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Show RTVER personal observance. I felt good again, young and able and strong. Even if I was a fool (and I didn't doubt it), even if I was crazy, I still had a chance at making good. Even the Bible had something to say about the fool who persists in his folly. And I've got to admit that after seeing the loonies in the kayaks, I did not feel quite so all alone. The next morning the sun burned away the last of the white morning fog and spring broke winter's hold upon the land and the river. The Mississippi, gray and formless the day before, became a shining horizon of blue. The river ran high and fast and all along its banks life blossomed into green spring. As evening came, instead of turning cold an amazing warm richness came into the air: trees were beginning to leaf and flower and the rich scent drifted across the water. I came into the bayou below Osceola, Arkansas and rowed up toward town. I decided to invest some of my last resources in some more southern fried chicken. I landed my boat under a stand of tall oaks and climbed over the levee. The Mississippi levee and flood control system is proclaimed as a miracle of modern engineering by the folks who built it, the Army Corps of Engineers, and it is truly one of the marvels of the mechanical age. It is wider, higher, and many times longer than the Great Wall of China and it does about as well at keeping the river contained as the Great Wall did at keeping the Mongols in Mongolia. The natural basin of the Mississippi River flowed through a flood plain that was about twenty miles wide. The actual course of the river wandered and varying river levels through the year created swamps and backwaters that acted as natural holding ponds and absorbed large amounts of the basin's excess runoff. The river was continually changing and renewing itself. The river that -177- |