Paddling The Tennessee River: A Voyage On Easy Water

by Kim Trevathan

Paddling the Tennessee River
A Voyage on Easy Water
Kim Trevathan
Outdoor Tennessee Series

In late August 1998, Kim Trevathan and his dog, Jasper, set out by canoe on a long, slow trip down the 652 miles of the Tennessee River, the largest tributary of the Ohio. Trevathan wanted to experience the river in its entirety, from Knoxville’s narrow, winding channel, which flows past rocky bluffs, to the wide-open waters of Kentucky Lake at its lower end.
Over the course of the five-week voyage, Trevathan rediscovered the people and places that made history on the Tennessee’s banks. He crossed the path of the explorer Meriwether Lewis along the Natchez Trace, noted the sites of Ulysses S. Grant’s Civil War battles, and passed Hiwassee Island, the spot where a teenaged runaway named Sam Houston lived with Cherokee Chief Jolly.
Trevathan also came to know the modern river’s dwellers, including a towboat pilot, two couples who traded in their landlocked homes for life on the river, a campground owner, and a meteorologist for NASA. He placed his life in the hands of U.S. Army Corps of Engineers lock operators as he and Jasper navigated the river’s nine dams.
Paddling the Tennessee River is a powerful travel narrative that captures the river’s wild, turbulent, and defiant past and confronts what it has become—an overused and overdeveloped series of lakes. But first and foremost, the book is the story of a man and his dog, riding low enough to smell the water and to discover the promise of a slow river running through the southern heartland.
The Kim Trevathan, who earned his M.F.A. in creative writing at the University of Alabama, works as a new media writer and producer and writes a column for the Maryville Daily Times. His essays and short stories have been published in The Distillery, New Millennium Writings, The Texas Review, New Delta Review, and Under the Sun. He lives in Rockford, Tennessee.

Genres: Travel

320 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2001

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

[David Ward · Rating 3 out of 5]

Paddling the Tennessee River: a Voyage on Easy Water by Kim Trevathan (Univversity of Tennessee Press 2001)(917.68). Local environmentalist paddles the Tennessee River for over 500 miles from Knoxville to Kentucky by way of TVA lakes through Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, and Kentucky. The author acknowledges that the Tennessee is a “dead” river for much of the trip (apparently as opposed to a “wild and scenic” river which has escaped damming by the Army Corps of Engineers through the date of publication. The author was accompanied only by his dog and received only nominal support logistically from his wife. I live in Knoxville less than a half mile from the river; there is not a tetanus shot big enough to get me in that water. I'm just kidding. Three big shots would probably be sufficient. My rating: 7/10, finished 9/8/2014.

[Chad Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

There's something comforting in finding someone on their own journey, especially in context to navigating on rivers, seemingly in search for something that cannot be objectively defined nor even understood until you have it in your possession. A person who feels and sounds familiar, an adventurer of sorts, but also an observer of the impact of modernity on nature and on the soul.

I don't think anyone should read this book with the intent or mindset that this will scratch the same itch as reading John Graves Goodbye to a River might. There are definitely influences that extend from Graves to Trevathan, shared interests like local history and boating general, but this book is better understood as an exploration all unto the author's own.

You will find an author that respects the river.

You will find a person, I suspect if you're reading this, that like yourself is out looking for the unimaginable on water.

[Austin · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author describes his multi-week canoe trip down the Tennessee River, from eastern Tennessee, through Alabama, into Kentucky. I enjoyed the details about life on the river--the odd people encountered, avoiding the dangers from other, larger boats and bad weather, the difficulty finding places to camp.

The bad guys are all callous, drunk motorboaters, polluters, and rigid campground managers, and they tend to repeat.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

In 1999, Kim Trevathan with his kindly dog, Jasper, shipped his canoe into the headwater of the Tennessee River near Knoxville, Tennessee, and began a five week, 650 mile voyage to River's end at the Ohio River, near Paducah, Kentucky.

Trevathan tells the journey in a well-structured tale mixing anecdote, research, reflection, and a variety of memorably sketched characters. The character of Trevathan is especially enjoyable, a nature lover and American litterateur, prone to episodes of cussedness. The self-ironizing stance allows Trevathan's episodes of reflective wisdom to stand out as hard- and well-earned lessons about the River and the respect it deserves.

(Full disclosure: Kim Trevathan and I both work at Maryville College, Tennessee, and I think Kim is a good bloke.)