John Ruskey has been paddling the Mississippi River since 1982.

But when he put his 24-foot, handcrafted cypress strip canoe in at Memphis during the record-breaking flood of 2011, he said, “Everything was different — the speed of the water, the landscape was completely changed. It was very disorienting.”

Ruskey, called Mississippi Man, is the owner of Clarksdale-based Quapaw Canoe. On Thursday, he will be in Vicksburg to tell about his trip along the swollen river with writer Hodding Carter IV and photographer Christopher LaMarca. The lecture, sponsored by the Warren County Soil and Water Conservation District, will include a slide show.