On his first day on the water, Graham Jordison saw a grizzly.
And that was precisely what his mother had feared.
She wasn’t worried about the 36-year-old’s skills as he kayaked the length of the Missouri River — from southwest Montana to St. Louis — far from his home in Lincoln and alone on the water for 2,321 miles and more than two months.
Mary Jordison had already been through that in 2014, when he paddled the Mississippi from its headwaters in Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico. She suffered panic attacks before that trip, thought of ways to try to talk her son out of it.
“It was insane. I was petrified the whole time,” she said from her home in Arizona. “This one was a little easier, because I know he’s pretty seasoned. But I was worried about bears and other things.”
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Graham Jordison’s grizzly bear appeared 90 minutes after he launched from Three Forks, Montana. It was rummaging in the rocks on the bank, still a few hundred yards downriver.
“I paused and panicked a little,” he said. “I didn’t know what it was going to do. I got my bear spray.”
But by the time he and his kayak approached, the bear had disappeared into the bushes.
And the real challenges were still downstream.
* * *
The Mississippi River was his childhood dream. The country’s longest river.
And after he climbed out of his kayak in New Orleans after 63 days — after dodging barge traffic, and navigating locks and dams — he thought he’d accomplished it.
Then he learned the Missouri was longer. Not by much, but still.
So he put the country’s longest river back on his to-do list. But he also got busy with his job. Jordison moved to Lincoln nine years ago to serve as a community organizer for the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign, a nationwide effort focused on retiring coal-fired power plants.
He focused early on the North Omaha Station, and gives the campaign some credit for the Omaha Power Public District’s decision to shut down three of the plant’s units and eventually convert the remaining two to natural gas.
He kept paddling in his free time. He’s kayaked most of the Elkhorn, and Salt Creek from Superior Street to Ashland. He avoids the shallow and sandy Platte, but is a frequent floater on the Blue River, his favorite, and last year kayaked it from Seward to Kansas, floating past former mills and old hydroelectric dams.
But he never forgot his Mississippi River trip, and all of the coal-fired power plants towering over the water, and the barges heavy with coal.
“And I had thought, ‘This is a missed opportunity from doing my work. I could be stopping at these communities where there are Sierra Club chapters, talking, listening, documenting.’”
Jordison realized the Missouri River would be similar, with nearly a dozen coal plants along its banks. He could bag the country’s longest river, and do his outreach work at the same time — meeting with Sierra Club members for lunch and dinner along the way.
He also knew that after five years, Sierra Club employees can apply for a work-related sabbatical.
* * *
The modern Missouri is really three rivers, said Jerry Bricker, an associate professor of biology at Nebraska Wesleyan.
The first, from its headwaters in Three Forks, is a nearly free-flowing 400 miles. Most kayakers attempting a source-to-sea voyage can manage it.
But then they hit the next Missouri River, an 1,100-mile string of mini great lakes stretching from Montana through the Dakotas and Nebraska, with no discernible current, most of it against a prevailing south wind.
You can spend 10 to 12 hours in the saddle, trying to average 20 to 24 miles, he said. Like a marathon with your arms, every day. And if the wind’s blowing too hard, you just wait it out on shore.
“That’s the stretch that beats the hell out of you,” Bricker said. “It’s all paddling.”
After that, south of the last dam above Yankton, South Dakota, the river — now controlled by the Army Corps of Engineers for navigation, with a flow between 5.5 and 6 mph — feels like hitting the interstate for the final 810 miles to St. Louis.
“Once you put back in, it feels like you’re flying,” Bricker said.
A decade ago, Bricker kayaked from Nebraska City to the Missouri’s end near St. Louis. This year, he finished what he started, driving to Montana and spending the next 69 days paddling back to Nebraska.
He’s been home for about a month now. He’s finally healing mentally and physically, he said — because the river can take its toll on both.
But it’s also hard to shake. “I swore I’d never do a trip this long again,” he said. “But now I’m thinking about other trips.”
* * *
In mid-August, Jordison was taking a day off in Riverdale, North Dakota, two of the big lakes — Fort Peck and Sakakawea — behind him. And he was exhausted.
“It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do,” he said. “I’m paddling like 10 hours a day. Sometimes, I don’t get out of my boat.”
Kayaking a big lake is tricky. If Jordison plays it safe and sticks closer to the shoreline, he adds an extra 15 to 20 miles to his crossing. But if he takes the shortest route, he might be more than a mile from shore, in volatile water for hours on end.
The open water of Lake Sakakawea had almost flipped him and his 250-pound kayak.
“It’s like a washing machine out there,” he said. “You get waves coming at you from all different directions. I got pounded.”
Moments like that on the Missouri made him grateful he kayaked the Mississippi first; it gave him some of the experience he needs.
“This is a whole different ballgame. This is way harder than the Mississippi. There’s a reason only about 10 people do this trip and only half finish it.”
He’s found a rhythm since July 19, when his father dropped him off in Montana. He starts looking for a place to camp around 6 or 7 p.m. He prefers sandbars; they’re cleaner, with fewer bugs.
He eats what he can buy in a grocery store and boil on a camp stove. Macaroni and cheese. Spaghetti. Canned fish.
And he tries to figure out what lies downstream. He didn’t know Bricker before this trip, but they met this spring on a Zoom meeting of would-be Missouri paddlers. Jordison was amazed; of the dozen or so people trying to float the river this year, two were from Lincoln.
Now If Jordison has a question about the river ahead — and if he has cell service — he calls or texts the Wesleyan professor for advice.
“He really picks my brain to figure out what’s going on,” Bricker said.
Then, the next morning, Jordison is back on the water.
* * *
The days can get monotonous, boring — especially on the lakes — and lonely, he said. But he’s aware that means he’s alone in some of the country’s most remote areas, and he has to take care of himself.
He wonders if his water supply will last to the next source. He worries about his sunburn, or whether a cut will get infected, or what if he fainted and fell out of his boat.
“It’s silly, stupid stuff. But I’m weighing the consequence of every decision I’m making: How will it affect my trip?”
But he’s not really alone. His GPS tracks his every move, — a tiny red dot in a big river — in real time.
“I watch him several times a day,” his mother said. “Yesterday, he didn’t move for a while and I was concerned. But it was raining and there were 30 mph winds and he was staying put.”
He’s also surrounded, and embraced, by self-proclaimed River Angels, who follow the progress of canoeists and kayakers on Facebook’s private Missouri River Paddlers page.
They float up in their own boats, to check on him or offer him a beer. They approach him at marinas, buy him a meal, give him rides, offer to put him up.
“I’ve got all these random people cheering me on,” he said. “I feel very well cared for. I’m used to doing this stuff completely on my own.”
* * *
Late last week, Jordison was on Lake Oahe, roughly 60 miles upriver from Pierre, South Dakota.
He checked his GPS: 1,125 miles of river to go.
He’s averaged 31.5 miles a day, but on the lakes, he was only making about 27. He was looking forward to the swifter current starting downstream from Yankton, where he plans to paddle 50 miles daily on the home stretch to St. Louis.
And his work-work will start soon. He’s planning on meeting with a dozen or so volunteers in a park in Sioux City. They’ll talk about their campaigns, have lunch, invite the media. And he plans more outreach in Omaha and Nebraska City.
He’s not sure how he’s getting home from St. Louis. But after more than a month on the river, he’s not sure he wants to get off.
He’s spent the summer floating beyond and beneath eagles, elk, moose, osprey and otters. He’s watched paddlefish arc out of the water in front of him like dolphins. It takes his mind off the stress of COVID, politics, bills.
People ask him what he thinks about on the river, and he says: I don’t, really.
“Part of me wants to keep going,” he said. “I’d probably lose my job, but I might just keep going.”