Float a canoe and a feline too

She was an environmental policy analyst, closing in on a master's degree and navigating Washington's turbulent political waters.

But two years ago, Carly Reiter walked away to become a part-time canoe saleswoman and world traveler. And these days her immediate concern is the turbulent Mississippi River waters and not sinking her canoe in them.

Her windburned face matches her fiery red hair. She's covered in poison ivy. Her hands are calloused and cracked.

She loves her life.

"I lived the nine-to-five, and it wasn't for me," said Reiter, 28, who docked in Cape Girardeau on Friday. "A lot of people really like it, but I couldn't go back."

She hails from Tallahassee, Fla., and has traveled Asia and Central America. Her latest adventure began three months ago at Lake Itasca, Minn., at the Mississippi's headwaters. It will end in New Orleans in December.

She's taking her time, stopping in river towns to e-mail friends and family, camping on sandbars and gathering anecdotes for the children's book she plans to write. It will be about a young girl who travels the river with her uncle and the characters they meet along the way.

But Reiter has no companion save a 9-week-old kitten a farmer gave her in Oquawka, Ill. Coyote George the Riverpig (a.k.a. "Coyote") likes to balance on the canoe's gunwales and has survived two falls into the Mississippi and an attack by a 10-pound catfish during a visit to a fisherman's boat.

Reiter does, however, have a giant can of pepper spray. "I get asked all the time if I have a gun, and I don't," she said. "I haven't had any trouble. It has been the opposite -- I've met a lot of cool people."

hhall@semissourian.com

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