Paddling Places Primeval

BD Markey facilitates a comfortable, safe immersion into the wilds of Mississippi

by

We launched on the first Saturday of the year. Through the January chill, we languidly paddled around the rotting canopy of fallen trees, called strainers; beside water-smoothed limbs that pierced the rippling surface, snags; and past gurgling feeder streams, swirling eddies, sandy beaches, and steep multicolored clay banks. We saw turtles and blue herons and a lone blinking deer. A hawk screeched in the distance and buzzards circled overhead. We scared up countless ducks and a beaver or two. The river was as wild as BD Markey had promised: virtually untouched and unspoiled. You might even call it pristine.

Markey is the owner and operator of Guided Canoe Tours, a venture he started in 2020 to share his love of the Pascagoula River Basin, the last remaining unregulated major river system in the lower forty-eight states. What this means is that along the more than two dozen rivers and creeks that constitute the watershed, there are no dams—other than those built by beavers—nor levees, channeling, or dredging. These living bodies of water meander through a patchwork of private and protected public lands, some 9,600 square miles of it, including 37,000 acres of Pascagoula River Wildlife Management Area and nearly half a million acres of De Soto National Forest, and eventually drain into the Gulf of Mexico.

Before the arrival of European colonizers and their forced removal of the area’s Indigenous tribes in the nineteenth century, the Choctaw occupied much of this land. The Chickasaw claimed a piece, too, as did the Biloxi and Pascagoula. According to Markey, there were settlements at many of the basin’s confluences, ideal places to fish and trade goods with passersby.

Experiencing a river so physically un-altered by the region’s tumultuous history,  and overcoming the unforeseen obstacles it presents is, for Markey, precisely the point of these adventures. In the city, it is easy to cultivate a sense of control in our lives. But out here, anything can happen. A surprise shower might develop in a moment’s notice. Massive logs jut out and block the path. You have no choice but to deal with these “problems” as they come, navigate around them, or beneath them, and continue on. Aside from the occasional piece of plastic (infiltrating even this wildnerness) you can go miles without seeing any evidence of modernity. It is easy to imagine you have traveled a thousand years back in time.

[Read about Heartland Tours' unique local agriculture tours here.]

I signed up for a three-day solo tour, just Markey and me. Earlier in the week, heavy rains raised the water level eight feet, but by the time Saturday came around, the river had leveled out. Sunday, the rains returned. We hunkered in our tents all morning and decided to camp on the bank another night. After the rain finally ceased, we sat in camping chairs and ate sandwiches and tomato soup for lunch, played cards, did some yoga, meditated, read a while, and gathered firewood until evening arrived—at which point we shared another meal and too many s’mores and conversed beside a crackling fire. The next morning, we discovered that the water had risen at least three feet—revealing before our eyes exactly how reactive these waters are to the elements.

Long ago Heraclitus pointed out that one never sets foot in the same river twice, that after each experience, the river and the person have inevitably changed. The snags we encountered yesterday are, with luck, submerged today and thus easier to navigate, and perhaps easier to forget. See how a river makes a tidy metaphor for life?

The next morning, we discovered that the water had risen at least three feet—revealing before our eyes exactly how reactive these waters are to the elements.

Markey got into this business after a life-altering experience in 2016. Late one night, while riding his bike to his New Orleans home, he was sideswiped by a car—a hit and run that remains unsolved. The damage was severe: collapsed and punctured lungs, a broken orbital socket and collarbone, and other injuries besides. He couldn’t get oxygen to his lung and swiftly went into a coma, but somehow, the next day he woke up. When he gathered his bearings, he looked inward and reassessed. Coming so close to death emboldened him to change what he didn’t like about his life—an awakening in more than one sense. He quit his desk job, got sober, and began to feel like a different person altogether.

Growing up in western Massachusetts, Markey had always been comfortable on river water. After recovering from the accident, he decided to try his hand as a whitewater rafting guide on the Deerfield River in New England. The next year, he bought a kayak and traveled to Minnesota to the source of the Mississippi River and from there paddled 2,400-miles down to New Orleans. “At the end of that trip, I realized I just want to continue living outdoors,” Markey told me. “I felt more alive, and healthier, and satisfied.”

Over the past few years, Markey has worked as a park ranger all over the country, from Vermont to Wyoming, returning to New Orleans at the end of the season to run his canoeing tours. They go from October to May, usually a couple of times a month.

“At the end of that trip, I realized I just want to continue living outdoors,” Markey told me. “I felt more alive, and healthier, and satisfied.”

Markey said that four to six guests makes an ideal group; more than that can get a little crowded. On launch day, usually a Friday morning, the guests meet in New Orleans and Markey drives everyone two and half hours east to whichever river he’s chosen for that trip. When they complete the route on Monday afternoon, Markey drives everyone back to New Orleans. He provides all the gear, the food, cookware, and expertise. All you need to bring are your toiletries and a few changes of clothes. Markey doesn’t disclose the names of the rivers he guides, nor the exact locations of his tours—the better to keep these places less known, less impacted.

[Read about one writer's experience of camping in the Atchafalaya Basin here.]

Markey first came upon the Pascagoula River Basin eight years ago, an entire year before the accident, and has since found healing in these murky waters. He’s begun to think of his trips as retreats, rather than mere tours, and even once invited an eco-therapist to lead meditation sessions. The basic idea is for guests to “get away from their city life and get into the emotional and spiritual connection that humans have to the natural world,” he said, “immersion, not visitation,” and he is there to facilitate that transformation.

“Everything kind of slows down,” said Erik Johnson, a former guest on Markey’s tours. “It lets your mind wander and delve into things otherwise you wouldn’t because of your normal grind of life … It was a big mental recharge.”

In one of our beach conversations, Markey elaborated on his vision. “Instead of just passing through here and taking pictures,” he said, waving at the line of maple and cypress above the mossy banks, “they’re living in it, living with it, for three or four days.”

“Everything kind of slows down,” said Erik Johnson, a former guest on Markey’s tours. “It lets your mind wander and delve into things otherwise you wouldn’t because of your normal grind of life … It was a big mental recharge.”

Another important aspect of Markey’s mission is to provide a space for groups who haven’t always felt welcome in outdoor spaces, namely BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and people of color) and queer-identifying folks. With this in mind, Markey has scheduled trips that intentionally cater to these groups. “I think the outdoors should be a welcoming place for everybody, because everybody can benefit from it,” he said. “If it’s more comfortable for marginalized groups to come on a tour exclusively for marginalized groups, then I’m happy to offer that.”

On these excursions, mornings usually begin with breakfast, which Markey prepares and cooks, followed by silent meditation and a brief yoga session. Cleaning up is either handled by volunteers, or otherwise the guests play a spoon toss game to decide. And then the camp is broken down, leaving no trace, everything repacked in the canoes for the next leg. It’s almost like a mobile floating summer camp.

On the third and final day of my private trip, we paddled through an epic morning fog. The swollen river was luminous, reflecting a rising sun. The water moved swiftly but we paddled anyway, entering a long serpentine stretch. Some of the curves looped around like a horseshoe and on the other side of one of them we came upon a small waterfall. We followed the bubbling current on the edge of the curves, like some antediluvian express lane, a truly exhilarating experience invigorated by the mystery of what lay beyond the next bend. Such experiences are harder and harder to find. 

Book a spring tour with Markey at guidedcanoetours.com.