Cedar puts out danger vibes

The mythology of the Woodland Indian cultures prominently features the Manitou, a water spirit, the guardian and keeper of rivers and lakes, who is both revered and feared.

Having spent the best days of my life wading and paddling Eastern Iowa's rivers and streams, I understand how that belief system evolved.

On most of the streams I frequent - the Wapsipinicon, Iowa, Shell Rock, Turkey, Volga, Maquoketa, Yellow, Upper Iowa and Little Turkey - reverence far outweighs fear. On those rivers, especially during late summer low flows, I get a friendly, welcoming vibe that makes me feel there is nowhere else I'd rather be.

But on the Cedar, which on Sunday drowned Jonathan Jones of Lisbon, a good man doing a good deed, fear takes precedence.

The Cedar, with its shifting substrate, relentless currents and malevolent aura, scares me.

I can “read” most rivers well enough to identify their hazards, but the Cedar, to me, is inscrutable; it all looks dangerous.

In the past five years, I've spent 15 days paddling more than 200 miles on the Cedar and never once felt comfortable or relaxed.

During a 2006 voyage, while paddling full speed ahead in the snag-infested braided channels between Nashua and Waverly, a rogue current in the blink of an eye turned my vessel sideways and deposited it on a sandy bank, leaving me flabbergasted.

In 2008, while paddling below Janesville with Gazette photographer Jim Slosiarek, a “sleeping sawyer” - Mississippi steamboat pilot parlance for a snag bobbing just below the river's surface - overturned our canoe, again in the blink of an eye, and left us spitting water as we scrambled to recover our gear.

Before those voyages, I once ventured in chest waders into the Cedar at Benton County's Minne Estema park, whose rocky banks and eddies bespoke a smallmouth bass bonanza, which might have been realized had I not stepped almost immediately off a dropoff into seemingly bottomless waters. By the time I had scrambled to safety, I was content to leave Cedar River wading to people taller and more intrepid than I.

The Cedar's awesome and mysterious powers are nowhere more evident than at Palisades-Kepler State Park, where the heroic Jones became the 20th drowning victim in 50 years after he'd saved the lives of two young strangers.

While my sense of the nature of most Iowa rivers ranges from benevolence to indifference, I can't help thinking the Manitou of the Cedar thrives on human bones.