LETTERS FROM HOME: IN CAPE GIRARDEAU, THE RIVER RUNS THROUGH US

May 18, 1995

Dear C.C.,

Received your postcard from Sedona. I thought maybe it was written in glow-in-the-dark ink, a missive containing secret wisdom, but turning out the light didn't help. Lose the yellow ink pen. So far, your signature and your cactus drawing are all I've made out.

I presume you went there to commune with the mysteries of the power vortex. Real, isn't it. When you're there you know this isn't like other places.

In Sedona, I've sometimes felt like Casteneda's Don Juan, all prickly with sensory information, aware of unseen and unknowable forces ordinarily obscured by the veneer of everyday living. But it's possible to feel that way anywhere.

A few mornings ago, the dusk-to-dawn light in the back yard came on. A thunderstorm swooped in, sucked up the light, crashed against the walls and sprayed decillions of water droplets upon us in just minutes before leaving for the east.

You can't take nature for granted in Missouri. Early the next morning, a violent wind sprang up, raking the trees in the back yard and blowing a clock off the bedroom wall. We immediately checked the TV for tornado warnings. Turned out to be a "down burst," which must be the next most powerful thing because it turned a park in the middle of town upside down.

A local poet complains that we've lost our fear of God here in the latter 20th century, that we've made God warm and fuzzy instead of the frightening force of the Old Testament.

Nature can be frightening, fearful creatures that we are, but behind the fear is awe to be part of such a creation.

The Mississippi is over flood stage now and headed higher. Some farmland is under water and they've closed the floodgates that protect the downtown. Until that happened, lots of people walked down in the morning or at sunset to look at the rising water.

I suspect they are checking on the eternally fluctuating God force in our midst, and maybe feeling the same feeling generated by the red Sedona rocks.

Cape Girardeau owes the front of its name to the river and the back to a man who set up a trading post at the spot where the river bend created a cape.

The river brought Lewis and Clark here, and U.S. Grant, and in the day of the paddle wheelers goods and culture from such exotic locales as St. Louis and New Orleans.

Before a bridge was built across the Mississippi, ferries were the only way of crossing to Illinois. Or you could wait and walk across when the river froze over.

Other means of transportation have been developed, but the river still runs through us. It still provides our water, disposes of our waste. Some people fish it and boat on it, though all that waste disposal makes us wary.

No matter what we seem to do, the river still provides. No matter what the river does, we stay as close as possible.

DC's parents just returned from a trip to Southwest Missouri bearing a canoe, a belated wedding present from one of DC's sisters. The next day a letter arrived from my friend David. I'd written him recently about feeling overwhelmed by our new house and new life in Missouri.

He reminded me that fortunately I know how to float.

Love, Sam

~Sam Blackwell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.