“Oh Sweet Jesus the levees that break in my heart” - Frank Stanford, “The Snake Doctors”
I drove an hour to Chester, Illinois, to meet up with my dear old pal Erin this week. Erin & I met during our freshman year at Knox College. She is currently on her way from her home in rural Alaska to work at the McMurdo Station in Antarctica. We are lucky enough to have grown up a few hours from each other, so I get to see her when she comes to visit her family in Missouri. Chester is a halfway point, so we decided to meet there this time.
For the first time in weeks, the sky was gray & heavy with rain–& I felt that way, too. A peculiar kind of melancholy. I drove on Illinois Route 3, which for a while is also the Great River Road.
Suddenly, my sadness had a face, a name: Monica. My dear former teacher & advisor, fellow poet, & beloved friend drove the Great River Road which follows the Mississippi River from way up North at the headwaters in Minnesota all the way South to the Gulf of Mexico. She was fueled by coffee, almonds, & clementines; her tiny high-heeled foot pumping the accelerator. I lived a block away from her then, for a couple of years after I graduated from college, & she brought me a little glass bottle of water from the headwaters, which I am looking at while I type this.
Monica died unexpectedly two days before my wedding in 2022. I miss her all the time, but acutely when the Mississippi is in eyeshot or I see a good bridge.
Still, I am healed by the landscape on the road to Chester. On one side, bluffs & steep hills draped in the Shawnee National Forest. On the other, the fertile farmland of the Mississippi River Valley that stretches flatly in dramatic contrast with the hills, until the tree line picks back up & just beyond it, that big river churns on & on. This area is also known by some locally as The Bottoms as it’s part of the American Bottom, which is the Mississippi floodplain in Southeastern Illinois.
Some very old houses are built on stilts into the hillsides that swallow old barns. I see a cemetery, white gravestones pepper the slope. Like the bleached sky, they stand out among the lush green trees. I pass a hill called Buttermilk Hill, which is so delicious I ponder the beautiful language of naming things.
As I get closer to Chester, I pass a building that looks like a restaurant or bar with a bare plywood saloon-like facade. On it, spray-painted in white: RESURRECTING WITH A LOT OF HELP FROM MY FRIENDS. I wonder what happened here: what fire or flood. I think of what love makes possible.
I feel lighter each mile closer to the river, closer to my sweet friend. I miss Monica, which makes seeing Erin feel even more special.
She & I met up at a little Mexican restaurant to eat vegetarian burritos as big as our heads & share queso & chips.
Then we went to the Popeye Museum & Spinach Can Collectibles. The creator of Popeye the Sailor Man, Elzie Crisler Segar, is from Chester. In true Midwestern fashion, the town boasts its quirky history with pride. Many years ago, I went to the Popeye Festival with my sisters Meredith & Laura. My favorite part was a haunted tour of Chester we took in the rain.
Erin & I ended up sitting on a bench overlooking the river. I drank a cold, sweet Tamarind Jarritos & we talked about many things that are in flux in our lives. We long to be kinder to ourselves, to achieve a healthy distance from tough thoughts. Can we learn to watch them like the driftwood bobbing down the river? Can we be passionate & also calm?
Proximity to the natural world helps us both center ourselves, I think. It grounds us. We change & still, the river. I like to feel humbled in this way. I have a fair amount of existential anxiety & I’m soothed by the powerful parts of this Earth that preceded me & will go rolling on after I’m gone. Enter catastrophic climate change anxiety here - or don’t! Just imagine the river, flowing ever onward.
Looking at my friend’s hands, her sky-blue fingernail polish that reflects her blue-blue eyes, which sparkle through her tears–my sorrow expands into gratitude for a connection that spans continents, for the comfort of friendship.
My dear Monica isn’t physically here anymore, but I continue to be changed by her love. Love, the ceaseless force that slowly erodes sharp edges over time. It whittles smooth the splintering bark of dead trees & shapes their roots into ornament. Maybe soft land gives in from the sides, widening the channel. Maybe an earthquake changes the direction of flow, but it returns, persistently, to knock at the doors of the heart. I am here. I will not leave you alone. I love you.
If you need me, I’ll be over here resurrecting again with a lot of help from my friends. Thank you for being among them.
Until next week–maybe we can try to go with the flow,
Annie
Hail Big Muddy! 9/12/24
Annie-gram 8: River