It took many years, but I finally found a bigger, wilder river. This time, I made sure the house was well above the 500-year flood plain.
This new and improved river meanders in huge curves through farmland. Along the banks are tall sycamore, silver maple and hickory trees. All the while, the river is trying to get at their roots and sweep them away.
Bridge Over Troubled Waters
High above the water a little ways downriver is an impressive bridge, built in 1988. During the infamous All-Rivers Uprising in 1993, logs jammed between the steel girders. They are still there, mute testimony to a staggering amount of water.
In the spring floods since I moved here in 2007, the roiling brown water has not gotten anywhere near that high. The spring thaw sends huge uprooted trees floating past. It's exciting for me to stand on the bridge and feel the shudder as debris hits the massive cement supports. The railing is altogether too short, about two feet, but I can never resist looking over to see the moment of impact.
From my shore, I see the collision but must wait for over two seconds for the report of the thud to reach me.
This river flows into the Missouri River. Each mile downriver from here, it gets bigger and more impressive, deserving the name Grand River. Where I am, there are shifting sandbars that keep it from being navigable. That's all to the good, keeping noisy boats from my domain.
On Thin Ice
These last few bitterly cold nights have frozen the river along the shore. My coon hound, Beau, made me uneasy by venturing out on the thin ice and crossing to the other side. He must be smarter than I thought, because he crossed down by the bridge, where it is the most shallow. When the river is low like it is now, water flows over the rocks there and makes a pleasant waterfall sound. Somewhat like a dormant volcano, the river is waiting for a little more temperature to do something dramatic.
My Starter River
When I lived on my first river, it was during those record-breaking cold winters of the seventies and eighties. In springtime, the break-up of the river was spectacular. I would take a lunch and sit on the rip-rap in the mild spring air.
The ice had frozen to a thickness of over a foot. There was a bridge downriver there, too, a smaller one, closer to the water. The ice and debris would get bottlenecked there and back up around the bend to where I sat waiting for the drama. From upriver, entire trees floated down to my vantage point. They hit the jumbled brown ice, dove under it and shot up into the air like breaching whales.
It was an unforgetable spectacle, with the sound made by the ice and trees slamming together. One of those times when the earth really shook.
Although those few days of break-up were the high point of my river-watching year, I could never coax anyone into experiencing it with me.
When I mentioned it to my farmer neighbor, who'd lived down by the bridge for decades, he told me that he also spent hours looking on as the ice broke up. He laughed, then said, "But if you tell anyone, they think you're crazy!"
