After graduating from Whitman last May, Kevin McNellis decided to trade in his cap and gown for a paddle, two canoes and one journey of a lifetime. For two months, he and three friends paddled the more than 2,000 miles of the Mississippi River from northern Minnesota to New Orleans, La. in two canoes.

The trip, dubbed ‘The Mississippi Project,’ was made possible through a grant from the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing. Awarded to Gabe Crane, a senior English major at the University of Pennsylvania, the grant provided the students with $2,500 for gear and supplies, along with a Treo 650: a wireless, solar-powered device that enabled Crane to transmit a journal of their experiences to a blog on the Center’s Web site.

Accompanying McNellis and Crane were Ryan Stoa, a McGill University student, and Danny Rosenberg of Reed College.

“We met a lot of people on this trip, and the constant question was ‘what possessed you to do this?’… There wasn’t any single overarching reason for any of us to do it…. We were just at this stage in our lives where we craved some sort of rite of passage to mark the transition from youth to adulthood,” said McNellis.

“Paddling the Mississippi holds an advantage over, say, trekking through Nepal, in that the river is essentially in our collective backyard and therefore makes traveling it a bizarrely resourceful and inherently American act. And…we happen to know how to canoe,” wrote Crane in a blog.

The four paddled by day and camped along the banks of the river at night, often relying on the hospitality of locals for transportation into nearby towns to purchase food and necessities.

“These canoe campsites are set up next to these tiny towns. We’d go into towns in the evenings to grab a bite to eat or more supplies, and we’d meet all these amazing, crazy people: from turkey hunters to investment bankers to a Bigfoot hunter,” said McNellis.

McNellis reported being surprised by the hospitality of the majority of the people they encountered. After learning of the men’s story, many offered a ride, a home-cooked meal, or even a place to stay for the night.

“Once we pulled into the boat landing, and within 15 minutes we were on our way to eat dinner in this man’s house. He cooked us steaks, potatoes and salad, and he let us relax on his couch and watch TV for a couple hours. You instantly felt like you knew these people, and you were a part of their family,” recounted McNellis during a presentation about the trip in Kimball on Feb. 20.

McNellis reported struggling with the still-existent racism in the Deep South, as well as the still-evident devastation by Hurricane Katrina.

“There are towns on the river that are 100 percent African-American, and white people would warn us about these towns and tell us that they were dangerous. When we stayed in these towns, we never felt unsafe for a second… In New Orleans, we saw that there’s still collapsed buildings, there’s still blue tarps, there’s still FEMA trailers. It looks like the Hurricane went through two months ago, not two years ago,” said McNellis.