Oxford resident Matt McLain is not afraid to take on huge challenges. The young Miami University graduate recently completed a canoe trip down the length of the Mississippi River from Lake Itasca in the headwaters of Minnesota down to New Orleans.

“Lake Itasca is right outside of Bemidji, Minn., two hours from the Canadian border,” McLain noted. “The only reason I’d ever heard of Bemidji was Miami beat them in the Frozen Four.”

The trip was a series of firsts for the adventurer, who never had seen the Mississippi River, nor had any experience canoeing.

“I figured it’s got to be easier than hiking. I thought the camping would be the hardest part,” McLain said. “(It’s about) being off the grid and fending for yourself. I wasn’t really too nervous. I figured I’d figure out how to paddle.”

McClain did not take the trip alone. He was invited by a group of three men from Knoxville Tenn., one of whom McLain had met while hiking the Appalachian Trail in 2010 and two others who had hiked the trail that same year.

“They were more experienced than me. There was one guy that had done a few week-long paddle trips, another was a whitewater (rafting) guy in Tennessee – he was the most experienced,” McLain said. “He could figure the lines we could try to run and how to stay safe.”

But, as sometimes is the case, experience proved to be the best teacher for McLain, who was able to pick up the necessary skills along the way.

“Where we started in Minnesota, the river is about as big as the creeks around here, so we started little and got to the point where it was a mile and a half wide,” McLain said. “We had a month of practice before we got to that point, so by the time we hit the big dangerous stuff we had honed our skills a little bit.”

The travelers were confronted by a spectrum of conditions, ranging from the cold night air of Minnesota to the Midwestern heat wave – 14 days in a row of temperatures over 100 degrees, and no shade on the river. After 65 days, they were in New Orleans.

“Our goal was to get down to the Gulf (of Mexico), but when we hit Baton Rouge, which is 230 miles from the Gulf, the bridges that cross the river are higher,” McLain said. “There was no place for canoes. It got to where we’re in a 17-foot boat, and there are couple-thousand-foot oil vessels.”

According to McLain, about two dozen people attempt this trip every year, and most of them stop in New Orleans.

McLain’s river voyage was not the first time that he had attempted something big without any prior experience. Before he hiked the Appalachian Trial – from Maine to Georgia – in 2010, he had never spent a night in the woods. In fact, his motivation for starting the hike was a little bit of friendly competition.

“I had been thinking about doing it for a number of years,” McLlain said. “I had a friend that completed a through-hike (from end to end) and that grinded my gears a little bit. It motivated me to go ahead and do it.”

McLain started by himself in Maine and met fellow adventurers along the trail, like a man from Germany with whom he hiked for a month and a half. According to McLain, around 60 people completed the hike that year, going southbound from Maine to Georgia.

The southbound route is the “unpopular” approach to the Appalachian Trail, and the dispute between southbound and northbound travelers has led to a rivalry on the trail.

“Technically it’s easier if you start in the south, because you have a longer window of time,” McLain explained. “If you start in Maine, you start with 100 miles of wilderness, which is the longest stretch of inability to get into civilization. You do the hardest thing first.”

Hikers have a seven-month window to complete the trail going north, and a five-month window going south. The first day of the hike through Maine includes Mount Katahdin, which is above tree-line.

“Katahdin is one of the most beautiful places on the whole entire trail,” McLain said.

There are other adventures in store for McLain in the future. He said he would like to hike the Pacific Crest Trail, which starts outside of San Diego and goes to Vancouver. It will take about five months. He would also like to canoe the Missouri River to St. Louis, and has a few other two-month hikes in mind.

“I like having a goal that’s months away and just grinding and working on it,” he said.

But the next goal on the horizon for McLain is graduate school at Ohio University, which he will begin this fall. He is studying environmental studies, and would like to work in the public sector, perhaps in forest service. While the job market is limited in that area, he is certain that the lessons he has learned in self-sufficiency will be valuable assets for the field.

“Hopefully I can find a cool job that’s a little weirder that most people wouldn’t enjoy,” McLain said. “A lot of my friends are like, ‘oh I’d love to do that,’ but they don’t know how. So I take them on weekend trips. It’s nice to have some skills that other people can depend on and let them enjoy the same things that I enjoy doing.”