Heeding a Stroke of Inspiration

This lonely stretch of the Mississippi River wakes to an inexplicable oompah, the rhythmic thumping of a tuba accompanied by trumpet and accordion. Five musicians stand on the muddy, overgrown bank--as if dropped there from the heavens--playing a Slovenian melody amid swarms of black flies.

The ruckus startles a passing towboat captain who idles his engine, peering through binoculars, distracted from an even stranger sight upriver.

Two arms thrash the water. A head occasionally pokes above the surface. Martin Strel is paddling, kicking, gasping his way toward the Gulf of Mexico.

It takes an eccentric to attempt such a feat, to dream of swimming the 2,360-mile length of the river some call the Big Muddy. His journey began in Minnesota headwaters and has progressed stroke by stroke, from dawn until dusk, every day for nine weeks.

Blisters and cuts mark his body. Barges rumble past as oblivious as elephants, swamping him in their wake. He has avoided snakes and alligators and, he says, survived a lightning bolt that missed him by a few feet.

Just as bad are the old tires, bottles, cans and empty propane tanks. He has suffered an assortment of stomach, ear and eye ailments along the way.

“Sometimes I have it very, very bad,” he says. “But always there is tomorrow.”

The 47-year-old Slovenian bolsters himself with a nightly dose of red wine, cases of which were brought along for the expedition. He takes strength from the band that has just arrived from his homeland, performing folk songs at various points along the river as he slogs toward the finish.

So close now, Strel wakes early each morning, slathering himself in lanolin and pinching back into his wetsuit, hobbling to the water’s edge.

“Same,” he says in an accent as tortured as the last mile of a long swim. “Each day is the same.”

*

If you are looking for deeper meaning in the tale of Martin Strel, something about the human spirit or a Mark Twain-style saga about traversing the watery backbone of the nation, the man isn’t much help. Essentially, he is swimming the Mississippi because that is who he is. He is a swimmer. He puts his head down and goes.

His son and a friend have traveled with him from Slovenia to drive his equipment along the banks, cook meals and arrange for motel rooms at night. A handful of Americans have volunteered too, including three kayakers who escort him down the river.

This is not the first time a swimmer has confronted the Mississippi. A Depression-era salesman named Fred Newton swam from Minneapolis to Baton Rouge in 1930 and a Los Angeles man, Nick Irons, duplicated the trip five years ago.

But according to people who keep such records, Strel would be the first to cover the river’s entire length. He began at Lake Itasca, Minn., on July 4, and is expected to reach the Gulf by Monday, far eclipsing the mark he already holds in the Guinness World Records book for swimming 1,866 miles down the River Danube.

Strel hardly looks the type. His build is squat, not at all square-shouldered in the manner of a world-class swimmer. He has, for lack of a more delicate term, a good-sized gut.

“Maybe if you want to swim so many days, you have to be a little bit fat,” says his son, Borut, 20, who minds the van full of wetsuits, towels and power bars. “Maybe other swimmers are thinner, but they are not as strong.”

When the current runs swift, when Strel can endure wearing flippers despite the skin peeling off his heels, he covers 40 miles before sunset.

“Not human,” says Matthew Mohlke, one of the kayakers. “No man should be able to do that day after day.”

Mohlke, a 28-year-old Minnesotan, initially wondered if he had signed on for a pipe dream, but his suspicions were eased the first day when, as he wrote in a diary, Strel “swam so fast out of the headwaters that we could barely keep up with him. He hits rocks with his hands, with his head and with his knees. Jagged sticks puncture him, but he keeps going.”

Debris was only part of the problem.

Eddies threatened to suck the swimmer under. At locks along the upper river, suspicious lockmasters--you’re doing what?--made him get out and walk to the other end. Near Grand Rapids, Minn., the water was so rough that Strel became seasick and told a pelican skimming past: “I want to switch places.”

His companions soon realized that he favored coming up for air on his left, which meant the kayaker on that side took the brunt of curses when he led Strel off course or into a hazard. Mohlke and the others agreed to rotate through what they called the “hot seat.”

Within weeks, Strel’s body was rubbed raw by his wetsuit, his head sunburned and the bridge of his nose creased by goggles.

“The mayflies are hatched and are thick on top of the water,” Mohlke wrote. “I wonder how many Martin swallows each day when he comes up for air.”

Asked about these hardships, Strel responds: “Why should I do this? A simple question that is difficult to answer.”

His hometown is surrounded by rivers and he says its name, Mokronog, comes from a folk tale that suggests the locals have “wet feet.” The waters run icy much of the year and, as Borut explains, most people “just stand on the side, looking.” Strel showed no such hesitation.

At 10, he outswam several soldiers on a bet, winning a case of beer for his older friends. A decade or so later, a professional marathon swimmer urged him to quit working as a guitarist and begin training in earnest.

After racing in marathons for cash prizes, Strel discovered there was more satisfaction and profit in solo, ultra-marathon swims. Slovenian companies sponsored him in exchange for putting their logos on his gear. The money paid for food, lodging and other costs associated with such projects, as well as months of training beforehand.

In his first big effort, in 1997, Strel crossed the Mediterranean from Europe to Africa. Then came the Danube in 2000--from Germany to the Black Sea--an accomplishment that brought him fame in his homeland. He returned to that river last year and claims to have covered more than 300 miles in 84 hours 10 minutes.

The Mississippi was, relatively speaking, a logical next step.

Other long rivers such as the Nile and Amazon are considered too dangerous and unpredictable, but the more Strel researched the Mississippi, visiting several stretches and interviewing people who had canoed it, the more confident he became. This attitude, which kept him going after a rough start, might have nearly killed him a few weeks ago.

Near Cape Girardeau, Mo., a storm swept in but Strel insisted on continuing. His crew members say lightning struck a buoy 10 feet away, its concussive force flinging him into the air. They pulled him from the water but found him unhurt.

Strel says the greatest danger is invisible. South through populous areas, the river is fouled by chemicals and raw discharge from sewage-treatment plants. Sierra Club officials joke that drinking water taken from the river around St. Louis has already passed through four people.

“It gets worse as you move down,” says Jennifer Hensley, a grass-roots coordinator for the club’s Illinois chapter. “If [Strel] ingests water, he can wind up with a pretty severe flu from bacterial infections like E. coli.”

For weeks, he has battled stomach ailments and conjunctivitis, his left eye swollen and red. His crew constantly watches for dangerous flotsam, blowing whistles as a warning, especially when commercial traffic forces Strel to swim near the banks.

The river that Twain and Carl Sandburg romanticized is now glutted with tires and steel drums, sinks and refrigerators, abandoned cars and every other imaginable form of urban refuse.

“I think it’s fantastic that [Strel] is doing this because it gets people excited about the river,” Hensley says. “But he’s definitely putting himself at risk.”

Strel says he is not doing it for the money. Even with his Slovenian corporate sponsors, he will barely cover the costs for himself and his crew. The glory isn’t much either. Only a few local reporters have wandered out to interview him and, for the most part, his only spectators are people who happen to be standing on the banks when he swims up.

For those who demand an explanation, he has prepared a list. He is swimming to promote clean water, to thank the U.S. for recognizing Slovenia as an independent nation a decade ago and to honor victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. There is also the matter of conquering the Mississippi.

“First man,” he says. “Something else, huh?”

But even this seems inadequate. Strel does not exhibit the fiery nature of an overachiever, does not seem haunted by inner demons as extreme sportsmen sometimes are. His manner is quiet and plodding. His son says: “He is a fish.”

*

By the time he reaches Baton Rouge, the start of an especially polluted stretch known as “cancer alley,” Strel is battered and 30 pounds lighter than when he began. These are not his biggest concerns.

“The current,” he says. “There is none.”

Toss a stick in the murky green and it sits idly and drifts hesitantly away. With no helpful push, Strel falls behind schedule and argues with his crew members when they urge him to quit before dark each day.

Near the town of Geismar, they coax him ashore at sunset, the river and its wooded banks awash in the golden hour, the hum of crickets and those black lovebugs dancing in the syrupy air. An old man stands on the bank watching, asking: “He came from where?”

The swimmer crawls ashore on hands and knees, his son hurrying to help. Together, they trudge through the woods, mindful that rattlers and water moccasins might lie coiled in knee-high brush. “I don’t like snakes,” Strel grumbles.

Up on the levee, he peels off his wetsuit and splashes a jug of clean water over his head. The band is waiting back at the motel, along with a modest dinner of meat, rice and bottles of wine.

That night, the pain in Strel’s shoulders will prevent him from sleeping more than a few hours. He wonders aloud if he will finish but, before anyone speaks up, he answers his own question.

The answer is simple.

“Water is for me,” he says wearily. “I was born for this.”

*

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Mississippi Strokesman

Martin Strel’s journey along the Mississippi River from its source to outflow will take him 2,360 miles in 68 days. Along the way he’ll take more than 2 million freestyle strokes, averaging almost 35 miles a day.

Start: Strel begins in two-foot deep water in the Mississippi’s source at Lake Itasca. Support workers surround him in three kayaks, blowing whistles to warn of dangers in the water.

Strel swims in four-foot waves for 11 hours through Lake Pepin.

Strel is able to swim through Lock and Dam No. 13 in Clinton, Iowa, but is forced to leave the water and walk around the river’s 28 other locks.

At Cape Girardeau, lightning strikes a buoy 10 feet from Strel, knocking him three feet out of the water.

After New Madrid, kayakers notice seven barges in two miles. The support boat, which usually carries supplies and assistants, sinks overnight.

After Memphis, the current drops off, making swimming more difficult.

After Arkansas City, drops in the elevation create eddies and whirlpools.

Strel breaks his own record from swimming the Danube, by passing Mile 1,867 between Lake Providence and Vicksburg.

Plows ahead through 80-mile stretch between Baton Rouge and New Orleans known as “Cancer Alley” because of all the pollutants.