You know that comic strip in the paper “Family Circus” that periodically shows the little kid being sent on some errand and traces his path over-behind-through- around-under-in-and-out of everything imaginable? That’s me when I am traveling. If you tracked my path some days it would look pretty crazy. For instance, yesterday I noticed one of my tires was low, so I stopped at a convenience store to ask where I might go to have it checked. The clerk was having a hard time giving directions, so another customer stepped in and said I should follow her as it was on her way back to work. As we started to pull out, I asked her to wait a second while I got out and gave her a postcard as a small thank you. She looked at it and said, “I think you just need to follow me to work!” She explained that she worked at the Muscatine Center for Non-Profits where they had recently established an Art Center and my project is just the kind of thing they would like to let people know about. I agreed to come by when my tire was repaired.
Listening
A while back I talked about noticing how this journey of 90 days seems to relate to a human lifespan of 90 years. There are aspects of the river at each point that seem to match the stages of a human’s development. This is day 36. The river is working hard here. From my current vantage point on the Riverwalk in Muscatine, Iowa, I can see a lock and dam in one direction and a big industrial installation with silos and smokestacks in the other. As soon as I left the rugged “Driftless” area, the land flattened out and became seriously agricultural and industrial. The air is frequently pungent with the smell of grain processing plants. The river banks are frequently lined with strange-looking conglomerations of tanks and silos connected by giant tubes, the purposes of which are mysterious to me.