time in almost 50 years. I found a sandy beach and backed the kayak in and dared to use the camera to record this mid-day view of the storied bridge showing the old parts and the older parts. I locked the camera in the clear plastic dry box and started through the series of bridges. The bridge by ICON, the former Pillsbury packaging plant, and the Indian Burial ground there at the end of Locust Street. (correction: it was the old Burying Ground, where Revolutionary War Veterans are buried, that we passed.)The stone and concrete river walls there seem extensive when viewed from water level.

Storm sewers appear at the river end of every major street and a signpost says that sewage is mixed in here when there is too much rain in Terre Haute. There is a plan to fix that and the recent 107 percent raise in sewage bills probably won't cover the bill.

We pass under the Dresser and Dreiser Bridges and find, between them, the remnants of the old Wabash Avenue Bridge. These bridges (and the US 63 bridge which I forgot to mention upstream from Fort Harrison) are notable for their plainness. They will win no architectural awards but they are functional bridges. No pictures are necessary or wanted.

There's a floating boat dock at Fairbanks Park. I have never seen a boat tied up there but it would work ok. My Pontiac waits in the parking lot above it. A few yards downstream is the launch ramp where we end our day on the water.

I was able to convince Dean that two people can carry two kayaks up the ramp more easily than 1 person can carry 1. My kayak weighs 7 or 8 pounds more than his so I got him on that one. I'll add a picture of both kayaks stacked atop my car a little later.

So that's the way it was on July 9. A day on the water is a good day... even if it is water you wouldn't want to touch. Our original plan was the Eel River but days without wind on the Wabash are very rare and gave me a chance to "get over" my desire to see what it would be like.

When I was a kid and sat on the bank with my good buddy, Dickie Leonard, and watched the water flow unceasingly southward, we talked about building a raft and floating to New Orleans. We were always working out some kind of a scam or prank that put us in danger of being caught or needing to flee to avoid capture. At age 11, most of these schemes were not carried out but the flight plan, we called it Plan B, always involved floating down the Wabash.

Who could have figured it would take more than 50 years for me to realize, if only in part, Plan B.


 

Plan B: The Wabash

Part two (even if I never write the rest of it)

The stream of scum seems to end at Fort Harrison. Let me guess that the water temperature normalizes and whatever it was that looked like the beginning of Meerschaum remained collected on the east bank upstream. It can't stay there. I guess it mixes in and becomes less noticeable.

There are few places to take a break and stretch your muscles on this run of the Wabash.. No islands, no beaches. I know of a place, the ruins of the Ft. Harrison boat launch and we find it. What's left of a once grand launch is a broken concrete ramp where boats were put in and taken out on iron rails. There's only a small space where it is safe to beach a kayak so Dean gets his chance to use his rope techniques to lift his kayak up the bank to make room for mine. The cable house is overgrown and only one of the two grand concrete structures has a roof. We can hear the children playing in the Elks Country Club pool but no one at the Elks knows we are there. I call the Vigo County Historian on his cell phone and ask him what these two structures are called. He doesn't know but when I suggest pagodas, he doesn't object. So I will call them the Twin Pagodas (or ruins thereof). We eat lunch in the shade on the south pagoda.

We should have stayed out of the water a little longer and stretched and walked but the river drew us back. After re-launching, I found an eddy and dared to take my camera out of the dry box and directed Dean to face me for one good picture of the approach to the Allison-Rudell Bridge. The courthouse dome is upper left in this picture and a peek of the bridge is below it. We are in the city but, except for these standouts, you can't hear it or see it.
 

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.