Page 49 - "Mississippi in the 1st Person" - Michael James Stone (Demo/Free)

Even though there is a side of me that is introspective, quiet, shy and emotional; life had me an A type person-
ality and so talking with people was easy enough and there was not a time that traveling down the Mississippi
from headwaters to gulf waters wasn't a great starting point.

And more than that……...I listened. I asked questions. I didn’t hurry off or act like I had to get somewhere
down the river or back to my kayak. I engaged people to talk by talking and once getting that “bridge of cov-
nersation “ going, letting the person tell me anything or everything they wanted to.

Sometimes it got quite interesting, but always people had a story to tell about where they lived, what they did,
how they interacted with the River, and how much they too wanted to do what I was doing. And when they
didn’t really want to go “down the Mississippi” they really wanted to hear about how far I was, or had gotten,
or when I finished.

THEY LITERALLY FORCED ME TO WRITE THESE BOOKS