Page 7 - "Mississippi in the 1st Person" - Michael James Stone (Demo/Free)

Life is an adventure we have yet to experience. Until the day we die, we are reveling in it’s va-
riety and basking in it’s wonder.

From the everyday mundane to the wonder of watching a new born babe open it’s eyes; there

is splendor all around us just waiting to be appreciated by those who have found that the Great-
est Adventures we live are those all around us every day.

A man can take a canoe with a group of men and travel up the greatest river America has and at

the time of his discovery of the Great American Purchase reveal there is no waterway to the
great Pacific Ocean. Then be almost unheralded till years later recognized as a great Adventur-

er by those who suddenly capture the moment for those who follow by revealing the depth and
wonder a Lewis and Clark had to do in order to accomplish a mission they were given to do.

But in fact most adventures are less than fact and more than fiction as were it not for writers

taking the everyday world of people on the river and capturing it in a fictional story like Tom
Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn by a man who changed his name to Mark Twain, who would have
cared what the Mississippi River did or didn’t do as long as work so preoccupied everyone’s

mind, or war took away the wonder of that mighty river.

The fact is a Great Adventure is experienced everyday if we but have the eyes to see and the
ears to here of the tales those who venture to tell of their exploits reveal to us that our lives

themselves are but birthing rooms of some wonderful world of human existence that given the
right perspective we begin to realize every one of us is a Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn in
our own back yards as Mark Twain proclaimed.

And each person has the capacity to become a Lewis & Clark given the simple nudge or com-
mand to go and explore, find the facts, report back.

When Samuel Clemens wrote of fictional characters to inspires us of the River he traveled up
and down on a Paddle wheeler; he used you and I as backdrops of humanity. There is nothing

great or magical about Tom Sawyer that is not found in your life’s cycle that is not lived out at
some point by you.

It’s simply Mr. Clemens made you and I see your world thru his eyes. The stories common, the

tales well known. That is the adventure that you have before you. To see your world though
someone else’s eyes and realize you are a Great American Adventurer and your journey is right

around the corner from a bookstore or ‘up around the bend “ on the Mississippi River.

You are the Mark Twain of your own life or the Lewis and Clark of an adventure waiting to
unfold. You have in this story a factual recollection of something you can choose to do if you

but feel the inspiration of the moment and decide to boldly go where lots of men have gone be-
fore but no one see’s it quite the same as you, or I. This is my Great American Adventure.