By Mark Coddington
mark.coddington@theindependent.com

He and his friends talked about building a raft, "Huckleberry Finn"-style, and seeing how far the river could take them.

Decades later, in 2002, he found out for himself.

Clausen's two kayak trips from Central Nebraska to New Orleans through the Loup, Platte, Missouri and Mississippi rivers along the way included a capsizing, a run-in with police and boatloads (sometimes literally) of compelling characters.

For Clausen, a former Seattle police officer and author of three police-based novels, it was the perfect basis for a novel. The result, "River," was published earlier this year by Silo Press.

Over the months he spent paddling down the river and stopping to chat with the people he met, he was amazed at how little they knew or understood the natural feature just outside their doors.

For the people in nearby towns, the river was always some unknown thing "down there." He stopped at riverfront casinos that didn't have a single window facing the river.

"It was the great landmark in their area, and they were just almost universally oblivious to it," Clausen said.

Clausen, who grew up in St. Paul and now splits his time between that area and Seattle, took the first trip with his adult daughter, Sonya. It was in the midst of that journey, somewhere on the Missouri River, that the two came up with the idea for a book partially to beat the boredom of paddling 10 hours a day.

That became a story of a man grieving over the death his estranged son who takes to the river to find himself but can't help but let his troubled past course through his mind.

The novel's main character's journey shares many similarities with Clausen's: Both men begin in the Sandhills, capsize where the Platte flows into the Missouri and find themselves accosted by shotgun-toting authorities in New Orleans.

Even several of the characters the Nebraska fishermen, the woman who offers a place to stay in New Orleans came from Clausen's trips.

"They're all fictional," Clausen said of the book's characters. "But they have some sort of a basis in reality, every one of them."

He's developed a special attachment to the Mississippi Delta and Memphis areas, with their slow blues, rich foods and warm people that have drawn him back several times.

But spending more than a month in a kayak also means hours upon hours of solitude especially when you're riding alone, as Clausen did in 2005.

Of course, he always had Gloria as a companion. That would be his homemade kayak who became something of a character in the book as well as real life.

"Sometimes, when I would get lonely, she was somebody that I could talk to," he said.

The river, too, is a character in Clausen's novel. It winds slowly but resolutely through the entire work, rarely in the foreground but always present.

Clausen describes it as a rejuvenating force and a source of imagination not only for the novel's characters but for himself as well.

He hopes to keep traveling the river until he can find peace with its flow. He's experienced it a few times, when the water is calm and air quiet.

But it always seems too brief. The wind starts blowing against him, making the river feel like an adversary, not an old friend.

"It's nothing like that, of course. The wind blows because the wind blows," Clausen said. "If we can understand that, that's when the peace comes."

For MAP:

Lowen Clausen twice took a kayak down the Loup, Platte, Missouri and Mississippi rivers to New Orleans once in 2002 (beginning near Fullerton) with his daughter, and again alone in 2005 (beginning northwest of Brewster). The part-time St. Paul resident's journeys became the inspiration for a new novel, "River."

For main PHOTO (front of kayak):

From a homemade kayak, Lowen Clausen overlooks the Missouri River near Bonnots Mill, Mo., in 2005. Clausen's trips down the Loup, Platte, Missouri and Mississippi rivers to New Orleans led to his new novel, "River."

For secondary PHOTO (Clausen with kayak):

Lowen Clausen sits atop his homemade kayak, Gloria, on the North Loup River northwest of Brewster in 2005. Clausen, who splits his time between St. Paul and Seattle, twice took a kayak from Nebraska to New Orleans.