Love letter to the Mississippi

BY TRISH STACHELSKI

The Mississippi River supports 260 species of fish, and 60 percent of all bird species in North America use the river as a migratory flyway. There are 38 species of mussels, 50 species of mammals and 145 species of amphibians and reptiles that call the river and its environs home. (Twin Cities Tours Website 2008)
With great anticipation I look forward to spring awakening the river gorge. It’s like waiting for a friend who has been gone a long time to finally arrive. Yet, I will miss the silence of the land under snow and ice and the solitude of walking the ice roads. Walking the frozen sloughs gives me a feeling of the immensity of the river basin. I can imagine myself an early explorer or fur trader.

One spring, I saw a strange flotilla reminiscent of Mark Twain’s raft from “Huckle-berry Finn.” The vessel I saw was moored to a giant poplar tree near the Franklin Avenue Bridge. The travelers had taken to living on the river they said, moving from town to town. They had calculated where to stop for refueling and where to get free food and coffee. At times, they stopped long enough for one of them to secure temporary employment. Sometimes the engine needed fixing or a tool had to be purchased. Smart and young, they had decided they didn’t like the 9 to 5 work track they had been raised to follow.

Unfortunately, the crew exhibited all the usual problems of society: competitiveness and vying for privileges and goods. Nonetheless, I admired them for their sense of adventure and fearlessness. They reminded me of the river itself, which the Army Corp of Engineers has attempted to control and constrict with a series of 29 locks and dams. If left to its own devices, the river would carve out its own course regardless of the wishes of humans along the bank.