I grew up on a river
and I loved it. People often think or even equate Idaho to Nevada, a place with
little to no water, but that isn’t the case at all. Idaho is home to some very
large rivers and lakes so we Idahoans love the water. It should come as no surprise
that I love the water. I guess, since I was born a Cancer, I’m supposed to love
water anyway, but I don’t hold much stock in astrology. I think most Americans
have some attraction to large bodies of water no matter where they live.
Mark
Twain gave us the mighty Mississippi with his riverboat tales in novels and
autobiography and I have latched onto all the mythology of that great river. I
have no clear memories of ever having seen it anywhere south of Iowa, though I
was there as a child. But even in Iowa that river is huge. With all of the big
paddle wheel boats and the slow steady flow to the Gulf of Mexico, it is the
great divide of East and West in our country. It is a highway of trade from
North to South. I love seeing it on a June night when the fireflies illuminate
its banks like some mythical otherworld. How can this vast river be here in the
land of grass and prairie? What has it seen? Is this why we are the land of the
free because even here on the vast expanses of plains our waters flow? I love
the thought of drops from the Rockies commingling with drops from Appalachia.
This is the meeting place of all of America. And I love it.
I
know I’m just some punk kid from a little hole in the ground town in a part of
Idaho that even most people from Idaho don’t know about, but when I climb the
western slope of the Rockies onto that continental spine I can feel myself flow
both Pacifically and Atlantically somewhere down in Missouri or Oregon or both
and I taste the fiber of my being as the drops of my existence flow into a
greater expanse of my home, the land of the free.
I
love the Mississippi.
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