The Source of a Great River- Part 1

When I was 21 years old back in 1974 I was struck with an urge to explore Africa's Nile river. I was living in Holland at the time and was a veteran vagabond having wandered North America and Europe out of a backpack for the better part of the previous three years. To stuff it all under an acorn cap, I wound up trekking the Nile River from the Pyramids through the Valley of the Kings and then south through Khartoum and further through the Sudd Swamp and onward to Juba in the south of Sudan, over Kabalega Falls in Uganda until I finally I dipped my toe in Lake Victoria and was satisfied. That trip cured my desire to travel by the seat of my pants and I hung up my backpack.

October 1974  A bad case of wanderlust

      I am planing to trek upstream to find the source of the 58 mile Pine River that flows by me now as I write. No, it is not the 3,470 mile Nile of my early days but it feels just as important to me now that I understand this river and where it comes from. I already know where it goes. The Pine collides with the Chippewa river a quarter mile down stream from my house and there loses its identity again and again as it flows into the Tittabawasee and the Saginaw rivers before melting into the Saginaw bay of Lake Huron. There the Rain water that falls on mid-Michigan's farm fields and forests eventually crashes over Niagara falls and out the St. Lawrence to the North Atlantic and the rest of the world.
   Tonight I think of the great explorers who spend their young lives recklessly for nothing more than to see themselves in the light of mysterious places and to acquire that 'sense' of adventure that colors everything that follows. To have a personal awareness and experience that is not common, to find the comfort in chaos and singularity, is of transient value in this high definition world of shared images. You get soft, you forget the edge is still out there and you get misty staring at old pictures.
   Stay with me over the next two weeks and we shall know this river as few have known it!