lyrics, José didn’t say a word for a couple hours after we left Saint Paul. He lounged on the back bench of Kocher’s van, hidden behind two pairs of glasses—the new eyeglasses from America’s Best, covered by the stunner shades—moving and grooving to the thump of his headphones.
I wasn’t surprised to see José acting hard around Kocher. Nor was I surprised that meeting José for the first time caused Kocher to question my sanity. He turned slightly to me with each of José’s off-key eruptions, his expression at once amused and concerned.
I gazed out the window, taking in the yellow prairie of the western lakes region. I couldn’t help but think with some regret about missing out on the Minnesota River, which paralleled our course some 50 miles south, beyond the rolling horizon.
When searching for a meaningful starting point, I had placed a phone call to Kevin Jensvold, the chairman of the Upper Sioux Community, whose tiny reservation sits along the Minnesota River, some 250 miles upstream from Saint Paul. I asked if he’d be willing to meet with José before our departure from Upper Sioux. I knew how much it would mean to José to have a tribal chairman pat him on the back as he boarded a canoe for the first time. Recognition and acceptance from men in the Native community was particularly important to him.
Unfortunately, Jensvold informed me dismissively that he might be busy the day we planned to shove off. “If he needs encouragement, tell him I’ve heard stories of men who came through here before in canoes.”
I asked Jensvold if there was anyone on his rez, a spiritual leader perhaps, who might be willing to come out to the river and speak with José. Jensvold said he would look into it and promised to call back. He never did.
I turned to the back of the van and shouted to get José’s attention. I told him about the conversation I’d had with the Upper Sioux chairman and his apparent lack of interest in our undertaking. José said that kind of treatment was what he had come to expect from Native people, even members of his immediate family.
“That’s how it goes, bro. Indians hear my name and think I’m just another Mexican. They don’t give a shit.”
José had told me before about how his brothers and sisters, of a Lakota mother and fathers of diverse nationalities (Somali, Ethiopian, Puerto Rican, Yemeni), had all experienced similar disdain from the greater Native community, who often derided them as illegitimate Indians. At Heart of the Earth, the Native charter school in Minneapolis where José had gone to high school, he was constantly getting into fights—particularly with the Anishinaabe boys—over the question of his Indian-ness. They hated him for being light skinned and having a Hispanic name, and he hated them for being Anishinaabe. He had been burned in romantic and business relationships with Anishinaabe people, and he clung to the historic animosity that lingered in Minnesota.
We pulled off the interstate in Alexandria, intending to eat lunch and round out José’s paltry collection of gear at one of the discount stores along the strip. While searching for a restaurant we drove past the 30-foot statue of Big Ole, “the country’s biggest Viking,” outside the Runestone Museum. Home to the Kensington Runestone—a purportedly ancient tablet covered with writing said to be inscribed by pre-Columbian Viking explorers in 1362, and discovered by a local farmer in 1898—the site had since become a destination of sorts. The inscription on the stone reads as follows:
Eight Goths and 22 Norwegians on a journey of exploration from Vinland very far west. We had camp by 2 rocky islands one day’s journey north from this stone. We were out fishing one day. After we came home we found 10 men red with blood and dead. AVM [Ave Maria] save from evil.
If the tablet is authentic, the Nordic travelers who inscribed it almost certainly came down from Hudson Bay, making the Runestone the earliest evidence of paddlers from the north Atlantic reaching Minnesota. Scientists and archaeologists had questioned its legitimacy for more than a century, but there was no debate as far as José was concerned. He had once participated in a discussion of the Runestone in a history class at Heart of the Earth, and his mind was made up.
“That rune thing is fugazi,” he said, sneering at Big Ole’s winged helmet. “To claim Norwegians were here 700 years ago sounds like a wild allegation to me.” Instead, he speculated, the Runestone was inscribed by white men scheming to claim Minnesota from the Natives, an assertion that almost seemed to be confirmed by Big Ole. From behind a blond beard he gazed into the distance, as if beholding his conquest. The inscription on his shield read: “Alexandria, birthplace of America.” As we pulled away, José saluted him with middle fingers out the rear window.
From Big Ole and the Runestone Museum we headed to Target, where I quickly lost track of José. I searched the men’s clothing department, where I hoped he would be considering some warm clothes. Then Kocher and I searched for him in Health and Beauty, where we figured he’d be looking for toiletries like toothpaste, a toothbrush, and soap. We eventually found him in Music and Electronics, clutching a portable CD player, a grip of AA batteries, and discs by Mariah Carey and Young Jeezy.
Had I known that José was about to spend nearly all the money he had on entertainment, I would have blown a gasket. He’d told me he was planning to set aside two paychecks for the trip. But I would soon learn that he’d “loaned” most of that money to D and his grandmother, and left Saint Paul with about $50 in his pocket.
As we followed José back in the general direction of the registers, Kocher sensed my aggravation. “Don’t worry about it,” he whispered. “He’ll figure it out once he’s on the river.” And on one level, Kocher was right. José had always lived with nothing, and he was well adapted to it. Kocher had kindly packed rain gear and a fleece sweater for him in any case, and I had a sleeping bag and pad.
From Alexandria we drove to Fargo and met up with my old friends Greeny and Huck, who had followed us to North Dakota in order to help with logistics and see us off. We parked Kocher’s van in a ramp at a mall and piled into Huck’s 4Runner for the 60-mile drive south to the headwaters. We planned to return to the van in three days, after paddling 100 river miles, at which point Kocher would drive home.
Greeny and Huck had been in my life for decades. As kids we banded together closely, boys seeking relief for varying reasons from our families of origin. It was with Greeny and Huck that I took my first bike trip, 250 miles from Minneapolis to the Wisconsin Dells, when I was just 14 years old. When I was 18, we took our first extended road trip, from Minneapolis to Key West, and from there to Montreal. After our freshman year in college, we met under the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, and spent the summer tramping across Europe, Scandinavia, and the British Isles. In subsequent years we pursued riskier adventures: traveling up the Amazon River, mountain climbing in Alaska, and hiking across Bolivia and Peru. Now Greeny and Huck both had young families and demanding professional lives.
Around midnight that night outside Wahpeton, the sky opened. We struggled to see through the foggy windshield, but eventually we found a dirt road leading in the direction of the Red River. I’d considered the trip for weeks, but many loose ends remained. I needed a dry place to sort through the gear and camping supplies. I’d intended to make my final choices at the point of departure, and as a result, none of the gear had been placed in waterproof containers.
Risking ridicule, I suggested we spend the night in a hotel, so I could get my shit together in a dry place. Huck and Greeny stared at me, unamused. “You want to spend the whole summer outside,” they asked, “but you’re afraid of a little rain?” I quickly conceded, and we agreed to camp along the river.
The following morning, as rain continued to fall in sheets, we were awakened by the electric-motor hum of a maintenance vehicle. Driving it was a worker in green coveralls, who pretended not to notice that our tents were set up between a sand trap and the 13th green, in the middle of a golf course.
I
