LETTERS FROM HOME: HOME IS WHERE THE RIVERS RUN AND THE SWAMP BUBBLES

June 3, 1999

Dear Pat,

Six rivers ran through the region where I lived in Northern California. The Mad, the Trinity, the Eel, the Klamath, the Van Duzen and the Smith. The Smith was the state's only remaining wild river. Untinkered with.

Some were good for fishing, others for swimming. When the coastal fog closed in in the summer, a girlfriend and I drove east over the hill to splash in the Trinity. She knew a secret curve in the road where if you stopped and climbed down the side of a perilous cliff you could swim and sun in naked seclusion.

Often I went to Mad River Beach just to watch the Mad and the Pacific collide.

All the rivers ran to the ocean, where they disappeared to all except the salmon who after years roaming the sea could still find the mouth that had expelled them.

We are river people here, too, and not just because we live on the mighty brown Mississippi. The Mississippi has been spoiled and girdled, too, but as we prepare to go online into the 21st century it still provokes our sense of spiritual wonder at the natural world.

As the Rev. Al Green sings, "Take me to the river, wash me in the water."

DC's parents have a cabin west of Cape Girardeau on the Castor River. We took Hank and Lucy there last weekend. After a season away, you never know what the river will look like. High water has brought fallen trees that create new surroundings, new encumbrances to passing upstream to the main channel, where the river is wider and remains clear.

You can't control the river but DC's father will paddle out after the flooding in an attempt to conquer his branch with a chainsaw.

After dragging the johnboat around and over horizontal trees, it does feel good to get to the clear stretch. There, we always check the neighboring Frenzels' cabin to make sure everything's in order. It always is, down to the table being set.

Hank and Lucy are old hands at riding in a johnboat. DC's father often takes them out to the cabin for a mid-week overnight visit. How difficult it must be to fish in a boat occupied by one dog -- Hank -- who hyperventilates and whimpers while on water and another whose explorer spirit has her jumping in and out of the boat almost continually.

The dogs return home exhausted, flop down on their mats and don't even stir when we arrive home from work.

A few days later, DC and I went to the Cache River in Southern Illinois. The stream has created a gnarled cypress swamp where great blue herons live and narrow mossy passages are the way in and out. We brought friends who'd never been there and I'm afraid overplayed the swamp's uncertainties though not its beauty.

Mysterious bubbles arise from the depths and bright yellow warblers play in the trees. But to be in the swamp when night is falling would be an adventure because certain sections are a maze even though canoe trails have been marked.

DC and her father were lost there for awhile a few years ago. I had a guide and still didn't know where I was most of the time.

Thunderstorms were threatening that day. It's not the place to be if the heavens start spitting lightning and heavy rain, I said. DC packed a cooler, chocolate chip cookies and flares.

We returned with the flares, sunburns and memories of wind softly playing on the water and gasps as heron silhouettes abruptly rose in impossible flight.

If you go down to the Mississippi River at sunset in the spring or summer or fall you will see people gathered there. Often the same people are there evening after evening.

In these bodies composed primarily of water, we are drawn to our source like fish going home.

Love, Sam