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I shuttled José to my bank to get his documents notarized, then across town to the post office at the airport. I drove slowly and took the long way, down Shepherd Road, along the high bluffs of the Mississippi River Gorge, and across the bridge connecting Saint Paul to Minneapolis at Historic Fort Snelling, a US Army post originally constructed in the 1830s. As we crossed the bridge, I looked down to the glistening intersection of the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers at Pike Island, the very spot where Eric Sevareid and Walter Port had set out on their epic journey to Hudson Bay on June 17, 1930. This area, known to the Dakota as Bdote, is a sacred site, the setting for one of their creation stories.

I had long thought of that opening in the forest canopy as a secret passageway out of my life. Since discovering Canoeing with the Cree in college, I had dreamed of replicating the 2250-mile route. As they often did when I drove across that span, the specters of Sevareid and Port swung their 18-foot canvas canoe around the tip of Pike Island and headed into the languorous current of the Minnesota River. I imagined myself down there with them now, in the stern of the Sans Souci, paddling so hard the ache began to drain from my chest.