Wisconsin Great River Road Archives

It has rained incessantly since I arrived in Galena, Illinois, 48 hours ago. Just as I am leaving, I am granted a 10-minute reprieve, so I scurry like a crazed squirrel grabbing a few shots of the beautiful downtown historic district.

Galena, Illinois

Back on the Mississippi Great River Road, after stopping at a river overlook and watching a pair of bald eagles spiral up from the misty valley below, I pull back onto the highway and surprise myself by turning north instead of south. It’s not confusion and it isn’t really a decision, it’s just my way of aimless traveling while on this 90-day journey of a raindrop – it’s just “surrendering to serendipity.”

It seems I’m headed to Sinsinawa, about 25 miles north and just across the state line into Wisconsin. All I know about the place, aside from loving the lyrical sound of the name, is that it is home to an order of Dominican Catholic Sisters who reportedly bake very fine bread. Once away from the tall bluffs that line the River, the sky clears and the land flattens out. Precisely cultivated rows, empty now of their bounty, stretch away to infinity on both sides of the road.

Sinsinawa Mound is a surprise – poking inexplicably above the tabletop of farmland around it. It seems, however, perfectly suited to be the home of Sisters pledged to a higher calling. I drive the quiet, shaded campus without seeing anyone and I am not moved to stop until I come upon a cemetery. A s I walk among the long, orderly rows of simple white headstones, reading the names of the Sisters, I wonder about the stories of their lives.

On a small rise just beyond the cemetery, there is a brick pattern of concentric circles that I recognize as a labyrinth. A sign invites anyone to follow the path to the center while praying or meditating. I do, and when I stand in the innermost circle, there is a heightened awareness of all things being in perfect order. Refreshed and content, my visit seems complete.

Labyrinth at Dominican Sisters of Sinsinawa Convent

Just as I reach my car, I hear someone say, “Come over here, will you, and help me a moment.” It’s a voice your mother might have used, or your third grade teacher – respectfully assuming that you will, of course, come immediately and do the right thing. I see her then – a petite woman with curly gray hair, standing beside an upturned bench. “This bench has blown over in the wind,” she says, “and we must set it upright.”

When our chore is complete, she beams up at me with an elfish grin and introduces herself as Sister Janette. We chat a few minutes, then sit together on the bench as she tells me about her community of Sisters and about her job here as the librarian. It turns out that while the Dominican Sisters of Sinsinawa are indeed bakers of bread, they are also bold activists who go wherever they are needed in the world to confront injustice. Since 1847, this order of more than 3,200 courageous women has fearlessly and quietly worked to eliminate racism, human trafficking and any behavior that impinges on human dignity.

Sister Janette’s eyes sparkle as she talks and I feel her spunk and her quiet effervescence. There is a river of subtle, but irrepressible, joy in her that bubbles frequently to the surface in contagious laughter. When I tell her about the 90-day journey of a raindrop, she is so delighted that it makes us both giggle. She asks about places I have been and what lies ahead, relishing each answer. She is, as my grandmother would have said “just plain tickled with the whole idea.” We laugh and talk like old friends, catching up on each other’s lives.

When I give Sister Janette a postcard of the journey, she looks at it quietly for a long time. Finally, she looks up with glowing eyes and says, “You know, Gayle, today is my birthday. This card and this time with you is my birthday present.” The smiles that we share then make my heart feel like it could burst. So this is why I had come – to help a friend celebrate her birthday.

I give her a birthday hug then and ask if I may take her picture. She answers in that “teacherly” no-nonsense voice that leaves no space for disagreement, “Yes, of course. But I shall be holding the postcard.”

The first 681 miles of the Mississippi have been all within the state of Minnesota. At Prescott, Wisconsin, the Mississippi is joined by the St. Croix River and from this point until deep in Louisiana; the river is always a boundary between two states. If you’d like a good visual of the path of the river (and ours), the Mississippi River Parkway Commission has a map that you can expand and contract here.

Somewhere between Elk River and Red Wing, where I am this afternoon, the color of the water has changed to the muddier look most of us know well. The barges on the river are much longer and wider and the river seems to have a more serious, hard-working personality. It’s interesting to notice – this journey is 90 days because the National Park Service estimates a single raindrop will travel that long to reach the Gulf from the headwaters. So far, the look and feel of the river at each point seems to correlate with a human lifespan of 90 years. It was a tiny fragile infant at Itasca, then a frisky, romping toddler at Bemidji, an agile 9-year-old at Cass Lake, an adolescent at Elk River and now on day 21, it feels like an adult, getting about the business of life, gathering waters, doing its job.

Perhaps that is contributing to my introspective mood today. Perhaps also three weeks is long enough to find the natural rhythm of living and working on the road and to allow some questions to present themselves. I’ve been asked various versions of, “What led you to do this?” There are easy answers I can give, depending on who is asking, and they are valid answers, but the question has many levels. It’s easy enough to say what it’s not about. It’s not about gathering or accumulating anything – not photos nor stories, experiences nor knowledge. It’s easy enough to say I am working on a book, but it’s not even about that. I may never be able to say in words what it is about.

But since words are the best tools we have, I will try – at least as I see it from this moment, on this picnic bench. It’s about this breeze that is starting to feel a bit chilly, this trinity of seagulls who seem to be playing with the updrafts and downdrafts simply because they can, the sound of a boat passing by, this breath I am taking right now. Too often, we miss the full experience of the present moment by wishing for something different.

Yesterday in St. Paul, I visited the Science Museum of Minnesota and saw the Dead Sea Scrolls currently on exhibit there. To actually see the fragments of scriptures written at the time Jesus walked the earth was a stunning experience. The lives of the people who placed those scrolls in pottery jars and hid them in caves 2,000 years ago were very different from our own. And yet, they struggled with the same human foibles that we do. All lives have both pleasure and pain – it’s simply the nature of life. But every moment that we can turn our attention away from past or future and bring it to just right now – that is a moment fully lived and appreciated. So, I’m just here on this picnic bench, watching the river and the gulls – and that’s what it’s about, nothing more.

I ended the day watching dusk envelope the town of Red Wing from a high bluff in Memorial Park.

That was yesterday. I slept deliciously and bounded up this morning well before the sun to explore. As much as I have loved Minnesota, there’s something exciting about having new territory in a new state!

From here on south, the Great River Road is often on both sides of the river, so hop scotching is encouraged! And, remember – if you decide to do any part of the GRR, it’s not about sticking to the route or getting from one point to another.

If a road seems to say, “come here” don’t hesitate. You might find something like this…

or an apple orchard.

The Wisconsin GRR in this region curves through rich farm land, past towering bluffs and through some villages that manage to be completely charming without being the least bit cutesy!

At Bay City, the river naturally widens and becomes Lake Pepin, the largest lake on the Mississippi. The morning meeting of the gulls had convened on the dock at the city park,

but as I approached they decided to move on, and had plenty to say about it as they went.

And so it goes…another day on the Great River Road. Gayle

The Birthday Surprise: Roadtripping With a Raindrop Moment #5

What’s It All About?