Coldhearted River: A Canoe Odyssey Down the Cumberland

by Kim Trevathan

Coldhearted River recounts the canoe odyssey of Kim Trevathan and photographer Randy Russell down the Cumberland River-almost 700 miles-fromHarlan, Kentucky, through Middle Tennessee and Nashville, then back into western Kentucky, where it spills into the Ohio.The Cumberland presented spectacular gifts to the adventurers: the morning when tiny fog tornadoes swirled gently around their paddles and the night above Cumberland Falls when they built a fire on a beach and watched rapids flash across the river. But, as it presented gifts, the river also presented danger. A fifteen-hour rain downstream of Wolf Creek Dam raised the river eight feet overnight, and a thunderstorm blew 60-mile-per-hour winds, forcing them to seek refuge under their canoe near a cornfield.Trevathan and Russell met many who helped them on their journey. Among others, a fisherman portaged them and their boat around a low-head dam near Pineville, and Vic Scoggin-who swam the length of the Cumberland in 1996-met them for a fried chicken dinner at Salt Creek Campground in MiddleTennessee.Coldhearted River explores the river's past, invoking the ghosts of the Shawnee and Cherokee, Daniel Boone and the French fur trappers who arrived before him, early settlers of Kentucky and Tennessee, such as James Robertson and John Donelson, and a binge-drinking ex-farmer named Ulysses Grant, who won his first significant battle at Fort Donelson, early in the Civil War.Entertaining and nostalgic, Coldhearted River will put readers at the bow of Trevathan and Russell's journey as the river controlled it-at its own pace, sometimes slow, sometimes fast and turbulent, but never dull, and never disappointing.

280 pages, Paperback

First published May 30, 2006

About the author

A native of Murray, Ky., Kim Trevathan’s books are Paddling the Tennessee River: A Voyage on Easy Water (2001), Coldhearted River: A Canoe Odyssey down the Cumberland (2006), and Liminal Zones: Where Lakes End and Rivers Begin (2013), and Against the Current: Paddling Upstream on the Tennessee River (2020). All four books were published by the University of Tennessee Press. His outdoor columns have appeared in the Daily Times (Maryville, Tenn.), the Metro Pulse (Knoxville), and the Knoxville Mercury. He has published fiction and essays in the Florida Review, the Texas Review, New Millennium Writings, the Distillery, the New Delta Review, and other literary journals. He won the Gemini Magazine prize for flash fiction in 2017. Trevathan has been teaching writing (journalism, creative nonfiction, fiction, and first-year writing at Maryville College for 22 years.

Reviews

[Kathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quotable:

Working rivers like the Cumberland and the Tennessee are the last back roads, the few places left in America where mysteries remain deep in the night, in the early mornings, sometimes surprising you in the midday glare. They wind far away from strip malls, and four-lanes into lives that have retained distinction, originality, and character. Canoeing, you set your own pace and rest assured that no matter how much concrete is poured, no matter how many trees are cut, no matter how much riprap smothers the banks, humanity will never succeed in obliterating a river. Rivers will endure forever, and in canoeing them, you become a part of their immortality.

Wisps of vapor swirled around our paddles like tiny tornadoes, creating whirlpool wakes on water so calm it seemed frozen. Mornings like this helped me remember why we traveled in a canoe, why we didn't attach a trolling motor to it, as many would suggest to us. Only within the silence and stealth of a canoe could we travel slowly enough to observe the habits of swirling, dying fog. Only in a canoe could we have gotten as close to the many deer we saw on the banks between Harlan and the falls, some of them staring at us as we passed, unfair ad, others turning and strolling away unhurried after they had satisfied their curiosity. That morning, so calm, so quiet in the muffled atmosphere, I felt the weight of the water as I pulled the paddle forward, careful not to splash. A motor separates the boater from such physical engagement with vapor, water, and wind.

[Carl Nelson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A keen-eyed account of the author's canoe trip down the nearly 700 mile length of the Cumberland River. Trevathan relates the events and emotional state of the journey very clearly. Ultimately, the trip was both disheartening in the way that humankind has treated nature as plunderers rather than stewards, and uplifting in the way that he and his canoe partner, photographer Randy Russell, found beauty and joy in it. The hydrology, geology, ecology, and history of the Cumberland likewise comes alive to make a book that is both meaningful and pleasant.