Page 93 - "Mississippi in the 1st Person" - Michael James Stone (Demo/Free)

I don’t sleep much and I rise early. So if I get too much down time when I am up tempo it’s
like a over wound spring just waiting to explode in activity. A lot of my life working has been

like that from geek or desk to fully outdoors. A dichotomy of opposite directions.

My mother used to say whole hog or nothing.

I suppose that’s true because everything I get involved in at the time I am involved in it I am
all in it. The Mississippi River was easy to be “whole hog in” because it dominated the land-

scape.

The Sky clearing up was always an amazing blue, but whether muddy or green or clear, shal-
low or full, The Mississippi River reflected on it’s surface the landscape around it and en-

hanced it for being there.

If that were even possible.

My track today promised me to be river. Not creek bed sand or river rock gravel, or even mud
that was starting to become more obvious, but a river I could roll over or paddle down. A river

that promised me a highway for my kayaks, a peace for my soul, a place to go and see what
next was in store.

I know it had been only 3 or 4 days but I was completely fed up with walking in the river with

frigid feet and sliding ground I wanted to have days where I could get in and out of the boat
with dry shoes……..or at least dry feet.

Starting this early with nary a nature making a noise I even started using a silent paddle stroke

to just enjoy the quiet reverie of the absence of sound from car or bird or even river. Slight
popping was there but no real sound right now and that was in some ways beckoning to me to
come on the river and flow with it’s rhythm as the outdoors woke to it’s melodic. I got in the

kayaks and just floated for a good ten minutes that felt like hours and ministered to me like a
balm of Gilead.

This morning certainly felt so soothing I could have enjoyed it for days.