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Where the River Fits the Song

Where the River Fits the Song THERE'S A CERTAIN TIME, EARLY IN SPRING, when 1 begin feeling the pull of the river. It always comes when the willow slaps are greening up near Portage des Sioux, and the geese have gone on without me. The mighty Missouri, which joins the Mississippi not far from our back door, is running heavy and cold with distant snowmelt-and 1know that the old river roads are open again. The first pang comes on about March 20th, the anniversary of an 1822 ad that ran in the old St. Louis Missouri Republican: "To enterprising young men. The subscriber wishes to engage one hundred young men to ascend the Missouri to its source, there to be employed for one, two, or three years. Wm. H. Ashley." (I ain't no younker, Major Ashley, sir, and don't savvy "enterprising ," but I'm a curly old wolf with a few howls left, and my stick floats upriver. Waugh!) Another pang comes a little later, sometime around May 14th, if 1happen to wander down to where Wood River once entered 103 Where the River Fits the Song T>lERli'S ,.. C~U"'" TIMS, ~,..nY '" SPall/uree, then: to be employed for one, two. or thlft yeats. Wm. H. A.hley.u (I ain't no younker, Major Ashley, .ir. and don't savvy"enterprising ." but I'm a curly old wolf with a few howls left, and my sti"k floats upriver. Waugh!) Another pang comn a little later, sometime around May 14th, if 1happen to wander down 10 where Wood River once e1ltered IOJ Where the River Fits the Song T>lERli'S ,.. C~U"'" TIMS, ~,..nY '" SPall/uree, then: to be employed for one, two. or thlft yeats. Wm. H. A.hley.u (I ain't no younker, Major Ashley, .ir. and don't savvy"enterprising ." but I'm a curly old wolf with a few howls left, and my sti"k floats upriver. Waugh!) Another pang comn a little later, sometime around May 14th, if 1happen to wander down 10 where Wood River once e1ltered IOJ 104 JOHN MADSON the Mississippi. There is a neglected little park there, still green and wooded but quieter than it was on that day in 1804 when William Clark and the Corps of Discovery left to cross the Mississippi and enter the mouth of the Missouri. I can sit within hailing distance of where, on that rainy spring morning, they broke camp and launched the two pirogues and the boat, bound for St. Charles to meet Captain Meriwether Lewis and then to vanish up the unknown river for over two years. Mid-May is a propitious time for such leave-taking, and it never comes but what I think of breaking my own winter camp and following. This wouldn't be a hard place to leave. Behind me are the oil refineries of Wood River and Roxana, fouling the air in a desperate attempt to fuel the commerce of St. Louis-which is busily converting some of that energy to a pall of smog. And the best escape route lies directly across from me, where the broad Missouri emerges from under the point of St. Charles County. From the beginning it has been a prime escape route, the back door of a new republic that had doubled its size with the stroke of a quill pen. The Gateway Arch of St. Louis proclaims this to tourists, but the mouth of that muddy river over there is the real symbol of what it's all about. As American rivers go, it has never looked like much. Not from this end, at least. Other rivers are more beautiful and imposing. But none can really compare with it-not the Potomac , nor Hudson, nor Columbia, nor even the Mississippi. The Missouri was a buckskin river, a wild Injun river drawing its medicine from the Big Sky. More men went up it than came back down-but they sent back the gold and beaver plew to prove that they got there. It was our true Northwest Passage at last, our only real westering river, the way into new empire. A great, brown, bank-caving, snag-toothed, turbulent bull buffalo of a river that muscled its way for 2,500 miles to close a river system between the Rockies and the snug farms of western Pennsylvania. The barriers of New France had crumbled, and the Missouri made its brag. "Come on up...