Skip to main content

Upholt paddles “Big River”

Sleeping under the stars, rising with the sun to the sounds of the Mississippi River, paddling daily in a handcrafted canoe — Boyce Upholt, a graduate student at Delta State University, spent six weeks on the Mighty Mississippi this spring.

Upholt, a candidate for a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies (geography), is documenting the “batture,” the woods between the levee and the river, as a part of his thesis.

He calls this important and little-known landscape the “walled-in wild.”

“In a way it’s the leftovers,” said Upholt. “It’s half domesticated, contained by the levee wall, with concrete lining much of the river’s edge, too. But it’s half wild, too — maybe more than half.”

See the full story and photos: https://www.deltastate.edu/photostories/2017/05/25/upholt-paddles-big-river/