The Atchafalaya Basin’s breathtaking scenery inspired Seth Varney as he paddled its length for the stretch run to the Gulf of Mexico.

When Varney stood in ankle-deep water, paddle in hand, canoe behind him, Wednesday morning in the Gulf of Mexico, his mission to canoe the Mississippi River from Minnesota to the coast of Louisiana was complete. The Asheville, North Carolina, resident chose to get off the big river in central Louisiana so he could experience the Atchafalaya Basin.

“Goal is reached! Felt satisfying to see the final stage of the river – from 3 feet wide in northern Minnesota and hearing wolves on Day 1, to camping a few feet from alligators and seeing the expanse of the Gulf today,” Varney wrote in a text message at 11:44 a.m. Wednesday.

He stayed overnight at the campground on the Atchafalaya Delta Wildlife Management Area, then headed to another campground Thursday at the Wax Lake Outlet before saying c’est tou Friday with a trip to Burns Point.

A real life Huck Finn

Varney started canoeing Sept. 4 at the Mississippi River’s headwaters just below Lake Itasca near Bemidji, Minnesota. The call of “Ol’ Man River” reminds of the popular Mark Twain novel published in the mid-1880s.

Like Huck Finn, Twain’s fictional character in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Varney apparently also regards the river as a symbol of freedom, peace and change. Yearning for a break from his daily routine, the 33-year-old outdoorsman quit his seven-year job as a paramedic to take the trip after a year of planning and, after its conclusion, plans to apply for nursing school at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, North Carolina.

The Vanderbilt University graduate (Class of 2011) is comfortable putting his EMS years in the rearview mirror.

“Yeah, I wanted to take a break. Yeah, I did. Seven years in an ambulance will make anyone need a break,” he said this past week.

“I wanted to do it this time of year so I wouldn’t roast,” he said. Or, he might have added, become a nightly feast for mosquitoes.

He avoided the heat but to his surprise, the coldest stretch of his trip was earlier this month around Vicksburg, Mississippi, and he was surprised to paddle through snowflakes his first day in Louisiana.

Varney made the stretch run down the Atchafalaya River this past week with an old college roommate at Vanderbilt, Cody Rucks, and Rucks’ girlfriend, Jayme Dean. The couple paddled along with him in their canoe the first week of his trek in the northern reaches of Minnesota and nearly three months later joined him in the nation’s last great overflow swamp in south central Louisiana.

A week ago Saturday, as a violent storm rocked Acadiana, Varney dined on boudin while staying at the Best Western in Franklin. The boudin was from Krotz Springs and alligator sausage, which he planned to heat up Monday night on a sandbar south of Morgan City, was bought in Baton Rouge by Rucks and Dean on their way to Franklin.

That Saturday night in St. Mary Parish was only the 10th time since Sept. 24 he slept under a roof on land. On three of those occasions family or friends met him along the Big Muddy.

Chance meeting with writer

After sleeping in a real bed, Varney was up early Sunday morning unpacking his gear from his buddy’s vehicle at Myette Point Boat Landing. He met a local outdoors writer who was going bass fishing and answered questions about his plans for that day.

Varney smiled at the New Iberia outdoorsman’s reaction to the quest that was about to end at the Gulf. The older man was surprised, almost incredulous, but very intrigued.

The North Carolina resident loaded his 15-foot-6 Northstar Canoe, made with carbon fiber and Kevlar, launched the canoe at the boat ramp a few yards from the West Atchafalaya Basin Protection Levee, paddled east to the river, then south toward Morgan City. He normally wields a kayak paddle, which gives him more speed, but pulls out a canoe paddle when a strong crosswind blows against the craft.

Twenty-four hours later, following an umpteenth overnight campout along the river, he was four miles south of Morgan City. He paused to send a text at 7:19 a.m. Monday: “I’m at a sandbar just on the other side of the river from American Pass. Took yesterday to get off the main channel and explore Duck Lake. Cypress swamp down here is unreal, feels like a different world from the rest of the Mississippi.”

He fielded a cellphone call at midday Monday to talk more about the excursion through 10 states ending in the Sportsman’s Paradise.

“It’s been a long time out here,” he said.

His worst experience on the water happened one very windy night three weeks ago when the portable stove he cooked with conked out. As he was trying to figure out what was wrong with it he smelled something burning … his camp chair had blown into the campfire. As he attempted to salvage that, he heard rustling near his feet and looked down … a skunk was warming itself 2 feet away from the campfire but skedaddled before unleashing an odorous odor.

Worst night sets up best day

The quality of camping dropped significantly without a stove or chair, as even the most casual camper might imagine. Those dispiriting losses set up Varney for some of Varney’s best moments on Ol’ Man River.

As he paddled 15 days later into Clarksdale, Mississippi, he ran into a group of people at their campground on a guided canoe trip operated by Quapaw Canoe Co. The Lower Mississippi River outfitters take canoers out in a 30-foot wooden canoe.

The paddlers made him feel right at home, even gave him food supplies. He crashed in Clarksdale, where he also purchased a new portable stove and new camp chair, and was an overnight guest of one of the guides.

“I kept running into all these generous people who want to give me stuff,” he said. “I haven’t run into a bad person on the river.”

River traffic respected him, he said, as large boats slowed to reduce wake. One barge even pulled over to let him paddle without getting rocked, or worse. Over his marine radio he could hear boat captains advising others of his presence.

It was a natural decision to get off the Mississippi River in favor of the Atchafalaya River, he said.

As Varney approached the Old River Control Structure located on the west bank of the Mississippi River in Concordia Parish, he had to decide whether to continue on the Mississippi River to reach the Gulf of Mexico or switch over to the Atchafalaya River. The decision was easy for the adventurer.

“Well, you know, I got two options — I can go through two industrial cities” or through the Atchafalaya Basin, he said. He chose the latter.

“I wanted to end the trip with something more nature than Baton Rouge and New Orleans … get into a swamp and stuff,” he said.

“It’s really beautiful down here …”

He hasn’t been disappointed since he got on the Atchafalaya River.

“It’s really beautiful down here, cypress trees and moss,” he said.

He was well aware that much of his trip was during hunting seasons all along the rivers.

“Before St. Louis, with all the locks and dams, there were a lot of duck blinds. I had to be vigilant,” he said.

Hunters were on his mind again traveling through the South, especially through the Atchafalaya Basin.

“I’ve pretty much been camping on sandbars. I’ve got hunter’s orange if I feel like it,” he said, in other words if he believed he needed to be showing it.

This is his third year of canoeing. He hiked and backpacked many miles earlier in his life before problems with his knees prompted him to buy a canoe.

His navigational aid during his long journey from Lake Itasca was via an Avenza Map, which pinpoints locations on mobile devices without the Internet or network connections. His cellphone also had a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers chart.