River queen of scrapes and bruises

As I drag my bloody right leg along the concrete toward the faceless statue of the Virgin Mary, the part of me not squealing in pain wonders how I could get hurt so badly in front of a monument to love and salvation.

The Virgin Mary -- all 25 fiberglass feet of her -- looms over my wounded body, my boating partner and the pint-size vessel made from plastic soda bottles that we have been coaxing down the Mississippi River for almost a month.

The morning sped by in what these days passes for bliss: Marc Eriksen rowing along, singing the Doobie Brothers’ “Black Water� over and over, aided by my pump-pump-pumping of our mini-paddlewheel. The boat is moving at a sluggish 1 to 2 miles an hour when we spot the gleaming white column through the haze near Portage Des Sioux, Mo.

“It’s the Virgin Mary statue,� I shout, even though the Our Lady of the Rivers I’d read about back home in Los Angeles looks more like a lighthouse than a symbol of a town’s triumph over a 1951 flood.

A word of caution: Never jog around a slightly mildewed religious icon bolted to a jetty. You just might anger it.

Rejuvenated, I step onto the boat, but it slips away. I do splits over an ever-widening section of water and maneuver my foot back onto terra firma, then uh-oh. The slippery algae on the embankment launches my leg right into the unfinished metal edge of a pontoon. My ankle twists, my shin scrapes and my rubber boot fills with icy water.

I can’t catch my breath. Feverishly, I yank off my boot in time to see a river of blood ooze over my wet sock. The skin on my shin flaps wide open in two places.

Panic follows the stinging pain. Any injury, even a small one, could force me to quit the trip.

Sheer luck and persistence have brought us this far. Eriksen almost capsized three weeks into the trip in Lake Winnibigoshish, Minn., and I am the river queen of scrapes and bruises since joining up in Dubuque, Iowa. But despite sliding down muddy banks and gathering poison ivy for a campfire, we have always managed to rise for “work� the next morning.

Eriksen is not about to let me abandon ship. “We have to keep going,� he says, holding out his hand to steady my shaking. “We still need to cross the river.�

Too breathless to speak, I shake my head no. I want to clean the river crud out of my clogged cuts. I want to be left alone to crawl away and die.

But the lock and dam entrance is on the other side, he argues, and the sun is going down. We must push on.

Disoriented by pain, I pedal spasmodically over the next four miles as my lower leg swells to twice its normal size.

Well after dark we find a break in the sheer white bluffs above Alton, Ill. We camp illegally on the boat launch of a private ski club. Although we’ve slept on private property before, we’re always afraid to build a fire. Usually we camp on publicly owned islands and sandbars.

I fall asleep, cradling my ankle. Hours later, Eriksen shakes me awake.

“Hear the thunder?� he asks. “We have to move the tent.�

The street above slopes directly over the boat launch. The tent will flood in minutes. The first splatters hit my head as we throw bags, bedding and food into the night to reduce the tent’s weight. I run backward with the tent toward a level patch of protected grass. My ankle wrenches and buckles with every step.

Back in the tent, I moan softly to avoid disturbing Eriksen. Water drips down inside the walls, soaking my copy of Mark Twain’s “Life on the Mississippi.�

Not for a moment do I consider leaving this fine mess.

To be continued....