Floating down the river, just like Huck Finn

It's a tale that's a testament to bibliophilia - and to college student antics.

Two 20-year-old Falcon High School friends, now students at the University of Northern Colorado, are on a summer adventure of epic proportions. They're following in the footsteps of likable ruffian Huckleberry Finn and his controversial slave-companion Jim by rafting the Mississippi, homemade boat and all.

The trip was the brainchild of Nathan Oligmueller, who read the book in a high school English class and loved it. He eventually wrangled his buddy and fellow Twain fan, Dave Brandsma, to join him partway through the voyage.

But for the rising college juniors, the trip is about more than a love of literature.

"We decided this was something we wanted to do while we were still young: the Huck Finn adventure - an American dream kind of thing," Oligmueller said recently by cell phone while floating down the Mississippi.

Literary re-enactments are commonplace, from the crowds that swarm Dublin to follow in the footsteps of Ulysses' Leopold Bloom on Bloomsday, to the hundreds of Gandolf costumes on parade at any Tolkien festival.

But the handful of adventurers who attempt to live out their ode to Mark Twain by making Huck's 930-mile trek on the Mississippi from Iowa to Louisiana have greater escapades facing them. While researching the trip, Oligmueller read tales of 200-foot man-eating catfish - really - and wind pools that swallow boaters, not to mention the dangers of tugboats. And they haven't even made it to the gator country of Louisiana.

Using Web sites for inspiration, Oligmueller drew up plans for the raft, and started building it over spring break. The boat - made of plywood, steel and 30 plastic fertilizer barrels for flotation - was finished a few months later in a flurry of activity during finals week.

At first, he was joined by his dad and another college friend, and the three launched from Davenport, Iowa, on June 9. Just a few days later, they had their first adventure, when Iowa floods washed through the Mississippi. They found themselves inserted into a post-apocalyptic landscape, with abandoned boats littering the river banks, and nothing but water visible all around.

"We (saw) houses literally floating down the river; we saw train bridges where the train had left the tracks and was floating," Oligmueller said.

They turned back, stashing their raft in the barn of a sympathetic local in Fort Madison, Iowa. But the hiatus didn't last long. Though his father and college buddy dropped out, Oligmueller went back to the river toting Brandsma along for the ride.

"I'm usually up for an adventure," said Brandsma. "I figured Nate had built the boat and it was pretty sturdy, and if not we'd make it up somehow."

The two have spent most of the last month riding down the river, smoking corncob pipes (though neither is a smoker, Huck was) and swatting flies to pass the time. Every evening they watch the world roll by and the sun set from the roof of their 20-by-9-foot cabin.

They stop every few days to stock up on gasoline for their makeshift motor, or ice for their makeshift refrigerator. And there was a requisite layover in Hannibal, Mo., home of Mark Twain.

Mostly, they've relied on the kindness of strangers to feed and house them. In one case, a good Samaritan drove Brandsma 16 miles to a hospital for treatment of a swollen foot.

"People are always willing to buy you a drink or dinner just to hear about your trip," Oligmueller said. "‘I don't think we've paid for much along the way."

But the trip isn't just about re-creating a slice of America's past. In a Huckmee ts-the-21st-century move, they've created a blog, www.bearnakedraft ing.com, and update it via a laptop hooked up to a solar panel in their raft. (Oligmueller's father disabled the site temporarily Monday and plans to relaunch it Wednesday.)

The pair plan to publish a book about their adventures when they return home.

American dream turned publicity stunt? What could be more American than that?

The pair insist, though, that the trip is about living out their youth.

"The last six weeks have just been the year of our life," Oligmueller said.