Rolling on the river...

I moved from California to Pennsylvania in June, driving myself across the country over the course of eight days, ten states, a visit with family, and my 40th college reunion. There will be other posts devoted to different portions of the trip, but this post is about the intentional detour I took in Illinois. My plan was to stop in Naperville, Illinois to visit with my niece and her family, which I did, and originally when I looked at the map it appeared Iowa would be the ideal spot to spend the night on my way.

When I first thought about this trip, it was with the idea that I’d let chance determine how far I’d go and where I’d stay. For some reason that wasn’t as appealing as I’d expected, so I went ahead and found an interesting place to stay for the first night. Then I checked to see how far I thought I’d make it the next night, and before I knew it, the entire trip was booked.

While investigating possible hotels or motels, I ran across a hotel on a river in Illinois, that had a paddle wheel riverboat next door. It was close enough to Naperville that I wouldn’t have to leave early in the morning, which meant I might be able to sit by the river and write. That clinched it, and I made the reservation. I arrived in late June, and discovered I was one of very few people staying at the hotel. It was midweek, and while it was crowded on the weekends, not a lot of folks were there when I was.

The riverboat was there, tied up to the dock, though the desk clerk thought it only ran on weekends until July. When I went to the restaurant next door, I was the only customer, so I got a premium spot, right on the river.

It was the Rock River, and the hotel was just outside the town of Oregon, Illinois. After dinner, I took my iced tea out on the deck to one of the empty tables and listened to the water lapping against the riverboat.  The Rock River is not the Mississippi. On the other hand, it’s no creek, either. The riverboat did not dwarf the river, in fact they looked as if they fit one another pretty well.

Some people love the mountains, some the forest, for me, it’s water. Put me next to an ocean, a river, heck, even a pond, and I can sit for hours. Though I did eventually go in that night, I was determined to bring my writing out there the next morning.

I did just that, along with my coffee, and got a lot of work done as I enjoyed the lapping water and the sun peeking through the leaves. It happened there was also a fair bit of activity on the riverboat, and when I asked someone, it turned out they had a lunch cruise scheduled. I could be back in plenty of time to get to my niece’s, and it was catered by the restaurant next door, so I knew the food would be good. I bought myself a ticket and hopped on board.

By the time we cast off, there was a busload of forty some men and women, a table of three or four women, and me. I raced through the excellent lunch so I could get upstairs and get a good look at the paddle wheel. The dining room was air conditioned, and they had a guitarist/singer performing, but neither of those attractions could outweigh the wheel and the river.

I thought about Mark Twain growing up on the Mississippi River, seeing river traffic in the same way we see a busy highway, seeing paddlewheel riverboats steaming by on a regular basis. I stood and watched the paddle wheel churning up the water, mesmerized. There were also occasional homes along the banks of the river, and places where you could see the highway.

There was one moment when the captain came out and pointed out a tree up high on the riverbank. If you looked carefully, you could see an adult bald eagle sitting in the tree, watching us. I tried to take a picture, but it’s pretty impossible to see it unless you know where to look. Then I stopped trying and just watched the eagle watching us.

Most of the time I sat in the shade. I listened and looked and smelled. Nowadays a paddlewheeler isn't a steamboat, it's run by diesel. The fumes can be hard to take. I watched the riverbank go by, saw people waving from the banks, just as people have always done when a riverboat goes by. And I remembered my dad’s mother telling me about her father, who was a minstrel on one of the riverboat’s in Pittsburgh after the Civil War (she was born in 1898).

Our lives, our histories, our stories, flow along like that river. We try to capture them, to hold on to something concrete. Only we can’t.

The eagle is on the branch in the center of the top third of the picture

There was a great line in the Emilio Estevez film, The Way, when Estevez’ character says to his father (played by his real-life father, Martin Sheen), “You don’t choose a life, Dad, you live it.”

When we pulled in to the dock, the woman who’d acted as the maître d' in the dining room tossed bits of roll into the water so we could see the local fish. The carp that swam up to get their treat were the most enormous fish I’ve seen outside the Monterey Bay Aquarium. 

The big group of people disappeared quickly to their bus, and the other group was long gone. I sat for a while at one of the tables on the dock, watching them clean up the boat, and take off the trash and the dirty plates and utensils. And the river continued its flow, lapping against the shore and the riverboat...