Prologue: A Starting Point

Dear Paul,

I was informed today that I would be allowed to take time off work for my expedition. Still not sure exactly how the trip will shake out, but I’m taking this as a starting point to begin sharing the trip with others. I will work remotely for the first half (I know you disagree) and then take a month off to finish. Though I have done a fair amount of preparation, I’m still an inexperienced kayaker with little time to gain the skills I need. Hoping that writing down my thoughts and sharing will help with focus and accountability.

For my first post, I thought I’d reflect a bit on the inspiration behind the trip and what motivates me to see it through. Name the three intentions I have for the trip. I’ve discussed all these thoughts regularly with my partner, BP, and still don’t have a clear answer. Finding an answer may be beside the point. What seems to feel right is finding a sense of liminality. More on that in a bit.

If you don’t mind, I thought I’d address my journal entries to you as a sort of thanks for your guidance. Of course, friends and family have offered many encouraging words. Even more, BP has been unbelievably supportive. But since you’ve experienced what I’m about to go through, you must understand best what I’ll struggle to articulate over the course of the trip. So, I suppose I’ll be treating you as my guide-star.

One thing I should explain - why I chose the name Franklin Bridges. BP was asking. The simple answer is that I don’t want my name on the internet. The better answer is that when I was in my 20s, I was a custodian for a small church at the top of the hilly Prospect Park neighborhood of Minneapolis. Bob Dylan’s watchtower poetically tops the tallest of them. I got paid with room and board. Had food stamps. Did odd-jobs and hustled part-time gigs for cash. Couldn’t afford a car and had to bike everywhere. Getting up the hill to Prospect Park was a slog. Coming back down the pothole strewn streets wasn’t easier. It was a time in my life I couldn’t look anywhere except right in front of me or I’d hit a hole, go ass over teakettle and break my arm.

I used the Franklin Avenue Bridge daily. There the land drops away into the Mississippi River Gorge. Downtown dominates the North end of the gorge. Trees and water dominate the South. If you look down, you’ll catch a beaver or muskrat swimming up the river. Fox and deer follow the wooded embankments. Eagles pop out just above the deck of the bridge before floating down the other side. Distant geese V away. The sky opens up. Storms can be seen piling in from the west. Stars flicker directly above between streetlights. I was uplifted by the beauty of it all. Contrasting all that, cars on the highway next to the bridge zip by or were stuck in traffic. They couldn’t see anything or didn’t take the time to observe. Crossing that bridge always felt like a liminal moment. Glimpsing the grandeur of nature pressed against our small struggles put me on the threshold of understanding something greater.

I’m thinking this trip will offer a few liminal moments to share.

If I talk about the trip to others, I struggle to help them imagine. I can’t articulate how comforting it is to be on the shore, lonely, but cradled under pines, smelling mist and buzzed by mosquitoes. I struggle to describe the beauty of dipping into waters as frigid as Lake Superior and awe at its vastness. I find spiritual metaphors the most apt. It’s like listening for a voice in the wilderness. In future posts, I’ll likely frame the experience as one of sacred mystery. For better and worse I am a practicing Catholic. Hope that isn’t off-putting for you.

Aside from the metaphysical, I have a few smaller intentions for the trip. At 38, I’m just starting middle age with a career where I am being asked to lead more. I admit I’m insecure as a leader. If I’m going to lead well, I need to have more agency to see a project to the end no matter the hardships. Therefore, my first intention is simply to execute as best I can: vision out the goal, build a process, commit, advocate for myself, recruit support, and keep moving.

My second intention is to live my principles better. I believe that no issue facing us today is more important than climate change and am a big proponent of living sustainably. But I am also fully enmeshed in a sedate middle-class lifestyle. Next to the warnings given to us by the greatest minds of our world, it feels so very small and meaningless. We are on a road to apocalypse paved by the conveniences I enjoy. I won’t go on too many diatribes that we simply break free from fossil-fuels. We all rely on them. The trip itself is a big endeavor that inevitably has them infused throughout. But I’ll do my best to minimize the impact. And I’ll take the time paddling to learn and plan another way.

Folks are asking how they can follow along and are even offering financial support. It’s flattering but a bit unnerving. I think it best if I not make this about me or about money. I have an idea of how to accept in a way that does not lionize me or commodify the trip. My third intention is to fundraise a bit for Renewing the Countryside, a nonprofit I’m involved with and hold in very high esteem. They do good work championing sustainable entrepreneurs in rural communities. If anyone deserves support and funding, it’s them.

I’ll do my best to be frank in these posts. At the core of it, the trip feels like a vanity project. There’s a lot of hubris in it. I don’t have experience that qualifies me to take on an endeavor this big. I don’t have enough skills or athleticism to think I am able to complete a 1,150 mile paddle, let alone while working. Where do I get the notion I can be successful? It’s just an idea I find inspiring. It feels like the right thing to do.

Well Paul, that’s it for now. More to come. Will do my best to make this a regular practice. Hope you’ll keep with me throughout. It’d be an honor.

Sincerely,

Frank