50-50-50 Year 2: From dark to light

Fighting loneliness one mile, one conversation, one laugh at a time

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Below is my latest story, published by Missouri Life. It’s on newsstands now.

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I rode shotgun next to Shane Camden on the way to the Missouri River. He’s the owner of Paddle Stop, an outfitter and brewery in New Haven, where my friends and I rented canoes for a grand excursion on the river. But before we could do that, we had to find the river. Right then, we couldn’t see a thing. Thick mist shrouded a valley as we sped into it, then as we drove back out of the valley, the blue sky returned. I marveled at the sudden change. “It’s weird, isn’t it, how light it can be and how dark it can be,” Shane said.

Going from dark to light served as an apt metaphor for this trip my friends and I dreamed up called 50-50-50—an adventure in which we attempted to hike 50 miles, bike 50 miles, and canoe 50 miles, all along the Missouri River in one four-day weekend.

I wanted us to push our lives out of darkness and into light. Loneliness is an epidemic in our country, particularly among middle-aged men, which all 12 of us on the trip were.

We are all members of F3, a free men’s workout group that exists to invigorate male community leadership. The three Fs are fitness, fellowship and faith, and I expected 50-50-50 to be thick with all three. My friends and I frequently conceive, plan, and execute 50-50-50 and other trips like it because we know our relationships will be stronger as a result. The point was not the miles. The point was what we filled them with— laughter, conversation, good food, good drink, and if things went really well, tears.

If we completed the event—finished all 150 miles— great! We’d have a “record” to beat next year. If we fell short, no worries; we’d try again next year.

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As I prepared for this trip, I talked to an editor at a major men’s magazine. He has traveled the world, and he said, admiringly, that Missouri is underrated as an adventure location. Too many people, he said, see it only as flyover country on the way to some other adventure location.

I agreed with him, sort of. I’m not a fan of the word “underrated.” I prefer to simply say Missouri has abundant opportunities for adventure. This year, this magazine is celebrating 50 years of proving that, and I wanted to get in on the fun regardless of whether the Show-Me State is underrated, overrated, or perfectly rated.

I booked a spectacular Airbnb in Washington to serve as our home base, set a roster of a dozen men eager to test their mettle, and in late September, showed up on the banks of the Missouri River eager to wear myself out in pursuit of fellowship and fun.

We put up a brisk pace from the first paddle stroke. The river flowed steadily below us, and the sun warmed our cheeks. The trees lining the river stood tall and green with just an occasional hint of the change in color that was soon to come. We talked back and forth among the six canoes about how easy this was compared to last year’s 50-50-50 slow-motion slog on a different river.

The irony of this will become clear: The first notes I took celebrated taking the slow way. “The other side of the river always looks faster,” I wrote. “The key to life is deciding not to care.”

Yeah, well, I cared an hour later when the wind picked up, straight into our faces. It was subtle at first, the difference between walking on the sidewalk and walking on the driveway. But soon it became a steep incline.

My pastor, Mike, sat behind me. Using his paddle to steer, he tucked us close to shore, hoping the trees along it would cut the wind. That helped, but barely. We chased the fast bubbles, which revealed the river’s channel, always its fastest section. That helped, too, also barely.

For hours, we fought the elements, our faces turning pink from effort, sun, and wind. Our language hewed closer to blue.

Paddle hard, paddle hard, paddle hard.

Go nowhere, go nowhere, go nowhere.

Finally, a bridge emerged in the distance, high above the river, carrying cars to and from Hermann. Almost there.

Almost there.

Almost there.

We still weren’t close.

I brought up something Shane told me as we drove over that bridge on the way to the put-in spot near Mokane. I used my paddle to point and hollered to my friend Josh in another canoe. “Shane called that the Bridge of False Hope because you can see it for miles. You think you’re done, and then it takes forever to actually get there.”

His smile turned into a smirk and back into a smile. “He’s got that right,” he said.

Our itinerary called for us to paddle under that bridge and keep going another 15 miles. We had to abandon that plan because it would get dark too soon. We were already three hours behind.

When I collapsed into bed that night, I felt woozy. I never sleep well on adventures. Sometimes it’s garden-variety insomnia. Sometimes my heart rate hasn’t sufficiently slowed after a day of exertion. Sometimes anxiety about leading the trip grips me. This time, the bed felt like it was moving, swaying, drifting as if I was still bobbing up and down with waves.

The bed moved faster than my canoe ever did.

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We arrived at the river to the next morning to see it shrouded in fog. The bridge into Hermann — the Bridge of False Hope — disappeared into it, like a straw into a milkshake. Instead of being visible for miles as it had been the day before, now it was invisible from close-up.

As we loaded our canoes and readied to push off toward New Haven and Washington beyond that, Shane warned us to be careful, to stick to river right until the fog cleared. Barges would be invisible to us, and we’d be invisible to them. In about as long as it took him to say that—poof—the fog lifted and was gone.

After a riverside lunch in New Haven, we returned to the water for one last stretch of paddling. High and to our left, two bald eagles flew circle after circle, as if on an airborne merry-go-round only they could see. For five minutes or more, they turned laps overhead then followed us as we looked for Boeuf Creek.

A right turn there led us into still water. The wind stopped. The sun turned up its heat. Sweat collected on my back. We inched our way around protruding rocks and fallen trees. Fish jumped out of the creek, banged into the cooler in the canoe in front of me, and fell into the water. Without the cooler, they would have landed in the canoe.

We grounded to a halt when the creek turned shallow. We carried our canoes through feet-swallowing mud and across shin-busting rocks.

Finally, we arrived at Colter’s Landing, named for John Colter, New Haven’s most famous resident. He was part of the Lewis and Clark expedition, and in 1807-08, he became the first European to explore what we know now as Yellowstone National Park and the Grand Teton Mountains. He was the original mountain man, and he stands as both a model for and the antithesis of what we hoped to get out of 50-50-50. He lived a vibrant, active, danger-filled life. He challenged himself, seized adventure, and survived by his own strength and endurance.

But he did so alone, which sounds like a nightmare.

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As we paddled, then pedaled and walked through those four days, we talked, we laughed, we teased. The miles were hard to come by. The conversations were not.

I talked to John, my co-organizer, about shared struggles with our teen and pre-teen daughters. Josh told me his goal was to not give me anything to write about, as on last year’s 50-50-50 he rode 30 miles on a broken bike, walked 35 miles on a badly sprained ankle, and while he was undoubtedly the hero of the trip, he much preferred to play a minor role.

Tim waxed poetic about the still of early mornings while hunting in Missouri. He craves the serenity, the darkness, the silence. He loves it when unseen woodland creatures break that peace, signaling that the forest is waking up.

Fred and I had a profound conversation about the fact he was in the middle of prostate cancer treatment.

Late one afternoon, near the end of a nine-mile hike, we arrived at James W. Rennick Riverfront Park, a strip of green dotted with benches, covered picnic areas, and trees, that separates downtown Washington from the Missouri River.

The river rolled on, bubbles speeding by, the rest as languid as ever. Music reached my ears. A man stood with his back to me, facing the river, as he played the trumpet. He hadn’t been there when we walked through a few hours earlier. Now his song welcomed us back to town.

Was he playing to the river?

For it?

At it?

In honor of it?

I smiled at the sheer weirdness of a man playing a trumpet along a river. Then again, I was canoeing 50 miles in it, biking 50 miles along it, and hiking 50 miles next to it, so who am I to call him weird?

Too soon, the music ended, or at least I couldn’t hear it as a train roared by, as is common in Washington and in New Haven and in Hermann and in every other town up and down the river. I turned to look at Mr. Trumpet. I wondered if he stopped playing; the train’s deafening noise drowned out everything, even rational thought.

Maybe he stopped as the train blared a horn of its own because nobody would have heard a note from him. Maybe he didn’t care about that; I mean, he was playing alone in a park, which certainly suggests he did not care about the lack of an audience. I like to think he kept playing the whole time because he was playing out of love and not for approval.

We resumed our hike, west across the park, the river to our right, the train gone, the trumpet’s notes fading behind us. A young couple on a picnic date sat facing each other instead of the river. I admired them for considering that the best use of their time. Four dogs and a dozen people watched the river roll by. I would have stopped to say hello, but we had miles to complete.

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As we ate dinner that night, I did the 50-50-50 math. We were still far behind schedule. The only way to get to 50 miles of hiking was to crush ourselves. To achieve our goal, we would have to hike earlier than planned, later than planned, and faster than planned, and in the process eschew conversation.

I decided to drop the 50 miles of hiking to 30.

To chase a total at the expense of deeper relationships would be like playing a trumpet while a train roared by. We would not chase the fast bubbles. We would chase each other instead. The miles would be low; the joy would be high.

I followed that decision with the best night of sleep I’ve ever had on an adventure.