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Show RTVER river moved, as slowly as if it had all the time in the world. It was a perfect metaphor of time, floating and whole but never the same thing in any two moments. As Heraclitus said, you can't put your foot in the same river twice, assuming if s possible to put your foot in the same river once. The river, like time, existed only in its fluidity. The day was very long. Morning alone seemed to last forever. Below the Chickasaw Bluffs the country leveled out again to become gently swelling hills. The river widened and slowed down. I lazed in the bottom of my boat, on top of my gear now instead of underneath it, drinking long draughts of sunshine. I felt like a groundhog must feel on his first day out of the hole. After the endless fog, when everything had been gray shades of light and shadow, the world exploded with color. The cottonwoods and willows were green and everywhere. Sugarberry, sweetgum, sycamores, and persimmons were starting to leaf out, and here and there a few dogwood trees flowered white like enormous carnations. The oaks-water oaks and swamp chestnut oaks and willow oaks- along with the elms and maples and river birch and pumpkin ash were beginning to bud, and in isolated stands black locust and hickory still stood winter-naked. The earliest wildflowers were appearing, soft yellows and blues that glowed in the intense clarity of the spring light. Along about noon I was appreciating the view when I noticed a brown cloud clinging to the southern horizon. It had to be Memphis, and as I looked closer I was surprised to see the Memphis skyline poking above the horizon, blue and sharply defined though it was almost twenty miles away. Through the long afternoon I watched the city grow larger and it filled me with a strange excitement: mighty mythical Memphis on the muddy Mississippi. -184- |