Walk Huckleberry Finn, down the Mississippi
A boy who has faked his own death and a man running from slavery, on a raft, going the wrong way. Your everyday steps carry you down the river with Huck and Jim, and Twain's words unlock where it happened.
- 1,100 miles
- 9 stops
- Mark Twain, 1884
Eleven hundred miles on a raft
A boy fakes his own murder and pushes out into the dark with a man escaping slavery, and the Mississippi carries the two of them eleven hundred miles the wrong way. Everything good in the book happens on the raft; everything bad happens ashore.
Huck's town, St. Petersburg, is Mark Twain's own Hannibal, Missouri. Huck escapes to Jackson's Island, finds Jim hiding there, and the two push off downriver on a raft. They mean to leave the river at Cairo, where the Ohio comes in, and head up it to the free states. In the fog they drift straight past it, and every mile after that takes Jim deeper into the South.
Twain had been a steamboat pilot on this river before the Civil War, and he knew every bend of it. The book follows the Mississippi through Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee and Arkansas to the Phelps farm, eleven hundred miles in all. Everything good in the story happens on the raft, and everything bad happens ashore.
- Distance
- 1,100 miles (1,770 km)
- Stops
- 9, each with its own passage and plate
- Map
- The real world, on Apple Maps
- Text
- Mark Twain; Project Gutenberg ebook #76
Where it starts
They’ll soon get tired of that, and won’t bother no more about me. All right; I can stop anywhere I want to. Jackson’s Island is good enough for me; I know that island pretty well, and nobody ever comes there. And then I can paddle over to town nights, and slink around and pick up things I want. Jackson’s Island’s the place.
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter VII · Mark Twain
This is the passage Bematist gives you the moment you set out. The other 8 wait at the places they happened, and the only way to read them is to walk there.
How long would the river take you?
The raft drifts at the river's pace. Yours is up to you. Choose when you'd like to reach the end and Bematist sets the pace from how much you already walk.
A rough guide, at about 0.75 m a step. In the app the pace comes from your own 30-day average in Apple Health, and stays fixed for the whole journey.
On the way
The words, at the places
9 passages, each waiting where it happened. You can see how far away the next one is, but not what it says.
Walk it with friends
Send a link and walk the same road together, each of you on your own streets, wherever you live.
No streak to lose
Steps come straight from Apple Health. A quiet day is just a short one, and your place on the road only moves forward.
More roads like this one
See the whole library, with a new book every month, chosen by walkers' vote.
Set out down the river.
1,100 miles of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, on the walks you already take.
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