May 27, Andrea rated it it was amazing. This book was an amazing journey to read. It was a very healthy approach to take and review after all these years the story and write it for us readers. I very much enjoyed reading the authors personal experience and will recommend it to any readers I know! Things The Dead Fear by Christopher Louis LaPrath, it made me realize the level of dysfunction in my family was milk toast compared to this. The book isn't "about" the family dysfunction. It's a true story about a young boy the author with special gifts that, in spite of going through the fires of hell, found the strength and courage as an adult to embrace those gifts instead of fear them.
It teaches us that, every experience we have in our lives has an impact on the person we choose to become because of those experiences, not in spite of them. It brings home the simple fact that what doesn't kill us can make us stronger It's inspiration at its best. This book takes you on a journey of life The lessons that every reader can get from this book are huge. Yes the book is horrifying and at the same time mesmerizing. The style of writing is captivating and conversational. You get to know Chris the boy and the heart of Chris the man, always wondering how he survived. I've read this book 3 times and each time couldn't put it down until it was finished.
It's a book worth reading and I hope, gets the attention of Hollywood. Joe Lansdale rated it did not like it Dec 08, Sarah rated it it was amazing Feb 18, Melissa rated it liked it Nov 19, Krystle rated it it was amazing May 13, AnnMarie Stone added it Nov 28, Charlotte marked it as to-read Jan 31, Brennan marked it as to-read Dec 04, Shannon Benjamin-Boote marked it as to-read Dec 11, There are no discussion topics on this book yet.
No trivia or quizzes yet. We paddled to beat nightfall. As the last light of day faded beneath storm clouds over Lillington, we pulled our boats up a small asphalt ramp. Just then, the skies opened up, with lightning and pouring rain, and we sprinted toward the nearest shelter, Howards Barbecue. They agreed to stay open late so we could eat and dry off. Hush puppies, barbecue, black-eyed peas, catfish, beans, applesauce, okra, and chocolate cake disappeared in the blink of an eye. The next morning, David Avrette came down to our little campsite behind his restaurant.
But David knew that Jordan Dam would protect him from the worst of the high water, and today, he owns the only restaurant within view of the Cape Fear on the miles of river above Wilmington.
Others may still be too scared to get too close. Up until that point, the Cape Fear was dropping an average of three feet in elevation every mile, and the resulting current gave us an extra two-mile-per-hour boost to our paddling. There was also plenty to see, and navigating the rapids kept our minds occupied. I could barely twist open a water bottle, and writing became physically painful. Instead, I tapped out notes and sent tweets from my iPhone. I never once lost cell phone service, shattering the image that I was truly in the wilderness.
Once, I thought I heard Andrew talking to me from across the river. Turns out, he was FaceTiming with his family as he paddled. On the second night, we had planned to camp at Old Bluff Church, a year-old Presbyterian worship hall and cemetery that sat out of sight, at the top of a foot bluff. It was serene, but terrible as a practical campsite. The take-out was unmarked, steep, and covered in poison ivy, and there was scarcely any flat ground to set up tents, let alone cook.
The site would be a heavy struggle at the end of a mile day of paddling, if we could even find it. As we looked for a better campsite, an island appeared. Sandy, covered with trees, and separated from the bank by a dry channel, the pristine spot was the beginning of our streak of luck. River magic, we called it. We pulled ashore, and smelled the stench of chicken houses nearby. Chris started a fire with his own private stock of oil-soaked firestarter.
Most of the land that straddles the river is private, he said, which explains why only a small number of people have ever paddled the entire length of the Cape Fear. There was only one public campsite, back upriver at Raven Rock. Regular paddlers are mostly out of luck. I slept tentatively as the river gurgled.
Chris snored loudly from his homemade hammock. Thankfully, nobody else showed up. Fayetteville, also, never showed up.
TRESTLE CREEK: Things the Dead Fear
There were a few more people fishing, from boats and the shore, and for the first time, we saw men living underneath a bridge, with a small fire going. Farther down, a CSX train passed overhead on a trestle. An old World War II subchaser, which later served as a floating dock, sat half-buried in the mud on the bank. A rusting overhead crane and rotting wooden pilings were signs that barges used to make regular trips up from Wilmington decades ago.
A small amphitheater at a riverside park and a marina were the only other clues that a city of , people was nearby.
From the river, the volume was only slightly raised as we paddled through a green canyon, unable to see out. We floated past Fayetteville, and, quietly, it floated past us. A steady wind gusted to 40 miles per hour. The kingfishers flying above us loved it, but the wind wrinkled the water and constantly blew our boats off course. The wind quickly numbed my feet. My toes turned white. From then on, I wore wool socks, covered in sandwich baggies, underneath my shoes. After Fayetteville, we passed Interstate 95 and practically nothing else. A house here or camper there.
A small creek or waterfall in between. As the evening closed in, we pulled up to a small dock as a couple of teenagers dressed in camouflage T-shirts loaded up a fishing boat. Last December, the river must have come up 40 feet at this spot, he said. Made for some great fishing in the flooded woods, because fish love exploring new ground, looking for food.
Hughie, a big man with a goatee, held his twin girls and told big stories in a cracking, singsongy tone. Once, he and some friends shot off a small cannon on a downstream sandbar, then got a visit from a game warden as they slept in their boats. Occasionally, kayakers pass through here, Hughie told me. Hughie tells them all the same thing: But the rocky and rushing river of the early days had turned into an empty highway with no off-ramps. By day four, I zoned out for hours at a time, humming to the rhythm of my strokes. I stared, hypnotized by the blue cooler between my knees. Fallen trees were no longer unusual, gnarled logs were no longer curious, flapping ducks were no longer startling.
Nature was no longer new. Before we reached the William O. But as a result of budget cuts and a lack of traffic, the locks barely ever open anymore. Still, we got lucky. He got the friend to carry all of our gear around the lock in the bed of his pickup truck. And later, river magic struck again.
All we had to eat was freeze-dried food, so we only used the expensive gas stove to boil water. We stopped at Lock and Dam No. After days of tree-tunnel claustrophobia, with our voices echoing off greenery, the wide-open space was as soothing as white noise. We figured we were going to have to carry everything around this lock, too, until Kemp spotted an Army Corps of Engineers pickup truck. The lockmaster was here, and Kemp started giving the man his best sales pitch. The lockmaster stopped him. Ten minutes in the lock saved us an hour.
After the second dam, the river wound more sharply. The banks were lower. The trees were shorter. There were more loblolly pines and bald cypress. There were fewer eagles and more songbirds. More snakes and fewer turtles. Our sense of distance also had changed. A highway mile is a minute long. But a river mile, on flat water, takes roughly 25 minutes and paddle strokes. On the mile stretch between the lock and our campsite, I kept thinking our destination was right around the corner.
That night, we sat around a campfire on a large white sandbar, cracked beers, and talked about the nature of river time.
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We talked into the night, as stars twinkled overhead, owls hooted, and fish jumped in the dark river. At that moment, we had all the time in the world. The next morning, I woke up at 6, with rain pitter-pattering my tent. But by now, we were paddling robots. We broke camp at 7, passed the two-car Elwell Ferry by 11, and approached the final lock at 1: Here, we saw streams that the Corps had dammed up to keep the water from cutting a new route around the dam. Instead, engineers have dropped boulders below the dam to create rock arch rapids, allowing fish to swim upriver to spawn.
Past here, the river, and our paddling, would be affected by the tides, so the closer our camp was to Wilmington, the better. We were just warmed up. We pressed on for five extra miles before pulling up at a landing. As we started to set up our tents and dry out our gear underneath an orange sky, an oversize Ford pickup emerged from the woods. She demanded that he bring us all back to the house to sleep indoors.
TRESTLE CREEK: Things The Dead Fear
Soon, we were whizzing through the dark woods in a truck bed. The man, Archie McGirt, told me his story. Everything felt vivid, as though my brain was learning, once again, to form memories. The next morning, the purple-and-orange sunrise revealed a strange new landscape: Every bit of ground was soggy. The cypress trees were marked with dark water lines, evidence that the high tide was rushing downriver toward the ocean. We passed Roan Island, and the aptly named Black River.
Soon, seaweed appeared, and fiddler crabs scurried in the mud among the spartina grass. Chris and Kemp disappeared ahead, and Andrew was gone, too, somewhere behind me, taking pictures.
TRESTLE CREEK: Things The Dead Fear by Christopher L. LaPrath
For the first time on the trip, I was alone. Drifting through the swamp on a falling tide. The seclusion was an illusion. I was four miles from the closest town. The map and the signal on my phone showed me that I was on my own, yet close to everyday life. I was unable to be seen, yet always within reach. The Cape Fear River was only as private as I wanted it to be.
As the river turned, the trees that had enveloped us melted away. Suddenly, we were in a brown, open expanse, with sunshine all around. Dead cypress trees, killed by the ever-increasing intrusion of salt water, cut stark figures against the blue sky. The four of us reunited at the under-construction Interstate bridge, as construction workers soldered rebar high above.
Ahead, the church spires and office buildings of Wilmington rose above the grass like a mirage. We ducked underneath a railroad bridge at Navassa as a large sightseeing boat was bearing down on us. Kemp shook his head and smiled. The captain was a friend of his, Kemp said. Men and women eating lunch at riverside restaurants watched us take stroke after stroke. Joggers glanced at us. Dogs sniffed in our direction. We sat up straight, and stuck out our chests. We paddled toward Dram Tree Park like runners entering a stadium at the end of a grueling marathon.
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We turned left, just above the noisy Cape Fear Memorial Bridge, and pulled onto a ramp, where Cape Fear River Watch volunteers, friends, and onlookers greeted us. It was like having a new job, I said. I got up in the morning, and got to work paddling. At the end of the day, I had dinner, relaxed, and went to bed. The next morning, I got up and did it again. As simple as I dreamed it could be. The last day of paddling was an afterthought. We had 26 miles to go, and the wind was at our backs, with a falling tide to push us. We left Dram Tree Park at 5: We paddled into the blackness of the foot-deep shipping channel and quickly encountered a container ship, the Maersk Wakayama, being guided by a tugboat to the mile-long State Port just south of downtown.
We gave it a wide berth. The Cape Fear River was now an estuary, and as its water dried on our coats, it left behind a salty residue. The channel was a mile wide. We passed Island 13, a splinter of land bulked up by sand and dirt dredged from the riverbed. Ahead, the water disappeared into the horizon, under a blue sky flecked with high, pink clouds. Pelicans, ibis, and seagulls circled above us. It was a lovely morning.