SierraScape October - November 2001
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River's pace allows time to question and reflect
On a chilly Sunday morning in mid-September, I embarked upon my first canoe trip down the Missouri River.
Our small fleet of five floated swiftly past the imposing white bluffs at Weldon Spring. Bluffs gave way to lush, tree-lined banks. We glimpsed families on bicycles pedaling the KATY Trail as we paddled downstream.
For the most part, we drifted in soothing silence, in time to the rhythm of the big river's current, which carried us at an impressive-enough four to five miles per hour.
Sometimes, however, our broad water highway passed beneath bridges carrying deafening, paved-highway traffic that hurtled overhead like a film reel comically sped up. But that particular Sunday, we were not in such a hurry.
Great blue herons and snowy egrets flew close along the shores. Often we'd see a solitary heron on the south bank and a pair of egrets on the north. Some egrets patrolled their sandbars with a full-grown, but still dark-feathered offspring, teaching the fine art of finding lunch.
Our own lunch was easier to come by; we pulled over at a broad swath of sandbar and out came the coolers and sack lunches. Although the sun had risen and intensified, shade held onto morning's dewy chill.
We explored that sandbar and others, discovering pieces of petrified wood that told of the land's immense age, as well as a river's ability to transport objects across distance and through time, polishing edges along the way. Perhaps older still were fossilized crinoids, their bodies converted to stone even as their home, an ancient sea, gave way to land.
We found rock shards, shiny and sharp with evidence of being flint-knapped by long-gone human dwellers. We puzzled over their purpose: for cutting roots, skinning hides, or war?
Downstream we continued, through the territorial waters of birds, gray and white, those boundaries as mysterious to us as our state lines and other demarcations would be to them.
At the next wall of bluffs, a red-tailed hawk rode thermal updrafts with purposeful precision; a flock of buzzards milled above a sandbar. We'd come across small bones and random feathers among the stones, evidence of very recent events in the avian world.
As we paddled hard against a strengthening headwind, another winged creature appeared, reminding us of recent events in our own world. A few commercial aircraft cautiously approached Lambert Field, while military jets ripped thin white contrails across the bright blue sky. They were a welcome sight after days of silent skies.
In the clear air, markings of passenger planes were as readily identifiable as any water-bird: red-tailed, white-bodied TWA, the brilliant-orange and autumn-gold of Southwest, the navy-blue underbelly of Northwest.
There were fewer than usual, we all remarked. Some were on the verge of a modern extinction perhaps; all were endangered.
Conscious of the interdependence and fragility of natural ecosystems, I wondered how we would deal with recent attacks on our own? We, too, are part of a balance. We are not immune to change.
Fossils, petrified wood, and stone tools weighed heavily in my pockets, like evidence: each testifying to the power of transformation over time
- each proof that in the drift of time, much has been lost.
The big river gave me 21 quiet miles to reflect on how everything changes... slowly and imperceptibly as well as with harsh suddenness. And how hard it is to make sense of either one.
At the take-out point in downtown St. Charles, I took away no answers. But I borrowed the calm and healing power of a river's beauty, a gift that Nature lends freely to us all.