Landmark Communications Inc. Paddling south through Alleghany County, I spook a doe and her fawn drinking in the Jackson River's rocky shallows, and watch as they bound, splashing, to shore. Canada geese cluster ahead, letting me glide almost close enough to touch before dashing flat-footed across the water and into the air. I pass over limestone ledges bearded in moss that dance with the current, can see river bottom 6 feet below my canoe in crystalline detail. Pallisades of dark rock tower overhead.
Rapids gurgle around every bend.
But then I reach Covington, and I lose the Jackson altogether. Here, nearly 70 miles downstream from the river's highland wellspring, toward the end of my fifth day of traveling its banks and surface to the sea, the pristine Jackson meets American industry. Something akin to boiling sauerkraut, but smokier, slightly sulfurous. Then I swing around a bend and find the river impeded by a hanging curtain of plastic tubing, red warning signs attached. Another sign on the bank to my left blares that I am about to enter a hazardous industrial area filled with chemical pipes and dams.