| 04/11/2008 |
| Dave Kraemer: Kenny has made my life better |
 We were driving in Kenny's hearse, his second one, across corn stubble in a low field next to the sprawling Mississippi River, on our way to Big Lake Shack, a crude board hut out in the river bottoms where Kenny is most at home. The hearse was a story all on its own. He used to buy them used, he told me, because you could pick them up cheap. Low mileage. No one else wanted them. And plenty of room in the back to slide in a canoe. And there was, in fact, a canoe in there, wet and muddy, nested among a tangle of old burlap, cattails, fishing nets and stuff I couldn't identify. It smelled of the swamp, of carp and muskrats and of that "boot-sucking mud" at the bottom of the Mississippi. I was a young reporter then, full of myself, but even more full of the sights and sounds - and smells - of the Mississippi. I was in love with the rivers and bluffs, the mystique, the mists, the dark, hidden valleys, tawny hillsides and the black, sinuous, backwaters that slid through the trees, curled around your mind and gripped your soul. Looking back, I could have fallen into no better place to begin my career. Never mind the superficial skills of writing on deadline, digging out facts from the county courthouse or learning to prop a telephone receiver in the crook of my neck. It was in developing a sense of place, an ethic, an ear for a good story, that would be the river's most valuable lessons. Kenny embodied that big river. His life and his stories stretch out across the wide valley. He was, and is, a genuine Mississippi River rat, steeped in lore, knowledgeable about a thousand practical, natural things, oblivious to most of modern life or the workaday world. He made his living hunting, trapping and guiding through the backwaters, surviving on roots and meat, pulled through life by his own hands. Through him, my sense of the river grew. But in the hearse, I was still in too much of a hurry, preoccupied with how this was going to go. I wanted what he had. I wanted it bad. I had a morning to spend. Then I had to be back at the office. How long was this going to take? Kenny moves slow. He talks slow. He says he might be the slowest talker in the English language. We stepped out of the hearse to walk a half mile back to the shack, but not more than a hundred yards into the woods, he stopped again. "You know what a walking stick is good for?" he asked. Sure, I knew. Balance, rhythm, poking at things. "Nope," he said. "It's for leaning on. It forces you to stop from time to time and rest awhile." We eventually made it back to Big Lake Shack, with a small table and chairs, a bed and a wood stove. We poked around in the canoe. Lunched on turkey Kenny had shot and smoked himself. And then I persuaded him to take me back. I filed my story and it became what is now an immense volume of forgotten words. Just this last weekend, I saw Kenny again. He was the keynote speaker at the Iowa Rivers Revival, a conference on promoting and caring for Iowa's waterways. In the 16 years since we last talked, Kenny has become famous. He's written two books, speaks on a circuit of school groups and conservation organizations like this one, and, a couple of years ago, the BBC came over to film a documentary on Kenny and the Mississippi River with spectacular cinematography from Neil Rettig. He since has been broadcast on the Discovery Channel. He looked the same age as he did in 1992. Kenny is the genuine article. You might think that a guy who now carries on such an erudite schedule is simply forced to pull on his river rat persona like an old coat and hat to give the city folks a show. But no, he's really that way. His message is rooted in the mud and it rises to the blufftops. It's part Cree, part Alsacian, part Zen. He speaks of a river ethic. Of the interconnection of everything. Of the circle of life. Kenny's respect for the land and the river is a message to the world. He's a master of storytelling. And a student of life. Journalists only reflect the world. Kenny grows from it. I'm humbled and awed that my life has been shaped by the stories I've been able to tell of people like Kenny. They form my body, they have determined my direction. Saturday night, before a mesmerized crowd, Kenny told a story of his own, about an old car, with the back seat torn out and the trunk open, so you could slide in a canoe, and about a dog, who jumped into that old car and dove into the backseat, sniffing out the burlap, the fish, the muskrat hides, cattail tubers and boot-sucking mud that filled the corners. I knew that story. I was in that car. I realize now that I am part of Kenny's story, too, just as he is part of mine. All our lives are made up of the stories of ourselves and of the people we meet, gathered across the years, braided like the backwaters of the Mississippi, flowing together down to the sea. Kenny steered his canoe next to mine for a while and let me see how he follows the river. My course will be different, but it will be better for having traveled a while with Kenny.
|