Ox-cart travelogue

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 18/08/2023 (751 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In the summer of 2022, Winnipegger Terry Doerksen and his wife Patty, along with Zik the ox pulling their replica Red River Cart, retraced the 800-odd kilometres of the historic Red River Trail, from Winnipeg to St. Paul, Minn. A new journey beckons for the Doerksens, but first, a brief recap of last year’s epic trek.

In planning our journey down the Red River Trail, I was most stressed about that first day — the six-hour trundle through city traffic from downtown. How would Zik, our ox, handle the assault on his bucolic senses? Would we get in trouble for leaving pie-shaped souvenirs on the street? Would we make it out of the city in the required time?

Apart from refusing to cross manhole covers and getting spooked by a cement truck, Zik did awesomely. It probably helped that he noticed another ox working just as hard as himself every time we passed a storefront window. The two of them had a lot to com-mooooo-serate about. After a friend scooped up the first cow pie, Zik displayed astonishing bowel control for the duration. And we crossed the south perimeter with minutes to burn before rush hour.

With some city clicks on the odometer, I looked forward to the final stretch of the journey, weeks later, to the heart of St. Paul with excitement. A friend had warned us we wouldn’t find a rainbow at the end of the road — there were a lot of homeless people in that part of the city. She didn’t realize we felt more at “home” among the unhoused than among the rich and powerful living on Summit Avenue where we planned to start our last day’s travel. Like the Métis from the Red River settlement who pioneered the trail that would become Kellogg Boulevard, and the panhandlers who stood at its intersections now, we felt like an aberration to the propriety of a vaunted state capitol.

The previous cart drivers to roll through there 150 years before also came as quite a shock to the local inhabitants. Their bizarre clothes, unintelligible jargon and lawless living were quite jolting to all that was dignified. Only when the steamboats full of supplies had arrived from St. Louis, the carts had been loaded, and the Métis drivers had left for their mysterious home in the north, could the city exhale and get back to normal life.

Just like the hundreds of Métis waiting for the boats to arrive, I had hoped to camp our last night on the shores of what had been Larpenteur’s Lake — now long since dried up. From Google Maps it seemed the grounds of the James J. Hill House — the largest mansion in Minnesota — would be perfect. But the staff at this historic site showed no interest in having a travel-worn cart enhancing their parking lot or a biomass-producing ox mowing their lawn. Figures.

It was James J. Hill himself, with his steamboats and railways plying to Winnipeg, who had brought an end to the Red River Trail. But we did receive a welcome to start our final stage at the parking lot of the nearby Cathedral of St. Paul. Rector John Ubel had become a Facebook follower of our journey. He knew his history: that it was previous ox-carters from Winnipeg who had established a log chapel on the banks of the Mississippi — the humble beginning to his cathedral that now imposed itself on St. Paul’s skyline. I guess the rector’s welcome was his way of paying back.

Unlike the anxiety around the start of our journey, this last ride to the docks of the Mississippi was one of pure joy. We left the cathedral at 6 a.m. on Sunday, July 17, 2022 — two months to the day after our departure from Upper Fort Garry. We took a quick photo op in front of the James J. Hill house to demonstrate that, despite all of J.J.’s efforts, one Red River cart was still rolling down the trail. As we headed down Kellogg Boulevard, we blew through red lights in the spirit of our lawless predecessors. We chatted with our panhandling counterparts who greeted us along the route.

One of them left her post and walked beside us with her little dog. “Ginger has never seen a cow before!” she informed us. Zik was mature and ignored the epithet. We passed right by Xcel Energy Center, where the Minnesota Wild play host to the Winnipeg Jets — rivals from opposite ends of the Red River Trail. When we turned right onto Jackson Street, Zik stiffened as his iron shoes started slipping on the steep asphalt slope. But I was thrilled to try out something I had read. I walked backwards ahead of Zik with my hand braced against his head, while Patty and a bystander bumper-shined behind the cart as we inched our way towards the river.

 

I-P-P-I-S-S-I-S-S-I-M

The Mississippi has long been a river of romance and high adventure for me. It probably started when I was a 10-year-old kid who had developed the sick skill of spelling its name backwards as fast as forwards. With a trick like that, you can imagine I was the life of every party. Then, of course, there were the tales of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, rafting in complete abandon on her swirling waters. Moving to Winnipeg, I read and re-read the adventure of Don Starkell and his two sons who put into the Red River at East Kildonan and paddled their way down the Mississippi and into the record books on the world’s longest canoe trip.

Now, suddenly, I was the guy on an epic journey, and staring down at my goal: that same mighty river! I hadn’t really imagined this moment ahead of time, but I must admit it was pretty exhilarating. I symbolically unloaded the buffalo robe from our cart and brought it down the stairs to the dock while Patty and Zik looked on from above.

With tired limbs and overflowing hearts we had arrived at journey’s end. After loading up ox and cart for their return trip to Manitoba, Patty and I made it back in time for mass at St. Paul’s. We wanted to formally say thank you to our Good Shepherd for His ever-generous journey’s mercies.

I found out later that Patty’s thoughts about the whole finale were a little different than mine. “Good. He’s got it out of his system. Now we can spend the rest of our years taking proper holidays by visiting family.” Poor Patty. Oh, she’d get to see her family, but she didn’t know I had spent many of those hours rolling down the Red River Trail thinking about our next journey. It would be a reunion tour with Zik on another route which, like the Red River Trail, played a supporting role in Winnipeg’s story… the Dawson Road.

Stay tuned…