Such as it goes with many things, like puberty, young infants and using a wheelchair, the Mississippi River has been imbued with a level of glamor it doesn’t really deserve. It’s magical, yes. It’s purposeful and deliberate. It’s vast. But it’s dirty, and murky with rusty barges bobbing through the waters like slow-moving icebergs enveloped in metal casings. And I think that maybe to realize that something you’ve always seen through a filter of mysticism and awe — like we often do with cities, growing up and certain people — is in reality just a slow moving, swampy body of water that’s littered with trash and dead birds is a powerful thing. Because that means it’s regular.
I rode along the River yesterday from school to Kenner, which is about a 20 mile there-and-back route. And the most remarkable thing spotted was a dead white heron.
